A-Infos (en) Jailed Terrorist Has `No Regrets'

[Tom Burghardt <tburghardt@igc.apc.org>]

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                 JAILED TERRORIST HAS `NO REGRETS'
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     Filed at 2:58 p.m. EDT May 9, 1998
     By The Associated Press
 
     MARION, Ill. (AP) -- In the solitude of his cell, Prisoner
87651-024 has time enough to reflect -- on his Puerto Rican
childhood and his baptism of fire in Vietnam, on his life in
Chicago and his years on the run from the FBI.
     
     Time enough for many things. But not for regrets.
     
     ``I cannot undo what's done,'' says Oscar Lopez Rivera.
``The whole thing of contrition, atonement, I have problems with
that.''
     
     At age 55, after 17 years in federal prison, with 53 years
left on his sentence, Oscar Lopez is a graying reminder of
another America, of a time when radical leftists planted bombs
against the ``imperialist'' state, and Puerto Rican separatist
groups like the one Lopez helped lead, the FALN, were rated by
the FBI as the most active and violent terrorists in the United
States.
     
     History has left them behind -- in Cuban exile or anonymous
middle age or the maximum security of U.S. penitentiaries. But
history may now lead Oscar Lopez into the spotlight again.
     
     In this centenary year of the U.S. takeover of Puerto Rico,
activists on that Caribbean island and in the United States are
seeking presidential clemency for Lopez and 14 other Puerto Rican
militants they describe as political prisoners. The White House
says it has received 100,000 cards and letters on their behalf.
     
     At the same time, the Puerto Rico question -- should it be a
state, an independent nation, something in between? -- is being
debated more seriously than ever in Congress, as it decides
whether to authorize a referendum on the issue in the U.S.
territory.
     
     Puerto Rican voters have regularly rejected pro-independence
candidates at the polls, and Lopez said he and his ex-comrades
would accept their decision in a plebiscite. But if
``independentistas'' find the process is rigged against them,
they will react violently, he said.
     
     ``If annexation (statehood) is the answer, I would say there
would be a good number of Puerto Ricans who would advocate and
practice armed struggle,'' he said.
     
     The FBI's latest report on domestic terrorism said support
for Puerto Rican militants has waned, but ``some extremists are
still willing to plan and conduct terrorist acts in order to draw
attention to their desire for independence.''
     
     The Marion U.S. Penitentiary, Lopez's home for much of the
past 17 years, is a low-profile, high-security compound among the
soybeans and Holsteins of southern Illinois. His 360 neighbors
here include New York crime boss John Gotti and Colombian
druglord Carlos Lehder.
 
     Interviewed via an intercom phone through a glass divider,
in an otherwise empty visitors' room, the once-feared Puerto
Rican militant is a small, lean man in red prison garb, with a
thick brush mustache, big eyeglasses and stubby gray ponytail. He
speaks with a high voice and wry smile -- and a supply of
up-to-date political information gleaned from phone conversations
and news articles.
     
     But when the questions turn to the violent work of the
long-dormant FALN, Lopez turns uninformative.
     
     In the 1970s and early 1980s, the FALN -- the Spanish-
language abbreviation for Armed Forces of National Liberation --
claimed responsibility for more than 100 bombings of public and
commercial buildings in such U.S. cities as New York, Chicago and
Washington, as well as in Puerto Rico. Few caused injuries, but
one still-unsolved bombing, at New York's landmark Fraunces
Tavern in 1975, killed four people and injured more than 60 in a
lunchtime crowd.
     
     At their trials in 1980-81, Lopez and his Chicago-based FALN
comrades were not tied to specific bombings. Instead, he was
convicted of seditious conspiracy (``to overthrow the government
of the United States in Puerto Rico by force''), armed robbery
and lesser charges.
     
     Asked now about Fraunces Tavern, Lopez says, ``I don't know
who did it.'' In fact, he adds, he has ``problems'' with ``that
particular action.''
     
     ``I as an individual would never set out to inflict pain and
suffering on any person not identified as my enemy.''
     
     His time as a U.S. infantryman in Vietnam in 1966-67
``taught me the fragility of life,'' he said. Vietnam, where he
won a Bronze Star for valor, taught him other things as well --
like how to make bombs.
     
     He said he carried out his first ``armed action'' for Puerto
Rican independence -- he won't say what -- not long after his
Army discharge. He worked, above ground, as a Chicago community
organizer, but by 1977 he was under federal indictment on
explosives charges, and on the run. He was captured in May 1981,
stopped by police in a Chicago suburb when his car made an
illegal turn.
     
     The sentencing judge ordered maximum prison terms on most of
the charges against Lopez, a punishment that clemency petitioners
call disproportionately harsh. Seventeen years should be enough,
they say.
     
     But others, including Puerto Rico's pro-statehood governor,
believe Lopez and his partners should offer something in exchange
for freedom.
     
     ``Maybe some of them are willing to say that they made a
mistake or that they would not do it again,'' Gov. Pedro Rossello
told The Associated Press in San Juan.
     
     Waiting for Oscar Lopez's words of contrition could take a
long time.
     
     ``I have no regrets for what I've done in the Puerto Rico
independence movement,'' the ex-FALN leader said. ``... The onus
is not on us. The crime is colonialism. ...
     
     ``If Puerto Rico was not a colony of the United States, I
would have had a totally different life.''
     
     In the silence of his cellblock, the aging ``freedom
fighter,'' as he called himself at his trial, has time to reflect
on a different life, as a free man.
     
     ``I would settle down in Puerto Rico and have a life with my
daughter and granddaughter,'' he said.
     
     And remain an active ``independentista''?
     
     After a long, quiet moment, Lopez replied, ``I cannot stop
being a Puerto Rican. I cannot be anything but a Puerto Rican.''
 
     Copyright 1998 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
 
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