Exiles return to Peru

Press, 18 April 1978, Page 9

Exiles return to Peru

PA-Reuter Lima Seven prominent Leftist political exiles, including two Army generals, have returned to Peru under a Government amnesty. They were headed by a retired general, Leonidas Rodriguez Figueroa, who, as an Army colonel, was one of the main architects of the 1968 military coup which steered Peru on a Left-wing, nationalistic course. He and other key officers were deported to Mexico in January last year for opposing the pragmatic, middle-of-the-road policies of General Francisco Morales Bermudez, who ousted the late General Juan Velasco Alvarado in 1975. Shortly before he was ex-

iled. General Rodriguez, who once headed the Velasco Government’s political agency, Sinamos, formed the Socialist Revolutionary Party which is contesting elections to a Constituent Assembly next June.

President Morales decreed a political amnesty last month to ease the way to a return to civilian rule. The June polling will be followed in 1980 by a General Election and a Presidential election.

General Rodriguez and three high-ranking Army and Navy officers were deported for Leftist Opposition activity within the armed forces. Three other deportees arrived from Panama. They included a former Marxist guerrilla and a union leader.