Peruvian security forces have rescued 54 adults and children, mostly members of the Ashaninka indigenous group, being held captive by Shining Path rebels in a remote jungle region, according to an official.
Anti-terrorism police chief Gen Jose Baella said some of the adults were kidnapped between 20 and 30 years ago from Puerto Ocopa and nearby towns when the rebel movement was still strong.
News emerged on Wednesday of an operation the previous Friday in which a special force unit comprising helicopter-borne soldiers and police freed 13 adults and 26 children. Security forces have revealed details of a second mission on Monday, which saw another 15 people liberated.
Baella said the women were used to produce child soldiers for the guerrillas and grow crops for them. The oldest of the 34 children was 14, he said. Members of the group have been reunited with relatives they had not seen for decades. He said none was being immediately presented to the news media. They were receiving medical treatment and being interviewed by prosecutors at the counternarcotics police base in Mazamari.
The rescued group was living in a various camps in thick jungle with a 50-metre (150ft) canopy in a place called Sector Cinco in Río Tambo in the province of Pangoa, said Baella.
The authorities were led to the camps by two young Shining Path deserters who were raised there, Baella said, and 70 people have been rescued from camps in the past year.
He added that the operation had further weakened an already debilitated Shining Path, whose principal funding source is cocaine trafficking and whose numbers analysts estimate at no more than 200 fighters. The group’s last refuge borders Peru’s main cocaine-producing region, the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro river valley.
Last year, its two top leaders — brothers Victor and Jorge Quispe Palomino – were indicted in the US on charges including conspiracy to commit narco-terrorism.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/02/fifty-four-adults-children-peru-captive-decades-rescued-shining-path
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