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Slain Puerto Rican Rebel Didn’t Have To Die <br>
Juan Gonzalez <br>
NY Daily News <br>
Thursday, October 6, 2005 <br><br>
A former naval intelligence officer says he knows for a fact that
Puerto<br>
Rican nationalist fugitive Filiberto Ojeda Rios didn’t have to die in
a<br>
shootout with the FBI. <br><br>
He says he knows this because he told FBI agents a year ago where they
could<br>
find Ojeda even telling them where he liked to eat. <br><br>
“What they did was an injustice,” the former Navy officer told me
last<br>
week. “No matter what Ojeda did, he was still a human being . . . .
They<br>
could easily have taken him alive.” <br><br>
The informant, who asked not to be identified, has given his full account
to<br>
the Justice Department’s Inspector General’s Office, which opened an<br>
independent review of the shooting last week. <br><br>
FBI Director Robert Mueller requested the review after top officials
from<br>
the island’s various political parties, including pro-commonwealth
Gov.<br>
Anibal Acevedo Vilá, and several members of New York’s congressional<br>
delegation publicly criticized the FBI’s handling of the incident.
<br><br>
And yesterday the Puerto Rican commonwealth’s own Department of
Justice<br>
subpoenaed weapons and records of the FBI’s operation. <br><br>
By the time of his death, 72-year-old Ojeda, a onetime musician
turned<br>
revolutionary, had become a legendary figure on the island. <br><br>
A founder of the militant pro-independence group called the Macheteros,
he<br>
had been on the run since 1990 for his role in a $7 million Wells
Fargo<br>
armed robbery in Hartford in 1983. <br><br>
During all those years, Ojeda frequently gave interviews to Puerto
Rican<br>
reporters, routinely disseminated pro-independence proclamations, and
was<br>
even spotted at times at protest marches. <br><br>
Despite a reward on his head that reached $1.1 million, he popped up
so<br>
often in public that Puerto Ricans openly joked about the FBI’s
apparent<br>
inability to find him. <br><br>
But on the afternoon of Sept. 23, a special team of agents dispatched
from<br>
the United States surrounded Ojeda’s farmhouse hideout in Hormigueros,
a<br>
small town near the island’s western coast. <br><br>
According to the official version, Ojeda opened fire from inside
while<br>
agents moved in to arrest him. One agent was wounded and Ojeda was
shot<br>
beneath the clavicle in the initial shootout. <br><br>
The fugitive’s wife, who was with him at the time, surrendered
immediately.<br>
She later claimed the agents opened fire without warning and that
her<br>
husband offered to give up in the presence of well-known Puerto
Rican<br>
journalist Jesus Davila, but agents refused. <br><br>
Over the next 20 hours, the FBI team sealed off the area and would not
allow<br>
Puerto Rican police near the scene. By the time they entered the
house the<br>
next day, Ojeda had bled to death. <br><br>
The long delay, officials say, was caused by waiting for bomb
detection<br>
units to arrive and check for possible booby-trap. <br><br>
But even those who oppose Ojeda’s radical views and methods aren’t
buying<br>
that account. <br><br>
Many are especially furious at the timing of the operation. <br><br>
Sept. 23 is the anniversary of El Grito de Lares, Puerto Rico’s failed
1868<br>
independence revolt against Spanish colonialism. It is a date
commemorated<br>
each year by the independence movement with a march to the town of Lares.
<br><br>
At the very moment federal agents were moving in on Ojeda’s hideout, a
taped<br>
speech of his was being played at the Lares event. <br><br>
“I’m a statehooder, but I see the FBI was trying to humiliate all
Puerto<br>
Ricans by going after him on El Grito de Lares,” says the former
naval<br>
officer who provided the agents information. “I feel I was used.”
<br><br>
In early 2004, he claims, he and two of his friends met with FBI
agents<br>
several times. The told the agents that Ojeda was living in
Hormigueros,<br>
and that the fugitive often ate at El Conejo Blanco, a well-known
restaurant<br>
in Hormigueros popular with independence supporters. <br><br>
“All they had to do was set up surveillance at the restaurant and they
could<br>
have picked him up,” the informant says. <br><br>
He says he also identified other spots on the island that Ojeda
frequented. <br><br>
“I wanted him arrested, not killed,” he said. <br><br>
But when the agents failed to act by early this year, he says, he broke
off<br>
contact and stopped offering any more information. <br><br>
“I didn’t do it for the money, and never received a penny,” he insists.
<br><br>
When I called FBI headquarters in Washington, they referred all my
questions<br>
to the San Juan field office, but agents there did not return several
calls<br>
for comment. <br><br>
Meanwhile, press reports in San Juan claim federal officials have begun
to<br>
pay out part of the $1.1 million reward for Ojeda to two informants.
<br><br>
<br><br>
<br><br>
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