Newspaper reports that freed Puerto Ricans had ties to Cuba
News/Current Events News
Source: The Nando Times
Posted on 11/06/1999 20:21:20 PST by kattracks
HARTFORD, Conn. (November 6, 1999 8:51 p.m. EST
http://www.nandotimes.com)
The Puerto Rican nationalists offered clemency by President Clinton in September were members of two groups with ties to Cuban intelligence agents, The Hartford Courant reports.
In a story in Sunday's editions, the newspaper said FBI files on a Wells Fargo robbery in West Hartford document Cuba's support for the Puerto Rican independence movement. The contents of the files have not been disclosed until now, the Courant said.
The FBI monitored conversations and meetings between Cuban intelligence agents and members of the group Los Macheteros, Spanish for "The Cane Cutters."
"Numerous court-authorized interceptions of conversations ... have determined that the Cubans support and direct the Macheteros at a firsthand level," the FBI said in a confidential memo.
In addition to analyzing the FBI investigation of the 1983 armored-car robbery, The Courant said it interviewed 50 sources, including former Cuban agents, FBI agents and congressional investigators.
In September, President Clinton freed 11 jailed nationalists, members of Los Macheteros or the FALN, the Spanish acronym for the Armed Forces of National Liberation. The FALN has claimed responsibility for numerous bombings in the United States; its 1975 bombing of Fraunces Tavern in New York City killed four and injured 63. Los Macheteros, with the exception of the $7.1 million Wells Fargo robbery, attacked U.S. government targets in Puerto Rico.
None of the prisoners offered clemency were directly involved in violent acts, Clinton said, and he acted on human-rights activists' arguments that the prisoners had paid their debt by serving an average of 19 years in jail.
In its Wells Fargo investigation, the FBI learned that Machetero leaders met regularly with their Cuban contacts in Mexico City, but sometimes also met in Cuba. About a third of the stolen cash went to the Cubans, sources told the newspaper.
White House spokesman Jim Kennedy, asked whether Cuban support for the nationalists was considered during deliberations on the clemency offer, said decisions about clemency are confidential. Mike Hammer, another White House spokesman, said nobody was available Saturday to comment on the specifics of the report.
Filiberto Ojeda Rios, a wanted Macheteros leader who has been in hiding in Puerto Rico for years, angrily denied any ties to Cuba during an interview with Puerto Rican radio journalist Luis Penchi.
"That is ridiculous, absurd," he said.
A spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section, which serves as Havana's de facto embassy in Washington, also dismissed the link. The office was closed Saturday.
"I have no information on that," said Luis M. Fernandez. "In my opinion, it is more science fiction than anything else."
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
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1 Posted on 11/06/1999 20:21:20 PST by kattracks