Guerrilla leader captured

THE LAST commander of Peru's Maoist Shining Path movement was caught yesterday after an army patrol spotted him in the jungle, 125 miles east of Lima. Ramirez Durand, 46, known as "Comrade Feliciano," took control of the guerrilla movement in 1992 after its founder, Abimael Guzman, 67, was captured.

President Alberto Fujimori said Durand would be held in a high-security prison at a naval base, tried by a secret military court and sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars.

The capture was another blow to the guerrilla movement, known in Spanish as Sendero Luminoso, although it will not mean its death. Shining Path had up to 10,000 fighters in the early 1990s but is now believed to have fewer than 1,000.