Dark day for Shining Path rebels

Monday, February 13, 2012

LIMA, Peru — Peruvian troops have captured the last historic leader of the once feared Shining Path guerrillas, after he was badly wounded in an apparent battle with security forces yesterday.

The man known as Comrade Artemio "is alive and receiving the appropriate medical attention", said Perus defense minister, Alberto Otarola, after President Ollanta Humala had earlier said the guerrilla fighter's dead body had been found.

"He is badly wounded and has all but lost his right arm," Otarola added.

A military offensive was launched last week in south-eastern Peru's Puerto Pizana area of the Alto Huallaga jungle to capture Comrade Artemio, 47, whose real name was Florindo Flores.

Defence officials said at the time they believed the guerrilla leader had been wounded.

"Now we must also act against drug trafficking in this area," Humala said yesterday. "That is how the pacification of the Alto Huallaga area really can get started."

Humala's government has been seeking to eradicate the last vestiges of Shining Path, which was one of Latin America's bloodiest guerrilla movements.

The rebels were all but eliminated in the 1990s under president Alberto Fujimori, after the arrest of its leader, Abimael Guzman.

Some 70,000 people were killed between 1980 and 2000 as the Lima government crushed the Shining Path and a rival leftist guerrilla group, the Tupac Amaru movement, according to Peru's independent Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

It is still listed by Peru and the US State Department as a terrorist organisation.

Remnants of the rebel forces — believed to number about 300 — remain in two coca-growing regions of the country: the Alto Huallaga Valley, and the Apurimac and Ene River valleys. Some worked as hired guns for drug-runners.

Peru had offered $350,000 for information leading to Artemio's capture and the US government another $5 million.