Life Sentences for Shining Path’s Tarata Bomb

Twenty-six years after a car bomb killed 23 people in Lima’s busy upscale commercial district of Miraflores,  Shining Path’s top leaders have been sentenced to life in prison, convicted of the crime of aggravated terrorism.  Most of the defendants, led by Abimael Guzman, founder of the Shining Path, are already serving time in prison for other crimes committed during the years of armed conflict.

The Tarata bomb marked a turning point in the rebel conflict, not only because it claimed the highest number of victims of any attack by the insurgents in the capital, awakening Limeños to the reality of what the insurgents had been committing in the Andean highlands for over 10 years, but because barely two months later, an elite police intelligence team finally tracked down and captured the elusive Guzman.*

The 400 kg bomb, in a car  parked on the narrow one-block street of Tarata, exploded in the evening while the area was still busy with restaurant goers. The blast wave also injured 115 people and destroyed or severely damaged the apartments of 360 families on Tarata and the neighbouring blocks.

Although Shining Path had for several years been encroaching on Lima from the highlands with car bombs against government and private institutions, with few exceptions the bombs were detonated at pre-dawn hours when few if any people were killed or injured.  Days earlier, however, three people were killed in the massive car bomb against Channel 2 TV’s offices.

The Shining Path defense lawyer, Alfredo Crespo, argued that the Tarata bomb was a mistake, that the target was the Banco de Credito offices and the timing was for much later in the evening.

The trial began in September last year, with hearings at the Naval base in Callao, where Abimael Guzman is already serving a life sentence for his role in the armed conflict he led for more than 12 years.  The sentence, guilty of planning and ordering the Tarata car bomb, was read out 26 years to the day that Guzman was arrested, on Sept. 12, 1992.    The other defendants sentenced were Guzman’s partner Elena Yparraguire, Maria Pantoja, Oscar Ramirez, Durand, Florindo Flores (Comrade Artemio), Laura Zambrano, Edmundo Cox, Florentino Cerron, Osman Morote and Margot Liendo.  The latter two defendants had been under house arrest, after serving 25-year sentences that concluded in April this year.  An additional defendant completed a 25-year sentence in June this year and fled to France.

The Shining Path members who executed the car bomb incident were tried in 1995 and have since completed their 25-year sentences.

*Twice the police team had been very close to capturing Guzman, towards the end of the Garcia administration and in the early days of the Fujimori administration, but Guzman managed to escape, apparently due to tip-offs.