ALIASES: “Artemio”
DOB: September 8, 1961
POB: San Juan de Siguas, Arequipa, Peru
NATIONALITY: Peruvian
CITIZENSHIP: Peru
HEIGHT: 5 feet 3 inches
WEIGHT: 140 pounds
HAIR COLOR: Black
EYE COLOR: Brown
Founded in 1970 on Communist ideology, the Sendero Luminoso (also known as the ‘Partido Comunista del Peru’) in the 1980s became a notoriously violent terrorist group that controlled large areas of Peru and struck the capital Lima with repeated violent attacks. Following a Government of Peru crackdown in the 1990s, Sendero Luminoso was reduced to only a few hundred rebels confined largely to Peru’s remote coca-producing areas. This weakened Sendero splintered in 2001. Subsequently, two armed Sendero groups remain operating, largely independent of each other, in Peru’s two largest cocaine production zones – the Upper Huallaga Valley and in the Apurimac and Ene River Valley (VRAE). Both factions participated in cocaine trafficking in these areas and engaged in violent attacks against Peruvian security forces.
Florindo Eleuterio Flores-Hala was the current leader of the Sendero remnants based in the Huallaga Valley, and oversaw all of its illicit activities. These activities included extortion, bribery, murder, and drug trafficking. The drug trafficking activities of this faction of Sendero included taxes/extortion payments charged to local drug traffickers in exchange for security of coca cultivations, cocaine labs, and shipments made throughout the Monzon and Huallaga Valleys. Furthermore, Flores-Hala was involved in the local cocaine trade in the Huallaga Valley, since he is believed to invest his own and/or Sendero money in drug trafficking ventures with local drug traffickers. Flores-Hala also allegedly used violence against Peruvian National Police officers, other GOP personnel, and the local populous in order to achieve his goals.
Flores-Hala was captured during a Peruvian government operation in February 2012.