The long hand of the Cuban American National Foundation
in and around the Elian Case
"La mas fea no perdona..."

CANF AND THE CENTRAL AMERICAN CONNECTION

Terrorism with impunity

BY NIDIA DIAZ (Granma daily staff writer)

A few weeks ago, articles appeared in the Central American press commenting on the dangerous decision of a court of justice in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula in favor of returning to Mario Delamico, a terrorist of Cuban origin, a weapon confiscated last year by the military authorities of that country.

That decision, the sources agree, is once again giving a free hand to this mercenary who, moreover, is known as a central pillar in the Central American connection for arms and explosives trafficking in the region. Delamico, 57, operates as a representative in Honduras for the Panamanian Longlas Enterprise.

This Cuban-American "entrepreneur" arrived in Honduras in the 1980s   after being expelled from Guatemala, and joined the operative team of then Ambassador John Dimitri Negroponte, who had links with the CIA. Negroponte had met Delamico in Viet Nam and decided to use him in activities against the Sandinista government. On October 6, 1999, the Nicaraguan newspaper El Nuevo Diario published an extensive article entitled: "Crime pays in Central America," with an epigraph that warned: "Arms and terrorists on the loose in the region."

The article affirmed that "over the decades, the covert arms trade has become one of the most flourishing businesses in Central America and the Caribbean, and a source of destabilization within the countries of the region which, in some cases, have served as a springboard for certain unscrupulous persons lining their pockets with dollars in exchange for facilitating the implements to fill many nations in the region with pain and mourning."

Many months earlier, on December 1, 1998, the Mexican news agency NOTIMEX reported from Tegucigalpa that Alfredo Landaverde, a member of the Honduran Police Intervention Squad, claimed in the national newspaper La Tribuna that Mario Delamico had offered to sell that country's police force a cache of Israeli-manufactured weapons, which were being kept in a military unit. According to Landaverde, the abovementioned weapons were utilized in the '80s by Nicaraguan contras, at that time quartered in Honduras, and that Delamico was involved in an assault in which President Carlos Roberto Reina (from 1994-1998) was killed when a grenade exploded in the garage of his home.

In another dispatch, datelined December 5 that year,NOTIMEX revealed that the Public Ministry had confiscated various arms caches belonging to Delamico which were being kept in safekeeping by the Naco battalion of the Honduran Armed Forces, located in the department of Cortes, in the northern region of the country. One day later, the agency returned to the theme, reporting that Edmundo Orellana, the Honduran attorney general, had announced the start of an investigation to clarify the link between the Armed Forces and Delamico, after his chief, General Mario Hung Pacheco, confirmed the existence of the abovementioned cache in a military warehouse.

Nonetheless, Colonel Jorge Andino Almendarez, commander of the 105th Infantry Brigade, based in San Pedro Sula, subsequently affirmed that the Armed Forces had not committed any crime, given that four presidents from 1985 onward were aware of the situation. However, on the same theme, the AP agency quoted statements from ex-president Azcona Hoyo, who governed the country between 1986 and 1990, and who denied authorizing the custody of Delamico's arms. According to the daily, which quotes as its sources political observers and intelligence information, "the Central American connection has roots in Miami, New Jersey and other U.S. cities where the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) has influence."

What are we talking about and who is Mario Delamico? Why are sections of the media concerned about the impunity granted this terrorist by a court of justice in San Pedro Sula? These are questions worth addressing.

The first response is evident. We are talking about a wellorchestrated and organized network of arms traffickers with the clearly defined objective of destabilizing governments in the region, and carrying out acts of terrorism against the Cuban Revolution, on a  basis of broad collaboration with and the complicity of important political and military figures, sheltered by the CIA and funded by the CANF.

Who is Mario Delamico?

Simply a paid terrorist and counterrevolutionary who has amassed a fortune based on bloodshed and whose existence is possible because of the existence of an empire maintaining a policy of hatred against anyone who defuses to follow its dictates. He is a personal friend, collaborator and supplier of killer Luis Posada Carriles and a whole bunch of terrorists based in Miami and other South American countries, awaiting orders and funding from the counterrevolutionary CANF to commit all types of crimes. It was precisely his proven actions against the Sandinista government from Honduras and presumably from El Salvador that allowed him to attain the domination and control he now has as a consequence of his close relations with Central American military and police chiefs and with CIA stations in those countries, from which he has received more than a few favors.

To give some kind of outline of Mario Delamico, suffice it to say that by 1992 he had become Luis Posada Carriles' central supplier and logistic support in relation to arms and explosives utilized in various acts of terrorism against Cuba and against its president. Two years previously, Delamico was directly involved in plans for an attempt on Fidel's life during a speculated visit to Honduras, to which end he supplied antitank weapons to the conspirators.

Another plan, likewise financed by the CANF, and directed by Posada Carriles with participation from Gaspar Jiminez Escobedo and Felix Rodriguez Mendigutia, aimed to take advantage of another possible visit by the Cuban president to the inauguration of Honduran President Carlos Roberto Reina, in January 1994, and to assassinate him.

At the end of that same year, "entrepreneur" Delamico hid his friend Posada Carriles in Honduras, after the infamous terrorist failed to execute a further plan to assassinate the Cuban president during that year's Ibero-American Summit in Cartagena.

In 1997, Delamico supplied Posada Carriles with weapons and explosives for acts of terrorism against Cuban interests,  particularly those utilized in the attacks on tourist facilities during that period.

The following year, in 1998, he would act as supplier of C-4 explosive to counterrevolutionaries Enrique Bassas, Luis Orlando Rodriguez and Ramon Font, to be used in a further frustrated attempt on Fidel's life during a visit to the Dominican Republic in August of that year. This criminal project was financed by CANF Director Arnaldo Monzon Plascencia. Fidel is and was not Delamico's sole target. According to The Miami Herald, in 1994, Delamico, with Posada Carriles and the then chief of Honduran Army Intelligence, Colonel Guillermo Pinel Calix, created the subversive group MOSCA, which unleashed a terrorist campaign over two years aimed at destabilizing the government of President Carlos Roberto Reina, which they perceived as being sympathetic to the Cuban Revolution. As can be seen, terrorists like Mario Delamico and Luis Posada Carriles move around our region with impunity, fulfilling orders from the Miami mafia with the "innocent" indulgence of the U.S. secret services in the execution of political destabilization programs in the region.

Today, putting an end to arms trafficking, terrorism and the situations that facilitate them, are imperatives that cannot be put off, given the irrefutable claims that, to date, these mafia groups and their leaders have operated with total impunity within the United States and in Central American countries.

U.S.: At least one gun had been seen at house

BY DAVID KIDWELL

The return of Elian to his father The city of Miami has opened a rumor control hotline to deal with concerns and questions about the seizure of Elian Gonzalez. The number is 305-579-1800.

At least one person at the house of Elian Gonzalez's Miami family during Saturday's predawn raid -- a Cuban American National Foundation security chief with a concealed weapons permit -- had been seen frequently at the home with a handgun strapped to his ankle.

Federal authorities point to Mario Blas Miranda, 48, a licensed private investigator and president of Wellington and Knight Security, and fellow members of the family's security team as partial justification for their armed entry. Miranda, a former Miami police officer who left the force in 1992, has been a constant fixture in and around the house since the controversy began.

Federal officials confirmed Sunday that their ''credible reports of weapons inside that house'' centered on the comings and goings of Miranda and his team -- not on information that any family members or other visitors had weapons.

As it turned out -- authorities concede -- there were probably no guns inside the house. The family and its supporters are outraged that the government used guns during the incident. 'We were not armed,'' Marisleysis Gonzalez said  at a press conference in Washington, D.C., Sunday morning. ''All we had was God on our side.'' The task force outside the home early Saturday focused attention on Miranda, knocking him to the ground, forcing him to spread eagle, and dousing him with pepper spray while pushing a shotgun in his ear.

''I could not think,'' Miranda said later. ''I could not move.'' Federal agents did not search Miranda for his weapon Saturday morning. Miranda declined to comment on Sunday.

 WEAPONS PERMIT

Miami Police Chief William O'Brien said Miranda weeks earlier ''had reached out to our personnel to let us know he was carrying a weapon and that he had a concealed weapons permit.''

O'Brien also said other Miami officers who had visited the home reported ''no weapons had been seen in the house. But with the number of people going in and out of the house, there was no guarantee. ''It's better from a law enforcement standpoint to err on the side of caution,'' he said.

Federal authorities say the weapons coming in and out of the house with the private security force were enough to raise doubts about the safety of the operation.

''We had credible intelligence reports that led us to believe there could have been guns inside that house,'' said Maria Cardona, Immigration and Naturalization Service spokeswoman in Washington.

''If you have that information -- even if it doesn't end up being true -- you have to act accordingly.

 EXPERTS AGREE

Law enforcement experts agree. They say whether or not guns were in the house -- or who in the house might have them -- is of little consequence, compared to whether police had even a small reason to be concerned. Cardona confirmed reports from other federal and local law enforcement authorities who said the only reports of weapons inside the house were those weapons carried by security guards on the payroll of the Cuban American National Foundation.

''I can tell you that I have heard those reports from our people in Miami,'' Cardona said. Those reports, in addition to at least two other unconfirmed reports of weapons in the neighborhood in the days preceding the raid, helped sway federal agents away from a ''soft approach'' and toward a use of force that shocked many.

 TWO REPORTS

One such report came from a television reporter who said a woman showed her a gun in her purse. Pressed by police, the reporter declined to identify the woman.

The second report centered on a nearby house where police had unspecified and as yet unconfirmed ''intelligence reports'' that weapons were being stockpiled. No police ever saw weapons coming or going from the home, and no warrant was ever obtained to search the house.

The day before the raid, immigration officers arrested two residents of that home on unrelated immigration warrants. No one was at the house Sunday afternoon to comment.

Cardona also confirmed reports from other unnamed Justice Department sources that Marisleysis Gonzalez made this troubling comment to members of the INS Community Relations Service on Thursday: ''You think we just have cameras in the house? If people try to come in, they could be hurt.''

Said Cardona: ''I didn't hear the comment so I cannot confirm it personally, but I can tell you that our people in Miami have reported that comment was made, yes.''

Armando Gutierrez, the family's spokesman, said Marisleysis ''would never say such a thing. I doubt that very much.''

Herald staff writer Frances Robles contributed to this report.