Already jailed Shining Path leader goes on trial for 1992 car bombing that killed 25 in Lima

Abimael Guzman, founder and leader of the Shining Path guerrilla movement, second from the right, sits during his new trial at the Naval Base in Callao, Peru, Monday, Jan. 20, 2014. Guzman and several more defendants are being tried for the 1992 Tarata street bombing, wich killed scores, and injured hundreds more. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia) (The Associated Press)

Abimael Guzman founder and leader of the Shining Path guerrilla movement, center facing left, sits during his new trial at the Naval Base in Callao, Peru, Monday, Jan. 20, 2014. Guzman and several more defendants are being tried for the 1992 Tarata street bombing, which killed scores, and injured hundreds more. Guzman is currently serving a life sentence. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia) (The Associated Press)

LIMA, Peru – The founder of Peru's Shining Path rebels went on trial Monday for a 1992 car bombing considered one of the worst attacks of the conflict he unleashed.

Abimael Guzman, whose appearance in court was his first time in the public eye in seven years, is already serving life without parole for a 2006 terrorism conviction for multiple crimes.

Prosecutors put the 79-year-old Guzman and 10 other imprisoned Shining Path leaders on trial for allegedly ordering the Tarata Street bombing that killed 25 people and wounded 155. Guzman was captured nearly two months later.

Guzman's lawyer, Alfredo Crespo, told The Associated Press that his client did not order the bombing, for which at least five people have been convicted.

Guzman, who spoke only his name to the judge in court Monday, has no chance of going free, but Crespo said at least two of his co-defendants would have been released had new charges not been brought.

Crespo said Guzman would be appearing in the same courtroom in the Callao military prison on charges in a separate case Friday stemming from rebels seizing an interprovincial bus in 1984 in Ayacucho state and killing 104 people.

The Maoist-inspired Shining Path waged a bitter struggle that included urban terrorism and rural massacres. The 1980-2000 conflict clamed some 70,000 lives, most of them civilians.