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.

Daniel Urresti was first named as part of the patrol which killed Bustios in 2011, but the accusation did not prevent him becoming interior minister in 2014. He plans to appeal.

Bustios’s daughter Sharmeli Bustios said: “I can tell my parents they can finally rest in peace.”

The National Association of Journalists said the verdict was restitution both for the family of Bustios and for journalism. “It is an important step towards justice and the defence of press freedom in Peru,” the group said.

The case highlights Peru’s long record of oppressing its Indigenous population, at a time when Amnesty International has condemned a “marked racist bias” on the part of police who have killed over 60 democracy protesters since the coup against elected president Pedro Castillo in December.

Tens of thousands of Indigenous Peruvians were killed in the 1980s as the army battled guerilla groups such as Shining Path, and officers have been convicted of organising a campaign of sexual abuse that involved the mass rape of Indigenous women in 1984-5.

The subsequent government of Alberto Fujimori in the 1990s conducted an involuntary sterilisation programme to reduce the Indigenous population, a project carried out with funds from the United States and the United Nations.