Peruvian ex-soldiers who raped teenagers jailed

A court in Peru has sentenced 10 retired soldiers for raping nine teenage girls and women during the country's armed conflict decades ago.

The court said the systematic rapes constituted a crime against humanity.

The soldiers were sentenced to between six and 12 years in jail.

While rights groups celebrated the fact that the men were sentenced, some of the survivors said they were disappointed that the jail terms were not longer.

The rapes were committed in the Huancavelica region of Peru between 1984 and 1995, at the height of the government's fight against Maoist rebels.

The rebels, who called themselves the Shining Path, were especially active in rural regions of Peru. Indigenous villagers in particular were often caught up in the crossfire.

Locals - often forced to provide food to the rebels - were often targeted by the security forces for allegedly cooperating with the rebels.

The soldiers who were sentenced on Tuesday had been deployed to the districts of Manta and Vilca, in the Andes mountains.

The court found that they systematically raped local girls and women inside their army bases, at checkpoints and in the women's own homes.

Survivors testified that the soldiers acted with total impunity.

Women's rights groups called the sentences - the first to be handed down to former soldiers for sexual abuses - "historic".

They said it was a milestone in the fight to bring perpetrators of crimes against humanity to justice.

However, some of the survivors said that they had hoped for longer sentences for the former soldiers.

One called the soldiers "cowards" for not showing up at court for the sentencing.

Rights groups hope the Manta and Vilca case will lay the groundwork for other alleged crimes from the conflict with the Shining Path to be tried.

However, a bill currently making its way through the Peruvian Congress could mean alleged crimes against humanity committed before 2002 cannot be brought to trial in Peru.

The widespread nature of the sexual violence against the women living near the army bases of Manta and Vilca was recorded in a 2003 report by Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The report identified 24 women who had been raped in the area. Sexual violence was so commonplace that at least 32 children were born as a result of the rapes, the commission added.

One of the survivors, who gave birth to two children after being repeatedly raped, said she hoped that "these criminals will now go to prison".

The Truth Commission report showed that sexual abuse was not confined to this area alone. It stated that nationwide more than 5,300 women were abused during the armed conflict.

While the majority of the sexual abuses - 83% according to the report - were committed by the security forces, the Shining Path also committed mass atrocities.

In one particularly bloody massacre, the rebels killed 69 local people in Santiago de Lucanamarca with axes, machetes and guns in retaliation for the killing of a Shining Path commander.

In total, almost 70,000 people died or disappeared during the internal conflict, which peaked in the 1980s and early 1990s.