Peruvian Police Say Shining Path Leader Captured
Abimael Guzman, the former philosophy professor who founded the Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) movement, was captured late Saturday, police said.
Guzman directed the Shining Path for 12 years in its violent campaign against the government.
Peruvian television showed images of a police operation in the middle-class Surco district of Lima and said Guzman had been taken.
A police spokesman confirmed the report, saying, “It’s true, it’s true; it’s Abimael Guzman.”
The Shining Path followed the tactics of China’s Mao Tse-tung in conducting a prolonged guerrilla campaign starting in the countryside and aiming to surround and strangle Peru’s coastal cities.
President Alberto Fujimori closed Congress and the judiciary and set up a military-backed one-man rule in April, claiming corruption was blocking his efforts to fight the Shining Path.
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