Abimael Guzmán, founder of Shining Path insurgency that terrorised Peru since 1980s, dies at 86

A truth commission in 2003 blamed the Shining Path for more than half of nearly 70,000 estimated deaths and disappearances between 1980 and 2000 Lima : Abimael Guzmán, the leader of the brutal Shining Path insurgency in Peru who was captured in 1992, died on Saturday in a military hospital after an illness. Shining Path’s violence is a big part of why Castillo’s is the first explicitly leftist presidential administration in Peru since the 1980s.” A truth commission in 2003 blamed the Shining Path for more than half of nearly 70,000 estimated deaths and disappearances caused by various rebel groups and brutal government counterinsurgency efforts between 1980 and 2000. Yet it lived on in a political movement formed by Guzmán’s followers that sought amnesty for all “political prisoners,” including the Shining Path founder. A January 1991 police raid in Lima found a videotape showing Guzmán and other rebel leaders mourning at the funeral of his wife, Augusta La Torre, known as “Comrade Norah.” About 15 years Guzmán’s junior, La Torre was No 2 in the Shining Path’s command structure before dying under mysterious circumstances in 1988.