A RETIRED army general and former interior minister has been jailed in Peru for 12 years for his role in the murder of a journalist in 1988.

Hugo Bustios was machine-gunned and blown up with dynamite in Huanta province, with authorities claiming the murder was the work of the Maoist Shining Path organisation.

But members of the military were later convicted of carrying out the attack to prevent Bustios covering reports of military abuses against civilians in the largely Indigenous region.