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News :: Civil & Human Rights : Crime & Police : Government Secrecy : Latin America : Protest Activity : Regime |
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Independista Fighter Found Dead in Puerto Rico Hideout |
Current rating: 0 |
by via AP
(No verified email address) |
24 Sep 2005
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Protests erupt after Filiberto Ojeda Rios was apparently killed in a shoot-out after operating underground in clandestinity for 15 years. |
HORMIGUEROS, Puerto Rico (AP) -- A Puerto Rican nationalist leader wanted in the 1983 robbery of a Connecticut armored truck died during an FBI stakeout of the farmhouse where he was hiding, the island's police chief said Saturday.
The FBI found the body of Filiberto Ojeda Rios in the house in the western town of Hormigueros, police chief Pedro Toledo said. The FBI called the office of Puerto Rico Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila to inform him of Ojeda Rios' death, he said.
''Filiberto Ojeda Rios is definitely dead,'' Toledo told WAPA radio.
A gun battle erupted Friday as FBI agents closed in to arrest Ojeda Rios, but Toledo said he did not know how the nationalist leader died.
FBI spokesman Louis Feliciano refused to comment on Toledo's remarks. Earlier Saturday, the FBI had said it did not know if Ojeda was alive.
Earlier, a law enforcement agent speaking on condition of anonymity and Hector Pesquera, president of the Hostiano independence movement, told The Associated Press the nationalist leader was killed when the FBI closed in to arrest him Friday.
The FBI detained Ojeda Rios' wife, Elma Rosado Barbosa, who was unharmed, the agency said in a statement.
The robbery of the Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Conn., is considered an act of domestic terrorism because it allegedly was carried out by 19 members of the Puerto Rican nationalist Macheteros, or Cane Cutters.
The FBI has asked police for equipment to detect explosives in the farmhouse, Toledo said earlier.
Some 500 people protested ''the assassination'' late Friday night, blocking San Juan's main Roosevelt Avenue in front of Hiram Bithorn Stadium.
''This was done on purpose ... to try to humiliate us,'' Jorge Farinacci, president of the Socialist Front, said at the demonstration. ''It's to tell us: 'You do not have the right to independence.'''
He called for the many factions in the fractured and marginalized independence movement ''to overcome political differences, to determine how to validate the right of our people to show their indignation of this assassination of our greatest patriot.''
Ojeda Rios, leader of the Macheteros, is one of four men still wanted for the Wells Fargo robbery. He was released on bail in 1988 after about three years in prison awaiting trial in Connecticut.
In 1990, he cut off an electronic monitoring bracelet and became a fugitive.
He was convicted in absentia in 1992 on charges of robbery, conspiracy and transportation of stolen money and was sentenced to 55 years in prison. Ojeda Rios sometimes grants interviews to Puerto Rican reporters and issues statements in favor of independence for this U.S. possession of 4 million people.
Only about $80,000 of the $7 million stolen has been recovered. The federal government believes most was used in Puerto Rico to finance the independence movement.
The United States seized Puerto Rico in the Spanish-American War. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens but cannot vote for U.S. president, have no voting representation in the U.S. Congress and pay no federal taxes.
Most Puerto Ricans are split between those who support making the island a U.S. state and those who favor keeping its status as a U.S. commonwealth. A small but vocal minority supports independence.
Three other men remain fugitives in the case, including Victor Manuel Gerena, a former Wells Fargo guard who allegedly injected two other guards with a sleeping substance to facilitate the robbery. He is on the FBI's most-wanted list.
One man imprisoned in the case, Juan Segarra Palmer, was granted clemency by President Clinton in 1999.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press
http://www.ap.org/ |
Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
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Re: Independista Fighter Found Dead in Puerto Rico Hideout |
by Edward J Ball Jr
ejballjr (nospam) cox.net (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
25 Sep 2005
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Long live Senior Rios in our hearts and minds - and death to the traitors of freedom, democracy, the right to vote, and the refusal to bukkle under to a rogue tyrannical government agency called the FBI |
