Peru nabs Shining Path logistics boss

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Peruvian police caught the logistics chief of Shining Path, the rebel group largely gutted after 20 years of fighting but whose remnants are active in coca-growing regions, officials said Saturday.

The Maoist guerrilla army fought successive governments starting in 1980 and was for the most part dismantled in the mid-1990s. Its leaders are serving life terms.

The fighting left some 69,000 people dead, according to Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The logistics man whose arrest was announced Saturday is Neymer Keni Maldonado, and he is a confidant of a leader captured in 2012, said the head of the anti-terrorism division of the police, General Jose Baella.

Maldonado was found with weapons and ammunition in the San Martin region of northern Peru.

He had knowledge of rebel assets that police have seized, Baella said.

"He is not just anybody," he added.

The vestiges of the Shining Path are active in two coca-growing regions, and the government says these fighters protect cocaine traffickers in exchange for money.