The Miami mafia’s September 11
• On that same date in 1980, Miami mafia capos were celebrating the
success of their latest feat of terrorism: the murder of Félix García
Rodríguez, a Cuban diplomatic at the United Nations, carried out
in a
New York street by Pedro Remón, the deadliest killer at their disposal
•
It was the one and only assassination of a UN diplomat and the news
immediately made world headlines • Pedro Remón, who was never
punished for his crime and continued his life as a terrorist, is currently
detained in Panama with gang leader Luis Posada Carriles; he could
soon be returning, unpunished, to his Florida residence
BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD (Special for Granma International)
• SEPTEMBER 11, 1980, 6:20 p.m. Traffic in the heart of New York
was its usual hellish self. Félix García Rodríguez
was driving past the
UN building in a vehicle belonging to the Cuban Mission. He was
supposed to pick up a work colleague and her children but
fortunately, she had decided to stay at home at the last minute. So
Félix, having left his apartment in Queens, stopped by a dry- cleaners
in his neighborhood to pick up some clothes and was heading
towards his office on the corner of 38th and Lexington Avenue,
Manhattan.
He was driving along Queens Boulevard when he had to stop at
the lights at the corner of 55th Street. That was the moment when,
in a fraction of a second, his world ended. A car pulled up alongside,
and an unknown killer aimed a MAC 10 machine gun at Félix García
Rodríguez and pulled the trigger.
One bullet hit him in the neck, and he lost consciousness. His car hit
another vehicle coming in the opposite direction.
The killers stopped their car, the one with the machine gun got out
and shot Félix again, this time in the head.
That man’s name is Pedro Remón, a terrorist from the Omega 7 group.
The driver of the car was Eduardo "Omar" Arocena, head of Omega 7
and author of a very long list of attempts.
That day, "Omar" was celebrating the sixth anniversary of his
organization. And the first murder of a UN diplomat was an exploit
celebrated by the Cuban-American mafia capos in Miami who blindly
supported his act of terrorism, along with the blessing of the CIA and
the FBI.
Its probable that the "anonymous informer" who later rang the
United Press International (UPI) agency to say that the Omega 7
terrorist organization was responsible for the deed was "Omar"
himself.
INDIGNATION AT THE UN
In Washington, the authorities advised the Cuban Interest Section —
the island’s main representation in the United States — of the murder
at 7:00 p.m. Ramón Sánchez Parodi, the section’s head at
the time,
left immediately for New York.
There, UN diplomats were in uproar. For the first time ever, terrorists
had used violence against the legitimate representative of a UN
member country. Nobody had ever dared to do such a thing, and
such a disgraceful act would never be repeated.
Three times on the following day, UN Secretary General Kurt
Waldheim expressed his horror at the crime. He communicated with
the U.S. representative at the United Nations, demanding that full
measures be taken to guarantee the safety of all the Cuban
personnel in New York, and insisted that the tragic event be
thoroughly investigated.
At a press conference Waldheim stated that he strongly condemned
the unjustified act of terrorism, adding that it was a new and tragic
illustration of the growing violence faced by diplomats around the
world.
Secretary of State Ed Muskie called it a reprehensible act and asked
for all the relevant federal agencies as well as the New York police
department to cooperate in the investigation.
The man responsible for U.S. foreign policy stated that terrorism was
to be condemned in all its forms and eradicated.
Donald McHenry, Washington’s ambassador to the UN called the
crime a blot on the United States.
Nevertheless, both Muskie and McHenry refrained from specifically
condemning the anti-Cuban terrorism sponsored, as was well known,
by the country’s very own intelligence services and to a large degree
tolerated by the federal police.
At the UN, Cuban ambassador Raúl Roa Kourí affirmed with
total
clarity: "these groups of professional killers have various locations in
the country that hosts our international organization. Their members
and leaders make public statements to New York’s Spanish-language
press and hold public meetings on the streets, crudely boasting of
their criminal intentions."
He justly recalled: "They are the same ones who have detonated five
bombs in the offices of the Cuban Mission at the UN over the last
two years and who placed a high-explosive bomb in the car
belonging to Cuba’s permanent representative to the organization."
Kourí added: "Félix García Rodríguez has died
as a result of his
cowardly murderers going unpunished for their previous crimes."
The subsequent investigations, concluded one year later, completely
supported his reasoning.
On September 13, the body of the murdered diplomat was brought
to Havana accompanied by Victor Villa, a work colleague of Félix
and
a former guerrilla fighter in the Sierra Maestra. An important group
headed by Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, member of the Political Bureau
and vice president of the Council of State, was awaiting their arrival
at José Martí airport.
On September 14, Félix García Rodriguez was interred in Havana’s
Colón Cemetery; thousands of people gathered to give their final
salute to a heroic comrade, victim of Miami’s Batista underworld.
His colleagues and friends remembered the murdered Cuban
diplomat, who had worked as a journalist on Juventud Rebelde
before moving to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as "a great guy." He
had worked for the UN Cuban Mission from 1977, joining Alarcón’s
team, and his main brief was to look after the many Cuban visitors
arriving in New York for reasons of work.
OMAR AND HIS KILLERS
According to information declassified by the FBI in 1993, Omega 7
was a Miami-based terrorist organization founded on September 11,
1974 by Eduardo "Omar" Arocena, with the backing of two fanatical
Cuban-American groups: the Cuban Nationalist Movement (CNM)
and the Martí Insurrection Movement (MIM).
Omega 7 was active until 1983, when it was destroyed by the arrest
of its leader.
Various of the 20 or so killers gathered around Arocena had been
recruited and specially trained in intelligence and commando
techniques by the CIA in order to participate in the failed Bay of Pigs
invasion.
The FBI confirmed that the training of those individuals as
mercenaries plus funds guaranteed by the CNM gave Omega 7 an
almost unlimited potential for terrorism.
In the majority of their actions, Omega 7 used bombs, bullets and
murder.
Despite the international impact of Félix García Rodríguez’
death, the
FBI waited until 1981 — at least officially — before beginning to
identify the perpetrators of the crime.
An FBI document reads that in December 1980, the Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS) questioned Pedro Remón and Ramón
Sánchez, another Cuban immigrant, on crossing the Canadian
border, traveling from Montreal.
Although a bomb had gone off at the Cuban Consulate in that city
just a few hours earlier, the two men were not questioned about the
incident.
However, the INS gave the FBI data on the two individuals and the
Feds finally uncovered the Omega 7 network. Investigations into the
activities of Remón and Sánchez allowed the experts to discover
their links with Eduardo Arocena, Andrés García and Eduardo
Fernández Losada, and the existence of the criminal organization.
A FINE AND A CHECK
Thus they were able to prove an important exchange of telephone
calls between Arocena and Remón around the dates of various
attacks, plus suspicious care-hire information in Newark Airport, New
Jersey.
Delving deeper, in the New York police archives investigators found
that a vehicle hired by Arocena and Remón had received a fine in
front of the UN Cuban Mission on September 11, 1980¼ and that
Arocena had signed a check to pay for the infraction.
On December 2, 1982, Arocena was called before the Grand Jury
and roundly denied all knowledge of Omega 7’s activities, except for
what he’d read about the group in the press.
However, the FBI report stated that the terrorist leader had initially
worked as a U.S. government agent. After that appearance, Arocena
briefly cooperated with the FBI and talked to investigators Robert
Brandt and Larry Wack.
At first he stated that he represented "Omar", the head of Omega 7.
But the next day he admitted that "Omar" and himself were one and
the same person.
After confessing that he’d traveled to Miami to pick up 600 pounds of
explosives from Pedro Remón, "Omar" surprised Brandt and Wack by
telling them over the phone that he didn’t want to cooperate with
them any more and then disappeared off the face of the earth.
The FBI claimed to have lost track of him, until his arrest on July 22,
1983, seven months later.
DREAMING OF FIVE VICTIMS
During the time he was cooperating with Brandt and Wack, "Omar"
claimed that Pedro Remón had killed Félix García Rodríguez.
He gave
the two men all the details of the vicious attack. And he also spilled
the beans on another murder committed by his organization: the
particularly repugnant killing of Cuban-American Eulalio Negrín
on
September 25, 1979.
Armed with the same MAC 10 machine gun as on September 11,
1980, Remón broke into Negrín’s home and shot him in front
of his
young son.
"Omar" confessed to the FBI that he dreamt about ordering the
deaths of five Cuban diplomats on that fateful September 11, with
the aim of celebrating his criminal organization’s sixth anniversary.
Among the other victims selected were Ramón Sánchez Parodi,
head
of the Cuban Interest Section in Washington, and Raul Roa Kouri,
Cuba’s ambassador to the UN.
When investigator Brandt took the stand at Arocena’s trial in 1984,
he told under oath how Arocena affirmed that he had tried to
persuade Remón not to kill Félix García Rodríguez
on September
11¼ but only because he realized that the diplomat was alone in
the
car.
Brandt testified that "Omar" told him he didn’t want to kill just one
Cuban, but five.
Pedro Remón and Eduardo Losada Fernández were arrested on
September 24, 1982 while attempting to steal a car in Belleville, New
Jersey. They wanted to use it for an assassination attempt on
Sánchez Parodi, which they planned to effect by placing a bomb in
the Cuban Interest Section.
"Omar" Arocena then confessed to personally making all the bombs
used by his organization. He also openly acknowledged his
operational links and training with the CIA.
IMPUNITY FOR REMON
At the same 1984 trial, a witness confirmed that Pedro Remón was
the person who had shot Félix García Rodríguez on
September 11,
1980 in New York.
In 1986 Remón, who was living in Kindall, Florida, at the time,
received a 10-year prison term after pleading guilty to the attempted
murder of Raúl Roa Kouri in front of the UN building and an attempt
on the Cuban Interest Section in December 1975¼ in a deal made to
get all the other charges dropped, including that of the September 11
homicide. A satisfactory result for the terrorist who, just a few years
later, was back on the streets, free to resume his former activities.
Pedro Remón effectively carried on with his career as killer and
terrorist, firstly alongside Huber Matos, boss of the Democratic and
Independent Cuba organization, linked to murky terrorist and drug
trafficking operations. Later on Remón joined arch-terrorist Luis
Posada Carriles.
In 2000 Remón surfaced in Panama, at the very moment of the
failed Posada Carriles attempt against Fidel Castro. Had the attempt
succeeded, hundreds of people would have died.
Along with Posada and two others, he is now detained at El Renacer
"model" prison, 60 meters from the Panama Canal. In Miami, mafia
circles have been predicting the possible escape of the four terrorists
for some time.
Remón — killer, Omega 7 terrorist, an accomplice in the majority
of
the extremely long list of attempts attributed to Omega 7 — could
then return to No. 170099 NW 98th Avenue, Hialeah Gardens,
Miami. With total impunity, and at great convenience to the country
that has always tolerated — when it hasn’t actually instigated — the
activities of the most fanatical Cuban-American elements. And a
country that is persecuting those who have risked their lives trying to
counteract such individuals.
On September 11, when the U.S. people recall the tragic hours they
lived through one year ago when watching the Twin Towers collapse
in flames, will the Miami terrorist circles be commemorating how, on
September 11, 1980, their hired killer Remón cowardly murdered a
young Cuban diplomat on the streets of New York? Will they be
bragging about how, for over 40 years, they have organized,
financed and encouraged countless murders, violent attacks and
criminal conspiracies against Cuba? Will they feel proud of their blood
on their hands that September 11, 1980, when they used violence
and terrorism to realize their annexationist dreams?
Chickens home to roost
THE U.S. legal authorities "weren’t as thorough as they could have
been" on investigating Félix García Rodríguez’ murder,
in case they
damaged their own interests," Ramón Sánchez Parodi, head
of the
Cuban Interest Section in Washington when the tragic event took
place, told Granma International.
"Rooster chickens," he added, referring to the famous saying: "The
chickens are coming home to roost".
"No U.S. government has ever stopped sponsoring anti-Cuban
criminals," pointed out Sánchez Parodi, explaining that this has
resulted in the most violent individuals "thinking they have license to
act against Cuba."
According to his own experience, that policy of various U.S.
administrations does not correspond to the wishes of the large
majority of Cuban immigrants living in the United States, who "just
want relations to be normalized" between the two countries.