Jonel Jhon Carmen Maxi, known as “Comrade Ivan” and a former member of the rebel group’s Upper Huallaga Regional Committee, was arrested early Monday in Lima’s Ancon district, Palomino said.

The former Shining Path member was wanted for the killings of nine police officers in ambushes and attacks on helicopters transporting coca-eradication workers, the police commander said.

The 27-year-old suspect also faces charges in the killings of at least 15 civilians who refused to pay money to pass through areas where the guerrilla group provided security for drug traffickers.

The suspect was arrested in an investigation separate from the operation that yielded the arrests Friday of more than 30 people, including mayors and coca growers’ leaders, involved in drug trafficking and other criminal activities in the Upper Huallaga Valley, Palomino said.

A television program broadcast video Sunday of a meeting in March between the suspects and “Comrade Artemio,” the Shining Path’s leader in the Upper Huallaga.

The video shows the community leaders receiving instructions from the rebel chieftain to stage protests and revealing plans to get the group involved in national politics.

The video provides evidence that “bad Peruvians do the bidding of this subject,” Palomino said.

The 48-year-old Comrade Artemio called for a truce this year and offered to hold a dialogue with the government.

The dialogue offer was rejected by President Alan Garcia’s administration after the United States announced it was offering a $5 million reward for Artemio.

The government has made the elimination of the Shining Path’s remnants a priority, the official Andina news agency reported recently.

The Shining Path’s remnants operate in the Upper Huallaga Valley under the command of Florindo Eleuterio Flores Hala, known as Comrade Artemio, and in the Valley of the Apurimac and Ene rivers, or VRAE, region, under Victor Quispe Palomino, alias “Comrade Jose.”

The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said in June that Peru had surpassed Colombia as the world’s leading source of coca, producing 119,000 metric tons of the leaf in 2009.

The Maoist-inspired Shining Path launched its uprising on May 17, 1980, with an attack on Chuschi, a small town in Ayacucho province.

A truth commission appointed by former President Alejandro Toledo blamed the Shining Path for most of the nearly 70,000 deaths the panel ascribed to politically motivated violence during the two decades following the group’s 1980 uprising.

The guerrilla group, according to commission estimates, also caused an estimated $25 billion in economic losses.

Shining Path founder Abimael Guzman Guzman, known to his fanatic followers as “President Gonzalo,” was captured with his top lieutenants on Sept. 12, 1992, an event that marked the “defeat” of the insurgency.

The guerrilla leader, who was a professor of philosophy at San Cristobal University before initiating his armed struggle in the Andean city of Ayacucho, once predicted that 1 million Peruvians would probably have to die in the ushering-in of the new state envisioned by Shining Path.

The group became notorious for some of its innovations, such as blowing apart with dynamite the bodies of community service workers its members killed, or hanging stray canines from lampposts as warnings to “capitalist dogs.”

The Shining Path’s remnants did not comply with Guzman’s order more than a decade ago to end the armed struggle, and he does not recognize them as members of the group.

The La Republica newspaper reported in May 2009 that Guzman, who is serving a life sentence for terrorism, called the remaining members of the guerrilla group operating in the VRAE region “mercenaries.”