Peruvian rebel leader sentenced to life in prison

[Charlie Brown]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/10/13/peru.terror.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest

LAO, Peru (AP) -- Shining Path founder Abimael Guzman, whose messianic communist vision inspired a 12-year rebellion that cost nearly 70,000 lives, was found guilty Friday of aggravated terrorism and sentenced to life in prison.

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Guzman was known to his followers as "Presidente Gonzalo," inspiring a cultlike obedience among a Maoist guerrilla insurgency that grew to 10,000 armed fighters.

"I am a revolutionary combatant and totally reject being a terrorist," Guzman declared as the trial began last year at the maximum-security naval base where he has been held since 1993.

But most Peruvians have little sympathy for Guzman, whose followers celebrated bloodshed in songs and slogans, describing blood as necessary to "irrigate" their glorious revolution.

The Shining Path bombed electrical towers, bridges and factories, assassinated mayors and massacred villagers, including 69 peasants in the Andean village of Lucanamarca, where nearly two dozen children were among those shot and hacked to death in retaliation for the killings of several rebels.

Guzman gloated about the massacre in a 1988 interview in the rebels' newspaper El Diario, saying: "Faced with reactionary military action, we responded with action: Lucanamarca."