Cota 1061

By AP Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008
Time

Peruvian authorities say a man has been arrested in Lima carrying a box of 36 grenades ahead of the arrival of 18 world leaders for a Pacific Rim economic summit.

Peru’s Interior Minister Remigio Hernani says the 31-year-old man has no arrest record and there is nothing to indicate he has ties to any of Peru’s leftist rebel groups.

The official told reporters Tuesday that Edwin Valladolid was arrested Sunday far from where leaders including U.S. President George W. Bush and President Hu Jintao of China will meet this weekend.

Police say Valladolid was arrested when he got out of a taxi carrying a sealed box, noticed police officers, got nervous and ran.

They say the grenades were inside, individually wrapped in newspaper.

<---End of Quote--->

Related Article:
Peru steps up APEC security

Nov 19, 2008 10:48 AM
One News

Peruvian police are taking extra precautions to prevent suspected holdouts of the left-wing Shining Path insurgency from attacking this week in Lima, where 21 heads of state will attend an APEC summit.

The group led a bloody rebellion from 1980 until the early 1990s, when it largely collapsed after its Maoist leader, Abimael Guzman, was captured.

But since October, it has been blamed for killing at least 20 soldiers and police officers in three ambushes carried out to defend mountainous coca-growing regions in the world’s No. 2 cocaine producer. Dozens of soldiers have been wounded.

More than 39,000 police will patrol Lima’s streets during the summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, helicopters will escort presidential convoys, and leaders will meet in the confines of Peru’s fortified Defense Ministry.

“The general command for APEC has been preparing for more than a year for all kinds of scenarios in terms of prevention and response — terrorism, organized crime, strikes against the republic,” Julio Vergara, the police chief in charge of APEC security, told Reuters on Tuesday.

APEC visitors include US President George Bush. In 2002, days before his last Peru visit, the Shining Path blew up a car bomb near the US Embassy in Lima, killing 10 people.

At its height, the Shining Path routinely robbed dynamite from Peru’s numerous mines and blew up electrical generators, transmission lines and buildings.

Last month, 30 members of the group revived the tactic, stealing dynamite from a mining camp of US-based metals company Doe Run, prompting the government to tell mining companies to take better care guarding their explosives.

In one ambush in October, the group placed explosives on a dirt road and then set them off with detonator cord as a convoy of military trucks drove by.

Conflict has increased since August, when President Alan Garcia, whose approval rating has sunk to about 20%, started sending soldiers to coca regions of the Andes in an effort to destroy what is left of the Shining Path, which security officials say includes about 300 guerrillas.

On Monday, police arrested a man in Lima with 36 grenades but they did not link him to the rebel group.

Before the recent wave of attacks, the Shining Path had killed about three dozen police, soldiers and anti-narcotics workers since Garcia began his term two years ago.

DEMANDING BIGGER SHARE OF MINING TAXES

Protestors on the Pan-American highway in Peru have taken police officers hostage, demanding a larger share of mining taxes from Congress.

Author: Diego Ore
Posted: Wednesday , 29 Oct 2008

LIMA (Reuters) -

Mineweb

Thousands of protesters in Peru’s Moquegua province took three police officers hostage and blocked a bridge on the Pan-American highway on Tuesday to demand that Congress give their province a bigger share of mining taxes.

The protesters snarled traffic along the main road to the neighboring province of Tacna, and to Chile.

Moquegua and Tacna provinces are locked in a dispute over how to share mining taxes, paid mostly by Southern Copper Corp , a unit of Grupo Mexico and one of the world’s largest mining companies.

Four policemen were wounded, and three of them were taken hostage, said Emilio Contreras, a police colonel. Community leaders said at least 10 people were injured when police fired tear gas into the crowd.

Southern Copper, which operates the Cuajone mine and Ilo smelter in Moquegua and the Toquepala mine in Tacna, said its operations were not affected.

Tensions have simmered since June, when protesters in Moquegua took 60 police officers hostage to urge Congress to pass a bill overhauling how taxes are shared among provinces.

President Alan Garcia has supported the bill, but he lacks sway in Congress to pass it. The bill would assess taxes based on how much mineral wealth a mine produces, and scrap the current system, which levies taxes based on how much dirt a mine moves.

This year, Moquegua expects to receive 20 percent of taxes paid by Southern that are distributed to provinces, while 80 percent will go to Tacna. Politicians in both provinces say they need the revenue to pay for basic services.

Despite seven years of fast economic growth, some 40 percent of Peruvians live in poverty and critics say Garcia is facing protests because a boom in mining exports has yet to trickle down to the poor.

This month he named a prominent leftist, Yehude Simon, as his prime minister in the hopes of averting more protests, which have been held in at least three other provinces this week as Peruvians demand better access to water, taxes and infrastructure. (With additional reporting by Miguel Zegarra; Writing by Dana Ford, editing by Philip Barbara)

(c) Reuters 2008. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.

11:06 AEST Sun Aug 10 2008

AFP

Nine MSN

Irate town dwellers in southern Peru killed a suspected child murderer by setting him on fire and badly burned a police officer who tried to save him.

The attack took place Friday in Pueblo Libre, in remote Chucuito province where vigilante justice has become commonplace.

The report said Jorge Jahuira Cruz, suspected of having killed an underage girl, was surrounded by a throng of townspeople who doused him with kerosene and set him alight.

Local police officer Javier Castro tried to save the suspect’s life but was set upon by the crowd who mistook him for a murder accomplice and also set him on fire.

Castro was saved by fellow police officers and got away with severe burns, Andina said.

No arrests were made during the incident, it added.

www.chinaview.cn 2008-08-02 17:06:03

China View

LIMA, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) — Peruvian police seized some 6,000 improvised explosive devices in a truck in downtown Lima on Friday, news reaching here from Lima said.

Initial investigations showed that terrorists may have planned to use the explosives to launch bomb attacks in crowded areas of Peru’s capital city, or in some key mining sites in the country, police said.

All the four people on the truck, including a 72-year-old driver, were detained by police, said the police.

Posted July 21st, 2008 by Sahil Nagpal

Top News

Lima - At least 22 people died in a head-on collision between two busses about 80 kilometres north of the capital, local media reported Monday.

The accident, which happened late Sunday night, also injured 71 passengers when one of the busses reportedly strayed into the lane of oncoming traffic.

But the two firms, Flores and Soyuz, which owned the busses engaged in open dispute over the accident.

A Flores spokesperson put the blame on the Soyuz bus - a charge that was refuted by a Soyuz spokesperson, who expressed suspicion that the bus was attacked on an open stretch of road.

In Peru and other South American countries, robberies of busses and other vehicles especially at night are not unusual. Often, the bus driver is threatened by fellow passengers who force the bus to stop, or by thieves laying in ambush to shoot at the bus to stop it. (dpa)

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Find Law

By CARLA SALAZAR Associated Press Writer

LIMA, Peru (AP) - Tens of thousands of union workers took to the streets across Peru on Wednesday to protest rising food and fuel prices they blame on the free market policies of President Alan Garcia.

Nine police officers were wounded after protesters attacked them with sticks in the village of Puerto Maldonado in the remote jungle department of Madre de Dios, state news agency Andina reported.

Protesters in the same town also set a fire that destroyed a regional government office, Cabinet chief Jorge del Castillo told reporters.

Peruvian media estimated that across the country, more than 30,000 members of the General Confederation of Workers heeded the call for the national strike. In Lima, some 6,000 people filled a central plaza for a noisy pot-banging protest.

Authorities did not give crowd estimates.

Gen. Octavio Salazar, head of the national police, said 216 people were arrested nationwide.

Transportation workers did not strike, but protesters blockaded key roadways with rocks. Rail service to the famed Inca citadel Machu Picchu was suspended Tuesday and Wednesday because of safety concerns related to the strike, train operator PeruRail said.

Garcia said the protests represented only a small sector of society and did not have a major impact.

“The population has shown that it didn’t have … the will to leave the country paralyzed,” he said in a televised address.

Peru’s economy has surged since Garcia took office in 2006, with growth hitting 9 percent last year and projected to be 8 percent in 2008.

But many of Peru’s poor say they haven’t seen any benefits from the boom.

2008-07-10 01:01:16 GMT

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