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Peru arrests coca growers and mayors in drug sweep

27 November 2010 04:58 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Dozens of Peruvians, among them two mayors and leaders of coca growing groups, were arrested on Friday for alleged ties to cocaine traffickers and Maoist guerrillas in the world’s No. 1 coca leaf producer, officials said, APA reports quoting â€œReutersâ€.
The arrests, made in jungle towns in the Alto Huallaga valley, mark the biggest anti-drug sweep by President Alan Garcia’s government.
Garcia has been under intense pressure to crack down on coca growing since the United Nations said this year that Peru had overtaken Colombia as the biggest grower of the leaf used to make cocaine.
He has also vowed to stamp out what remains of Shining Path rebels who went into the drug trade after their leaders were captured in the 1990s.
"This is a witch hunt against coca growers," Geronimo Villogas, a lawyer for an association of coca growers, said on RPP radio.
A judge ordered the arrests of up to 45 people after police found chemicals used to refine cocaine and linked them to the suspects, among other evidence, local media said.
"How are they going to prove that the chemicals belong to the coca growers?" Villegas asked.
Coca growers often back candidates for mayor in small jungle towns where the leaf is grown and a handful of legislators in Congress rely on coca planters for political support.
Growers say that they plant the crop for its traditional uses in food, tea and indigenous religious ceremonies -- Andean inhabitants chew the leaf for energy-- but police say 90 percent of Peru’s crop flows into the drug trade.
The Alto Huallaga valley is one of two major drug regions in Peru where holdouts from the Shining Path insurgency are still active.
This week, two Peruvian soldiers were killed and five others were wounded when they stumbled onto landmines set by the Shining Path in another coca-growing area known as the VRAE, or the valleys of the Apurimac and Ene rivers.
Shining Path have been blamed for killing more than 50 soldiers or anti-drug police in the last two years.