Peruvian Anti-Drug Prosecutor Sonia Medina affirmed she will not be intimidated by Shining Path leaders who attempt to deny receiving financing from drug trafficking.
"As I told
Abimael face-to-face, I am not afraid of him," she was quoted as saying.
Medina said she participated in the hearing on Tarata Street bombing case —for which
Abimael Guzman and members of the Shining Path Central Committee are being probed— because she has competence over it, as the case implies terrorism and drug trafficking.
According to Medina, when she began to question lawmaker Marco Miyashiro —Chief of the former
GEIN Police Intelligence Unit that captured Abimael Guzman— the lawyers and the accused tried to stop her in a high-flown, rude and irreverent manner.
"The leaders present at the hearing got upset. To me, their justification is that everything that has to do with terrorism can be imputed to them, not drug trafficking, as this would be contrary to their grounds. However, the links between
drug trafficking and the Shining Path are real, and history has recorded this," she affirmed.
Medina said fulfilling her role —by asking questions during an interrogation— does not harm anyone. She was trying to know about the links between the terrorist organization and drug traffickers.
"When Guzman left the place, he stood right in front of me and said: You don't know who you're messing with. He used a hand gesture as well. Maybe, it's my perception, I don't know. The Court will watch the video during the next hearing. I saw it as a threat," she stated.
The prosecutor put the incident on record, claiming she did not want this to happen but had the right to report it to the Court.
Much of said fatalities are attributed to Shining Path, responsible for brutal terror attacks such as the Tarata Bombing, as well as massive assassinations in rural Peru.
(END) FHG/CCR/RMB/MVB
Published: 12/6/2017