Sendero Luminoso leader receives second life sentence in Peru

Florindo Flores, the former Sendero Luminoso leader known as Comrade Artemio, has received a second life sentence in Peru, this time for four ambushes against army troops in 1996.

The Third Transitional National Superior Criminal Liquidation Chamber announced the ruling on Wednesday. Judges Máximo Maguiña, Reli Callata and Helbert Llerena also ordered Flores to pay the state 20,000 soles, or about $6,000.

The court found him guilty of leading and ordering the attacks around Tocache, in the San Martín region, three decades ago. Flores had already received a first life sentence in 2013 for terrorism, drug trafficking and money laundering.

Authorities captured Flores in 2012 after he had spent 28 years in hiding as the leader of the Maoist group's operations in the upper Huallaga River basin in Peru's Amazon region. Sendero Luminoso carried out about 500 attacks there and across Peru, killing roughly 1,000 police officers, civilians and military personnel, according to the account.

His capture brought an end to major Sendero Luminoso activity in the Upper Huallaga, one of the group's most active fronts during Peru's 1980-2000 internal armed conflict. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimates that the two-decade conflict killed about 69,000 people. Sendero Luminoso and the Marxist Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement sought to seize power by force, while Peruvian police and armed forces responded with heavy force and faced allegations of numerous human rights violations.