GLEN ELLYN, Ill. (AP)—A suburban Chicago woman is being held in a Peruvian jail on charges of belonging to a guerrilla group that assasinated two officials, but the traveler contends she’s just a tourist caught up in a legal nightmare, friends and authorities say.

Cynthia McNamara, 39, of this western suburb, is getting a first-hand lesson in the Napoleonic code, a legal system that says you’re guilty until proven innocent. It could cost her her life.

Peruvian Police accuse McNamara of heading the guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, which authorities say assassinated two government officials Aug. 13 in the south-central Andean region of Ayacucho.

McNamara has been held since her arrest on Dec. 5, 1987.

Friends in Glen Ellyn describe McNamara’s lifestyle as Bohemian and say she has traveled the world.

“You name it, she’s been there,” said Jane Graham.

“She carried all her belongings on her back. She is just a free spirit,” Graham said.

In an interview published in the Chicago Tribune’s Sunday editions, McNamara said she has traveled in the Andes for nearly two years “because it’s pretty.” But her nomad existence has been difficult to explain to Peruvian authorities.

“I don’t like to work,” McNamara said.

“I work only when I have to, teaching English,” said McNamara, who has also spent two years each in Africa and Asia.

Peruvian police said two officials were killed, and the van was set afire. The driver and the nurse’s aide were allowed to go free.

The driver later said the head of the guerrilla group was a tall blond woman who wore a black hat and had foreign features.

The prefect of Ayacucho, Jose Rada, connected the news of the guerrilla leader with McNamara, whom he had met a month earlier. Foreign tourists are rare in Ayacucho because it has been in a state of emergency for nearly five years.

When shown a picture of McNamara, the driver identified her as the guerrilla chief, but he changed his mind after he saw her in person.

Nonetheless, she was arrested Dec. 5 when she stopped by Rada’s office to say hello.

Under Peruvian law, an investigation of the case, which began before Christmas, must be completed within three months.

Awaiting the outcome, McNamara has been incarcerated in the three-story Canto Grande penitentiary with about 70 female Senderista prisoners. Most of them are young women accused of bombings, assasinations and other terrorist activities.

“It is certainly an eye-opening experience,” McNamara said.

“In two years of traveling through Peru, I never had contact with the communists, and now the government and the police have put me in contact with them.”