Patterns of Global Terrorism 1996 - Peru

The Peruvian Government's largely successful campaign against terrorism suffered a setback with the takeover of the Japanese Ambassador's residence in Lima on 17 December. In this attack, Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) terrorists captured more than 500 hostages, including eight US officials, numerous foreign ambassadors, prominent Peruvians, including the Foreign and Agriculture Ministers, six supreme court justices, and high-ranking members of the police and military, as well as members of the Peruvian and international business community. The heavily armed terrorists boobytrapped and mined the Japanese Ambassador's residence. Most hostages were freed in the first several days after the attack, including all of the US officials. At the end of the year, 81 hostages were still being held.

The MRTA's main demand was the release by the Peruvian Government of imprisoned MRTA members in Peru, a demand that stalled attempts to resolve the hostage situation. The crisis was exacerbated when an Uruguayan court denied extradition requests from Peru and Bolivia and released two MRTA members detained in Uruguay. The MRTA hostage takers in Lima released, almost simultaneously, the Uruguayan Ambassador from captivity. At year's end, efforts to resolve the crisis peacefully were under way.

The Government of Peru hosted the Inter-American Specialized Conference on Terrorism, sponsored by the Organization of American States, in Lima in April. This conference adopted the Declaration and Plan of Action, which strongly endorsed the characterization of terrorist acts, regardless of motivation, as common crimes rather than political offenses.

Sendero Luminoso was significantly weakened when its founder Abimael Guzman was arrested in 1992, but it continued to carry out bombings and assassinations in 1996 against domestic targets. As in the previous year, in 1996 most terrorist violence took place in the Upper Huallaga and Apurimac Valleys, but even there Army-sponsored self-defense militias helped counter the terrorists. There were two international terrorist incidents in Peru in 1996: a car bombing of a Shell oil warehouse on 16 May and the MRTA hostage seizure in December.

Throughout 1996 Peruvian security forces captured several important terrorist suspects, including Elizabeth Cardenas, a.k.a. Comrade Aurora, a senior Sendero Luminoso leader who was arrested in December. In another blow against international terrorism, the Peruvian police in May arrested Yoshimura Kazue, a leading member of the Japanese Red Army wanted for her role in the 1974 seizure of the French Embassy in The Hague. She was subsequently deported to Japan. On 11 January Miguel Rincon, MRTA's second-highest ranking leader, was sentenced to life imprisonment.