LIMA (AFP) - Peruvian officials tightened security at the maximum security prison where the country's top imprisoned rebel leaders are being held.
The clampdown came after President Alejandro Toledo announced that he wants to accelerate the trial against Abimael Guzman, the imprisoned leader of the Maoist Shining Path rebel group.
Toledo said in a speech late Saturday that he wanted a summary trial, and that he wanted new judges to try the case.
Guzman, 69, was sentenced to life prison in 1992 by a military court whose judges' identities were hidden. The sentence was overturned last year by Peru's Constitutional Court, which ruled the secret military court was illegally constituted.
Guzman's retrial opened Friday in a courtroom in the prison at the Callao naval base west of Lima where he and other Shining Path leaders are held.
However it was quickly halted and postponed for one week when the 18 defendants raised fists and began shouting "Long live Peru's Communist Party," "Long live the armed struggle," and "Glory to the Peruvian people."
Toledo condemned the event as a "shameful spectacle." Friday's "arrogant" behavior "cannot go unanswered," he said.
Measures taken Sunday include an end to face-to-face personal visits. Visitors and lawyers must now communicate with inmates only via telephone and see them through a heavy glass window.
Toledo also ordered that Guzman and other imprisoned Shining Path leaders be placed in solitary confinement, and ordered the transfer of some inmates to other prisons.
Until recently Guzman was able to spend long periods with his lover, Elena Iparraguirre, herself an imprisoned Shining Path leader, according to press reports.
Prosecutors are seeking a life sentence against Guzman, who led some 7,000 Shining Path fighters in a guerrilla war in the 1980s and 1990s, when they are accused of responsibility for nearly 70,000 deaths.
The once-feared group was crushed in the early 1990s during the presidency of Alberto Fujimori. The group has been reduced to some 300-500 fighters in Peru's remote south and southeast.
The maximum security prison in Callao was built in the 1990s by Fujimori's intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos.
Current inmates include top leaders of another rebel group, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), as well as Montesinos himself, who faces charges that include nepotism, arms trafficking and money laundering.
Guzman faces 30 charges relating to terrorism and crimes against humanity.
11/07/2004 - 22:56 GMT - AFP