- Title: Shining Path founder Abimael Guzman on trial for 1992 bombing
- Date: 6th June 2017
- Summary: LIMA, PERU (FILE) (ORIGINALLY 4:3) (REUTERS) ****WARNING CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY*** PEOPLE STANDING AROUND SCENE OF BLAST WOMAN CRYING BY MAN AT BLAST SITE
- Embargoed: 20th June 2017 22:51
- Keywords: bombing trail Tarata Abimael Guzman Shining Path founder
- Location: LIMA, PERU
- City: LIMA, PERU
- Country: Peru
- Topics: Crime/Law/Justice,Crime
- Reuters ID: LVA0026K555J7
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: The founder of the Maoist-inspired rebel group the Shining Path was in a Lima court on Tuesday (June 6) as prosecutors in Peru push for a life sentence to be handed down to Abimael Guzman for allegedly ordering a bombing in Lima that killed 25 people in 1992.
Guzman is already serving a life sentence for having led the Shining Path's attempt to overthrow the state.
The 1992 car-bomb attack on Tarata Street in the upscale district of Miraflores was part of the Shining Path's bid to take its militancy to the capital from rural Peru and helped build support for a crackdown on suspected rebels by former President Alberto Fujimori.
The bombing was the Shining Path's bloodiest attack in Lima and followed massacres in indigenous villages in the Andes and Amazon that resisted the group's control.
Presenting their evidence, prosecutors talked up reported links between aid groups and the Shining Path.
But Guzman's defence has argued that lower-ranking Shining Path leaders in Lima ordered the Tarata Street bombing and denied their client was involved.
They have also talked up Guzman's good will to attend the hearing despite his reported deteriorating health.
Prosecutors argue Guzman and other former Shining Path leaders, all of whom are already in prison, should receive life sentences and pay reparations for the Tarata Street bombing.
The Shining Path launched one of the deadliest internal conflicts in Latin America in the 1980s. An estimated 69,000 people were killed in the conflict, according to a truth commission. - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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