\n Peru's Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman, who is already serving a life sentence, was handed a second life term on Tuesday for a 1992 car bombing that killed 25 people in Lima.\n<\/p>\n
\n Three judges at the National Criminal Court issued life sentences for Guzman, 83, and nine other leaders of the Maoist-inspired insurgency which began in the 1980s.\n<\/p>\n
\n In the attack, a car packed with 500 kilos of explosives blew up in a narrow street in Lima's upscale Miraflores district, killing 25 people and wounding more than 100 others.\n<\/p>\n
\n The blast, which destroyed shops, cars and homes, was the first time Shining Path had attacked a civilian target in the Peruvian capital.\n<\/p>\n
\n The sentences were delivered at a six-hour hearing broadcast live on television at the end of a 20-month trial, which Guzman denounced as a farse, insisting he had nothing to do with the attack.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said it was a mistake committed by followers.\n<\/p>\n
\n When Shining Path began its campaign in the 1980s, its goal was to overthrow the government and install communist rule through a \"dictatorship of the proletariat\"\n<\/p>\n
\n But when Alberto Fujimori took over as president in 1990, he launched a major crackdown on the Shining Path, and after Guzman's arrest in 1992, the guerrillas' activities declined sharply.\n<\/p>\n
\n That year, Guzman was sentenced to life in prison for treason by a military court but the sentence was overturned by Peru's Constitutional Court in 2003.\n<\/p>\n
\n A retrial began the same year and in 2006, Guzman was sentenced to life for terrorism, murder and other crimes committed during the two-decade insurgency which was responsible for the deaths of some 70,000 people.\n<\/p>\n
\n A 2003 report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that just under half of the victims were killed by the Shining Path while a third died at the hands of government security forces and local militias. The rest were unattributed.\n<\/p>\n
\n Although Fujimori was credited with crushing the Shining Path, he was accused of authorizing a \"dirty war\" to eradicate them and members of the Tupac Amaru, a rival leftist guerrilla group.\n<\/p>\n
\n In 2009, Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in jail for corruption and human rights abuses during his time in office.\n<\/p>\n
\n Today, the Shining Path is a largely defunct, renegade group of rebels hiding out in the jungle and working with drug traffickers to fund their operations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Peru's Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman, who is already serving a life sentence, was handed a second life term on Tuesday for a 1992 car bombing that killed 25 people in Lima. Three judges at the National Criminal Court issued life sentences for Guzman, 83, and nine other leaders of the Maoist-inspired insurgency which began […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-38810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n