Peru Jails Ex-Intelligence Chief Over 1988 Journalist Murder

A court in Peru sentenced the country's former military intelligence chief to 12 years in prison on Thursday over his role in the 1988 murder of a journalist.

Daniel Urresti was found to have been complicit in the killing of Hugo Bustios, a reporter for weekly magazine Caretas, the court ruled.

Bustios was killed during a plain-clothed military patrol in the Andean region of Ayacucho.

Urresti was part of the patrol, which took place in the epicenter of an armed conflict, but he maintained his innocence throughout the trial.

Bustios' murder had been blamed on the country's now defunct Shining Path rebel group, which was active during the 1980s and 1990s.

But witnesses said that Bustios had been deliberately targeted by the patrol, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The trial was the second in the same case against Urresti after the Supreme Court in 2019 overturned a ruling made the previous year that had acquitted him.

Two decades of fighting between the rebels and security forces left 69,000 people dead or missing, according to Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Source: VOA News