The result of years of tolerance towards terrorism in Florida
BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD – Special for Granma International –
THE Miami terrorists are not a priority for the FBI, affirmed Judy Orihuela, spokes person for the Federal Bureau of Investigations office in Miami, in an interview published by The Sun-Sentinel . The assassination in Caracas of Venezuelan Public Prosecutor Danilo Anderson ended up displaying, in all its horror, the result of that policy of tolerance on the part of U.S. authorities towards the Miami circles that openly preach and practice terrorism.
Former captain of the Venezuelan army Luis Garcia, head of the terrorist Venezuelan Patriotic Junta, training at the Homestead camp in Florida with terrorists from Rodolfo Frómeta F-4 Commandos. Ex-generals Medina and González González were also present. In the south of Miami-Dade county, a group of people dressed in camouflage, use high-caliber weapons and train, the article from this important South Florida newspaper continued in its April 6, 2003 edition, referring to the terrorist training camp maintained in the Everglades by the Cuban-American group Commandos F-4, led by notorious criminal Rodolfo Frómeta.
It is necessary to point out that the group is not a “serious priority” for the FBI, although, among other activities it boasts on its web site, it teaches its recruits techniques for the use of military explosive charges detonated by remote control.
Months earlier, in a September 4, 2002 wire, datelined Miami, the Spanish agency EFE had already revealed that “a retired captain from the Venezuelan National Guard” had formed “an alliance with a group of Cuban exiles in Miami.”
The dispatch specified that “attired in his country’s national guard uniform at the Cuban exiles group Commandos F-4 headquarters, Luis Garcia Morales, representing the Venezuelan Patriotic Junta” declared that from that moment he would be coordinating actions with the Miami terrorists.
“SECRET MISSION” IN WASHINGTON
On January 29, 2003, an article entitled “Miami’s Little Havana Finds New Foe in Venezuelan Leader,” published by The Wall Street Journal , illustrates the extent of the FBI’s criminal inertia.
That day, the U.S. financial community’s austere paper described how in Miami, Frómeta, head of the F-4 Commandos, relished announcing with impunity the creation of an civil-military alliance with Venezuelan pro-coup commander Luis Eduardo Garcia aiming to “overthrow the presidents Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez. “
The article, written by journalist José de Córdoba, specified that García was among military who, on April 11, 2002, the day of the coup intended to overthrow Hugo Chávez’s constitutional government, attacked the presidential palace from a rear door.
The Journal later quoted “another military dissident” (note the always convenient word), Major Juan Díaz Castillo who, in a room full of Spanish- speaking reporters gave a press conference in which he violently attacked President Chávez.
After the press conference, Major Díaz Castillo flew to Washington to work on a mysterious secret ‘mission,’ said Captain Garcia, the famous U.S. daily reported verbatim.
WHO ARE THE F-4 COMMANDOS?
Confessed terrorist Rodolfo Frómeta has a long history of activities against Cuba organized from Miami. Already in 1981, while a member of Alpha, he was sent to Cuba to carry out a terrorist operation. He was detained by the Cuban authorities, found guilty and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment.
In 1994, on his return to Miami, Frómeta was detained along with another six individuals, this time in the Gulf of Mexico, by an U.S. Coast Guard patrol. Some 50 weapons, 26,000 cartridges and several thousand dollars were discovered in their boat. Frómeta spontaneously admitted that he was heading for Cuban territory with his men to engage in terrorist-type attacks.
The U.S. authorities did not deem it necessary to accuse Frómeta of any crime, in spite of his confession and past record.
In June of that same year, Rodolfo Frómeta was arrested again, with another of Alpha 66’s veteran terrorists, Fausto Merimont, for trying to buy an antiaircraft Stinger missile, three M-72 antitank missiles, C-4 explosive and a grenade launcher from a federal police double agent.
This time, his impunity was demonstrated by the judge, who regaled Frómeta with a 41-month prison term. By September 1997, the terrorist was already back on the streets, benefiting from an early release.
Hours after his release, Frómeta was already conspiring with other terrorists, individuals like Guillermo Novo Sampoll, CORU’s hired killer, who assassinated Chilean leader Orlando Letelier and was later detained in Panama with terrorist chief Luis Posada Carriles, as well as Roberto Martin Pérez, responsible for terrorist activities under the leadership of the Cuban-American National Foundation.
Frómeta also boasted over the years of being “a close friend”
of Lincoln Diaz-Balart, the Cuban-American congressman. A photograph in the former’s office pictures him shaking hands with the politician. A terrorist friendship that avoids reference to Diaz-Balart, whose father was the head of the White Rose, the first terrorist group created by counterrevolutionaries as early as January 1959.
On August 24, 1999, Miami’s Diario de las Américas celebrated the reactivation of F-4 Commando activities under the command of Rodolfo Frómeta,” and the “destruction” of a bus, train wagons and tobacco storehouses in Cuba. On January 12, 2001, Frómeta openly announced in Miami that another set of “military objectives” had been destroyed.
On March 27, 2001 Rodolfo Frómeta appeared at the rigged trial of the five anti-terrorist Cubans arrested by the FBI while infiltrating Miami’s criminal groups. Without the slightest hesitation he confessed to his military training activities with Alpha 66 and F4 Commandos, as well as the consignment of arms and explosives in their power and for armed “incursions” into Cuba.
Incredibly, this confession of terrorist activity did not provoke the slightest response from the FBI whose south Florida chief, Héctor Pesquera, a corrupt official associated with the Miami mafia, directed the political trial along with the district attorneys.
THE FBI: BLIND, DEAF AND DUMB
In a telephone conversation with The New Herald on the cowardly assassination in Caracas, Andrés Izarra, Venezuelan minister of communications and information, referred to an interview with Venezuelan actor and entertainer Orlando Urdaneta on Maria Elvira Salazar’s Channel 22 program, when the former maintained that Venezuela’s “only way out” is the “physical disappearance of President Chávez.”
Elvira Salazar then asked him how such a “physical disappearance” might occur and Urdaneta replied, “with some men with powerful weapons equipped with a telescopic sight that doesn’t miss,” adding that it would have to “come from soldiers or entrepreneurs… who would have the money to bring in an Israeli commando.”
It is not known whether the FBI has even interrogated Urdaneta, who continues living peacefully in Miami.
The Venezuelan minister also referred to an article in the Caracas Últimas Noticias , revealing that Cuban-American terrorist capos have made “supplies, experience, strategies, logistical support and contacts throughout the United States available to the Venezuelan opposition,” pointing to the alliance between the Venezuelan Patriotic Junta and Rodolfo Frómeta’s F-4.
The scandalous tolerance towards terrorism that reigns in south Florida could be much more fully documented. According to Martin Sánchez, director of Venezuelanalysis.com, between 2002 and March 2004, 27 calls to overthrow and assassinate Chávez were made over the Miami TV and radio stations. In spite of the huge volume of evidence presented over the course of the years regarding this tolerant approach by the highest U.S. authorities, and relations sustained by individuals of terrorist backgrounds with the current administration, an anonymous U.S. State Department official questioned by Miami’s The New Herald after the crime in Caracas declared that “it is ridiculous to claim that the U.S. government allows terrorists to operate on its territory.”
The F-4 Commandos have an office in Miami. They have been visited on many occasions by the press. They are located at 1412 W. Flagler Street, Office A, second floor, and can be reached at telephone number (305) 642-7790. The group also has a website where they brag about their acts of terrorism. Without any interference.