The fate of the remains of the founder of the terrorist group Sendero Luminoso, Abimael Guzmán, is still pending on Sunday night after a judge declared inadmissible a lawsuit to hand over his body to a woman who is not a direct family of the victim.
The Peruvian law does not have a protocol to know how to proceed in case of controversial prisoners as it is the case of Guzmán, considered the main cause of the bloodbath that lived Peru between 1980 and 2000 that left thousands of deads in its confrontation with security forces.
The law states that a corpse must be delivered to his family. The government has indicated that it is up to the prosecution to decide, but has suggested that it be cremated and its ashes thrown into the sea to prevent burial and worship at the victim’s grave. In 2018 authorities destroyed a mausoleum in a cemetery in Lima in which it had been announced that Guzmán would be buried.
On Sunday night, Magistrate Sergio Núñez declared inadmissible the habeas corpus requested by Elena Iparraguirre, Guzmán’s wife, who is being held in prison in Lima and had appointed Iris Quiñónez, a woman who is not her family. , to claim her husband’s body. The law states that a corpse is only delivered to a direct relative. The couple has no children.
Iparraguirre granted “written power” to Iris Quiñonez. The criminalist Carlos Caro told the newspaper El Comerç that Quiñónez had to additionally have a power of attorney authenticated by a notary. If this does not happen in 36 hours, it will be up to the state to decide what to do with the body, he said.
The defense of Guzmán’s wife argues that Quiñónez’s body must be handed over to her because Iparraguirre is imprisoned, which makes it impossible for her to receive her husband’s body in person.
Earlier, the prosecution said in a statement that Guzmán’s body, which died the day before at the age of 86, would be handed over “to direct relatives.”
At the autopsy it was determined that Guzmán died of “bilateral pneumonia caused by a pathological agent.” He worked as a professor of philosophy at the San Cristóbal de Huamanga National University, and later led the only Maoist group in Latin America. In 1980 he began a power struggle that left thousands dead, mostly indigenous to the Andes and the Amazon.
Authorities have been debating what to do with Guzmán’s body all weekend.
Benet Jiménez, a retired lawyer and colonel from the police who led the capture of Guzmán in 1992, told reporters on Sunday that Peru “never began to think what to do with the corpse in case a man dies in prison. senior leader of Shining Path to Avoid Martyrology “.
“They have to make things transparent,” so the country will avoid trouble, Jiménez said after leaving a mass at Lima Cathedral, where he attended alongside 34 officers from an intelligence police group. with which it catched to Guzmán in a house of the Peruvian capital the 12 of September of 1992. the operation was supported by the United States.
It is unknown whether Iparraguirre will ask to bury or burn the remains of her husband. Guzmán and Iparraguirre – a teacher of education initially lived on the second floor of a house facade in which on the first floor lived a ballet dancer.
Guzmán died at 6:40 a.m. Saturday morning in a military prison. He suffered from psoriasis, a dermatological disease that turns red and cracks the skin. Police had known about this disease since before her capture because investigators following in her footsteps found boxes of pills to treat her in the garbage bags of the home where she was hiding.
The report of the lifting of his body prepared by the prosecution has indicated that he was found lying in his bed. He had a grown beard and wore a beige jacket, lead-colored pants, blue stockings, and a disposable diaper. On the ring finger of his right hand was his golden wedding ring. Guzmán and Iparraguirre were married in 2010, two years after they were both sentenced to life in prison for ordering the murder of 69 peasants in the village of Santiago de Lucanamarca in 1983.
For now, Guzmán’s body remains in the morgue in the coastal province of El Callao, near the prison where he died.
The Peruvian government warned on the eve that any attempt to pay tribute to the founder of Sendero Luminoso or hold mobilizations in his memory will be considered a crime of apology for terrorism, which is punishable by four years in prison.
Shining Path initiated its fight in the Andean region Ayacucho. A truth commission that studied the internal armed conflict indicated that the confrontation between hikers against security forces left nearly 70,000 dead.