LIMA, Peru — Peruvian security forces have arrested 24 leaders of the political wing of the Shining Path rebel movement including the lawyer of its imprisoned leader and the cousin of President Ollanta Humala, the president announced today.
Humala said in a radio interview from Canada that Wednesday night’s arrests followed a police investigation that determined that various members of the MOVADEF movement were responsible for terrorism and financing terrorism through drug trafficking.
Neither Humala nor any other government official provided details of the two-year investigation that Humala said led to the arrests.
Among the arrested were Alfredo Crespo, attorney for Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman, and Walter Humala, a singer and guitarist who has called for Guzman’s release.
MOVADEF was formed in 2009, calls itself Marxist-Leninist-Maoist and ran candidates in 2010 regional elections without winning a single race.
Guzman is serving life without parole for terrorism.
He led one of Latin America’s most violent insurgencies, which was defeated with his 1992 capture. Some remnants remain in the world’s No. 1 cocaine-producing valley.