PERU | Mixed developments in battle with SL. Between late August and late September the Peruvian authorities announced two successes against the supply lines of both of the active units of Sendero Luminoso (SL) guerrillas. On 30 August the Centro Integrado de Inteligencia contra el Narcoterrorismo (CIIN) announced the capture of José Santisteban, a retired army sergeant, who had been supplying the Huallaga unit of SL with rifles and explosives stolen from army depots. Know in SL ranks as ‘Vicente’, Santisteban also trained the guerrillas in the use of the weapons. He was said to have been close to ‘Artemio’, the leader of that SL unit.
On 30 September in Vilcabamba, Cusco, a joint army-police unit captured Mauro Navarro Ramos, suspected of being the SL member known as ‘Camarada Primo’. He was found carrying ammunition, mobile phones and wifi modems, believed to have been ordered by the leaders of SL’s VRAE unit. Navarro Ramos was presented as a key figure in SL’s logistical apparatus.
No immediate results are to be expected from the government’s new strategy for the VRAE, said defence minister Daniel Mora on 19 September. This strategy involves handing over complete control of the campaign against SL to the army, including an effort to provide necessary infrastructure to hospitals, schools and roads in the area. For this purpose, the government has reactivated three battalions of army engineers.
Not everything, however, was a success story. In Lima on 12 September, SL sympathizers kept the security forces on their toes with 10 successive bomb hoaxes across the city. The date marked the 19th anniversary of the arrest of Abimael Guzmán, the founder-leader of SL. This prompted the leader of the pro-government block in congress, Daniel Abugattás, to propose an amendment of the penal code to punish hoax bomb calls with fines or community service sentences.
On 14 September the SL unit operating in the Apurímac-Ene valley (VRAE) attacked a military helicopter as it was taking off in San Martín de Pangoa, Junín. The helicopter remained functional but two soldiers were killed.
ECUADOR | ‘New evidence of coup plot.’ Defence minister Javier Ponce said on 7 September that new evidence had come to light that has led him to the ‘absolute conviction’ that the national police’s intelligence unit was involved in the police mutiny and alleged coup attempt of 30 September 2010. Intercepts by the army of radio messages to police cars, he said, incited the police to assassinate President Rafael Correa while he was in the police hospital, surrounded by the mutineers, that day. He added that another suspicious fact was that many microwave transmitters of the television stations had been posted outside the police headquarters before the rally took place (he overlooked the fact that a major demonstration by serving police officers — an obviously newsworthy event — had been announced in advance).
VENEZUELA | ‘No Russian AA missiles for Iran’. On 5 September Vladimir Zaemskiy, the Russian ambassador to Venezuela, denied media reports that his country would allow the transfer of sensitive military equipment to Iran. ‘It has been said,’ he told the newspaper El Nacional, ‘that Russia would be willing to authorise the delivery [to Iran] of the S-300 anti-aircraft systems we sold to Caracas. This is an invention, a premeditated lie.’ He drew attention to the fact that Russia had halted the delivery of five S-300 systems ordered by Iran and that it was abiding by the UN Security’s resolution to bar the supply of certain arms to Iran. Venezuela has asked Russia for a loan of US$4bn to buy more military equipment from Russia [SSR-11-08].
