Shining Path leader questions legality of retrial

THE retrial of Abimael Guzman, founder of Peru’s Mao-inspired Shining Path movement, opened yesterday with the former philosophy professor, who preached a vision of a classless utopia, raising a defiant fist.

Manuel Fajardo, Guzman’s lawyer, said before the start of the trial in the capital Lima that both Guzman and he would refuse to speak during the hearing to protest its illegality.

Guzman, 69, mastermind of a bloody insurgency initiated in 1980, was captured in 1992 and sentenced by a secret military tribunal to life in prison without parole.

New charges were brought against Guzman after the secret military court was deemed unconstitutional.