Abimael Guzmán, the famous leader of Peru's Maoist Shining Path group, began facing judges September 26 in his third trial. Guzmán and 23 of his followers who were allegedly members of the outlawed party's Central Committee are being tried by a special anti-terrorism court presided by Judge Pablo Talavera and two other magistrates. There are, however, only 12 defendants in the courtroom. The others are being tried in absentia.
The defendants are charged with five separate crimes: leading Shining Path, planning terrorist attacks, using a local school as a façade to recruit new members and raise funds, publishing a weekly newspaper, El Diario, to foster terrorism, and perpetrating a massacre in 1983 that left 69 people dead. Prosecutor Luz Ibáñez has requested life sentences for Guzmán, 70, and his closest followers and 25 years for the other defendants. She has also demanded that they pay 20 billion USD in civil reparations. Most of the defendants were arrested and convicted in 1992. According to the 2003 final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated political violence committed in Peru between 1980 and 2000, Shining Path was responsible for the disappearance and death of 54 percent of the nearly 70,000 victims of these dark years. According to the government, Guzmán was the head of "a terrorist organization that seeks to destroy the Peruvian state by any means."

The prosecution and the defence gave a clear indication of their arguments at the trial opening. Manuel Fajardo, Guzmán's attorney, says he would prefer that the trial end quickly, "because it is illegal." Fajardo says the case should not continue because "it violates the fundamental legal principal that no one can be tried twice for the same crime. Dr. Guzmán faces the same charges with a request for the same sentence that he has faced twice before." Guzmán was tried and sentenced to life in October 1992, only one month after his arrest, by a navy judge who was hooded and had his voice distorted.

Guzmán and thousands of other inmates convicted for terrorism in the 1990s were given a chance for a new trial in early 2003, when the country's highest court, the Constitutional Tribunal, ruled that the 1992 anti-terrorism law was unconstitutional. His second trial got underway on Nov. 5, 2004, but ended 10 days later in a mistrial. The first session was cancelled after Guzmán and several of his followers shouted revolutionary slogans. Two of the three judges recused themselves in two subsequent attempts to restart the trial. "The state has tried to blame the fiasco on Dr. Guzmán, but it was not revolutionary chants that ended the trial. Two of the judges stepped down, so it was the state that caused the mistrial," says Fajardo.

"The defence attorney can talk about theories, we prefer to talk about facts."

He also objects to the fact that his client is being tried by a special court created to hear terrorism cases and is demanding that Guzmán be tried under the penal code instead of the anti-terrorism laws. Fajardo maintains that the prosecution's efforts to charge Guzmán with leading a subversive organization is based on German legal expert Claus Roxin's theory of "commission of a crime by domination of an organizational apparatus." This theory, which clarifies the role of a hierarchal leader under criminal law, has been used for cases from Adolf Eichmann's 1961 trial in Jerusalem to trials before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Fajardo says the Peruvian government's use of Roxin's theory proves his point that Guzmán should be tried under the criminal code. "Any way you look at this, the Peruvian state has no legal basis for this trial," Fajardo says.

Prosecutor Ibáñez dismisses Fajardo's arguments as legal manoeuvring to distract attention from the fact that his client is guilty. "The defence attorney can talk about theories, but we prefer to talk about facts. The facts in this case speak for themselves," says Ibáñez.