Former head of Peru’s Maoist rebels dies in prison, lawyer says
- Abimael Guzman, 86, had been serving a life sentence in the maximum security prison at the Callao naval base near Lima
- Guzman was considered the architect behind the Maoist Shining Path guerilla group’s attempt to overthrow the Peruvian government between 1980 and 2000
The historic leader of Peru’s Maoist Shining Path guerillas, blamed for one of the bloodiest insurgencies in Latin America, died on Saturday in a military prison, his lawyer told Agence France-Presse.
Abimael Guzman was 86. He had been serving a life sentence in the maximum security prison at the Callao naval base near Lima.
Lawyer Alfredo Crespo said the navy had confirmed the death and informed Guzman’s wife, Elena Iparragurre, who herself is serving a life sentence for terrorism in a different Lima prison.
A prison statement said Guzman died early on Saturday from “complications in the state of his health.” It provided no details.
Guzman, a former philosophy professor, was considered the intellectual architect behind the Maoist group’s brutal, 20-year attempt to overthrow the Peruvian government from 1980-2000.
That conflict – in which Guzman hoped to impose the Marxist model of his icon, Mao Zedong, on Peru – claimed 70,000 lives, either dead or disappeared, according to the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.