PERU: Profile of Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman ahead of Friday's sentencing in civil trial

On Friday (October 13), Abimael Guzman, the leader of Peru's ruthless Shining Path rebels, will have his day of reckoning in the courts. He could face a life sentence for the deaths of some 31,300 people killed during Latin America's bloodiest insurgencies in the 1980s and early 1990s. Guzman, a former philosophy professor, led the group in a "popular war" to try and install communism in the South American country. The revolution began on the eve of Peru's return to democracy after 12 years of military dictatorship, when the Shining Path burnt election ballot boxes in the Andean town of Chuschi. Guzman called on his followers to cross a "river of blood" in the name of revolution, and kill 10 percent of the population. The group's worst atrocities included the massacre of 69 people, including 22 children, in the village of Lucanamarca in 1983, and the 1992 van bombing of an apartment block in a Lima suburb, which killed 25. Guzman was in hiding for years during the height of the violence, but two months after the fatal van bomb attack in Lima police received a tip on his whereabouts. A police surveillance team staked out a dance studio for weeks where Guzman was holed up with his lover and Shining Path Number Two, Elena Iparraguirre, before moving in to take both of them into custody. Police officers involved in the arrests say they acted right at the twelfth hour. "He was so close (to having a revolution) because he was already in his second last stage of his plan. If I had not captured Guzman, now we would be the Popular Republic of Peru, as he called it, and we would all be part of the Red Army," the police officer Benedicto Jimenez who tracked down and captured Guzman told Reuters. After his arrest, Guzman was paraded by the authorities like a beast in a cage, before being sentenced to jail for life in 1992 by a hooded military judge at a secret trial. He and Iparraguirre were both shipped off to the same top security complex in a naval base off the coast of Lima. A year later he appeared again to sign a peace accord that renounced the communist goals of the Shining Path. But the incident sparked a massive corruption scandal that felled the government of former President Alberto Fujimori. Government spy agents were widely reported to have treated Guzman to birthday cakes, special handling and a cosy jail regime, to butter him up for the peace deal. The face of the short, steely-eyed former professor then disappeared from the public eye for over 12 years, and the strength of his following whittled into insignificance. The Shining Path still remains on the U.S. government's list of terrorist groups, and several hundred die-hard members are holed up in Andean and jungle areas. But police and drug experts say most members of the Shining Path are now linked with the increasingly lucrative drugs trade in what is the world's second largest cocaine producer after Colombia. "They (the Shining Path followers) are hired killers for the drug traffickers, they work for the drug traffickers, attack police when the drug traffickers ask them to and provide security for the transportation of drugs. They have forgotten the group's interest in taking political power," analyst Fernando Rospigliosi said, referring to an incident in 2005 when the Shining Path killed 13 police officers in two attacks, prompting concern about the April 9 election. Then suddenly in 2003, Peru's top court annulled Guzman's sentence after a repeal of the draconian anti-terror laws that has sent him to jail. Authorities refused to release Guzman, but a civilian retrial was ordered and Guzman scored a huge publicity coup in court when he punched the air with a fist and chanted rebel slogans to the media. The case crumbled into chaos, and two judges resigned. The fiasco prompted the swift separation of Guzman and Iparraguirre, who was sent to a women's jail back on the mainland. National analysts say the debacle proved how important Guzman was, and still is to many parts of Peruvian society. "Guzman is not just significant in the historic and concrete past, he also has a present and future significance because he reflects the state of things in my country, the situation of social fractures, of exclusion, of secular injustice," President of the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation Commission Salomon Lerner, said. Guzman - now 71-years-old - was born in Mollendo, a port town some 1000 km south of Lima, the illegitimate son of a well-off merchant, who had six children by three different women. Guzman's mother died when he was only five years old. He studied at a private Catholic secondary school, and became interested in communism and Marxism while studying philosophy at the San Agustín National University. He befriended several like-minded young academics committed to bringing about revolution in Peru, and visited the People's Republic of China for the first time in 1965. Guzman has never shown any remorse and rejects charges of terrorism, saying all those killed by the Shining Path were the victims of a legitimate war.

ITN Source | October 13, 2006

Tags:. .chanted. .butter. .ballot. .massacre. .bloodiest