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Shining Path Hunters Guilty in Peru
Lima - The Peruvian Supreme Court ratified a guilty
verdict against general (r) Julio Salazar Monroe for
the murder of a professor and nine university
students on July 18, 1992.
The Court, however, reduced from 35 to 28 the
sentence against the former head of National
Intelligence Service. The massacre wa committed by
the Colina Group, a military dead squad.
The higher Court also confirmed a 20 year sentence
for Wilmer Yarleque as one of the chiefs of the
illegal group for his participation in the killings.
Former agents Orlando Vera, Luis Alarcon and
Fernando Lecca were sentenced to 15 years.
The La Cantuta massacre, in which a university
professor and nine students from Lima's La Cantuta
University were abducted by a military death squad
and "disappeared", took place during the presidency
of Alberto Fujimori. The incident occurred two days
after the Shining Path's Tarata bombing left over 40
dead in Lima Province.
In April 1993, military whistleblowers claimed the
death squad had abducted the victims, tortured and
murdered them, and then hurriedly buried them;
later, they claimed, after questions had been raised
in Congress, that the armed forces had exhumed,
incinerated, and reburied the bodies in another
location.
Lawyer Gloria Cano, a lawyer for victims relatives
and a human rights activist welcomed the court�s
ruling for "punishing this horrible crime as
premeditated homicide and forced disappearance".
With this sentence justice is finally served, she
said.
Former president Alberto Fujimori was condemned a
few months ago to 25 years in jail as the main
author behind the massacre and that of Barrios Altos
in which 16 civilians, including a child, were shot
at close range in 1991 by the Colina Group, also for
being suspected of supporting the Sendero Luminoso
(Shining Path) guerrilla movement.
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