LIMA, Peru (AP) — Peruvian troops captured on Sunday the badly wounded leader of a remnant of the once-powerful Shining Path rebel group, effectively dismantling a well-armed faction that lived off the cocaine trade, President Ollanta Humala said.
Humala, a former army lieutenant colonel, flew to the remote coca-growing Upper Huallaga Valley of central Peru to congratulate the police and soldiers who had snared the 50-year-old rebel, Comrade Artemio, and two of his confederates.
He said Artemio, whose given name is Florindo "Juan" Flores, was undergoing medical treatment and would be airlifted to Lima.
"Mission accomplished," he told state TV from the police counter-narcotics base where Artemio was taken.
He said that with the capture of Artemio and several of his top lieutenants in recent weeks security forces had eliminated its leadership and pacified the Upper Huallaga, making agribusiness, cattle ranching and tourism now possible.
Analysts consider Artemio's capture a crippling blow to a roughly 150-strong band that represented roughly half of what remains of the Shining Path, which killed thousands during the 1980s and 1990s. He was apprehended three days after being wounded under circumstances neither Humala nor other officials immediately explained.
The other faction, also involved in the drug trade, is centered further south in the valley of the Apurimac and Ene rivers. Humala said security forces would now focus efforts on fighting that group, which was blamed for an attack on a remote police station last Monday in which two police officers were wounded.
Defense Minister Alberto Otarola said Artemio had "practically lost his right arm" when he was wounded. Other officials said he had at least one serious chest wound.
Humala expressed pride at announcing the capture of the guerrilla who was the Shining Path's regional chief in the early 1990s when Humala commanded a local army garrison.
He said security forces had been "closely following" Artemio in recent weeks and had acted at an opportune moment when civilians wouldn't be in harm's way.
Otarola said Friday that Artemio was wounded in combat with government forces early Thursday in the village of Puerto Pizana, but local journalists have reported that at least one of his own men may have turned on him.
The mayor of the La Polvora district encompassing the village, Nanci Zamora, told The Associated Press that Artemio were brought before dawn Thursday to an emergency medical technician in the nearby town of Santa Rosa de Mishoyo.
Zamora said he had suffered a chest and leg wound.
She said that after he was treated subordinates took him down the Mishoyo river, a tributary of the Huallaga.
The United States had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest. Such rewards have proven highly effective in neighboring Colombia in persuading some rebels to turn against their leaders.
The Shining Path has shrunk since its 1980s heyday when it controlled large swaths of the Peruvian countryside. Troops captured leader Abimael Guzman in 1992 and his successor Comrade Feliciano in 1999. The group has since split into the two factions.
In December, Artemio told visiting journalists that his cause was lost and he was seeking a truce with the government.
The self-described Marxist said he wrote Humala twice but received no response.
Previous Peruvian governments refused to negotiate a truce, he said, adding that he'd also proposed one in 2003 through the Roman Catholic Church and the International Red Cross.
He said the only way to change the capitalist system was through a socialist government, "but at this moment that is not possible."
Peru is the world's No. 2 producer after Colombia of coca, the basis for cocaine, although the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says it has now surpassed its Andean neighbor in potential cocaine production.
DEA officials say that's because comparatively little coca crop eradication occurs in Peru, where plantations tend to be more mature and higher-yieldling.
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Associated Press writer Frank Briceno contributed to this report.
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