MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Shinning Path collaborator sentenced 20 years

The ballet dancer who hid Peru's notorious guerrilla leader Abimael Guzman above her dance studio in Lima was sentenced to 20 years in prison for terrorism.

Abimael Guzman, founder of the Shining Path rebels was discovered at Maritza Garrido Lecca's studio in Lima after a nationwide manhunt in 1992.

A military court verdict in 1992 was overturned by the Peruvian Constitutional Court prompting a retrial by a special anti-terrorism court.

Shinning Path is blamed for the majority of 70,000 deaths and billions of dollars in damages since Peru's insurgency broke out in the 1980s. Ms Garrido Lecca was arrested after a lengthy surveillance operation on her building in Lima with policemen dressed as garbage collectors and street cleaners.

She had rented the house with another member of the terrorist organization and subsequently expressed her sympathy for the group in a public presentation held by the police after her capture. However the defence argued that her only crime had been renting the house to Shining Path leaders.

The court ruled that Garrido Lecca will complete her sentence in 2012.

The prosecution had requested life imprisonment for Garrido Lecca insisting that her militancy in the group had been proven. Police Colonel Benedicto Jimenez, one of the officers who arrested the rebel group's leaders in 1992, testified that Garrido Lecca had climbed quickly in the organization and belonged to Shining Path's Support Branch.

Abimael Guzman and a dozen more Shining Path leaders are currently being re trialled and could face life imprisonment for their twenty years of terrorist violence.