Omega-7 killer Remón unmasked

                   • At a Puerto Rico Senate commission hearing, Posada Carriles’
                   accomplice was accused of the murder of Carlos Muñiz • In 1993, a
                   confidential FBI report identified him as the man who killed Cuban
                   diplomat Félix García Rodríguez in front of the United Nations building
                   and Cuban-American Eulalio José Negrín

                   BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD (Special for Granma International)

                   PEDRO Remón, arrested in Panama along with Luis Posada Carriles
                   on charges related to a conspiracy to assassinate President Fidel
                   Castro, was identified in a confidential FBI report as the murderer of
                   Cuban diplomat Félix García Rodríguez and Cuban-American Eulalio
                   José Negrín; now his dossier has been officially requested by the
                   Senate commission in Puerto Rico investigating Carlos Muñiz Varela’s
                   murder.

                   The most "discreet" of the terrorists locked up in
                   Panama, along with his boss Luis Posada Carriles, is
                   a very dangerous killer and another product of the
                   "special" training given by the CIA to a large
                   number of Cuba exiles in preparation for the Bay of
                   Pigs invasion. After that failed operation, the same
                   figures, trained to perfection in the use of weapons
                   and explosives at Fort Benning, reappeared in the
                   ranks of various terrorist organizations, some of which were clearly
                   backed by the CIA.

                   According to a October 1993 FBI report which has now been
                   declassified and published on the Internet, Pedro Remón was first
                   linked to terrorist activities after being detained along the
                   Canadian-U.S. border in December 1980, hours after a bomb
                   exploded at the Cuban Consulate in Montreal. He was accompanied
                   by Ramón Sánchez from Miami. Remón and Sánchez were
                   questioned by the U.S. Naturalization and Immigration Service (INS)
                   and their data were given to the FBI.

                   However, the report states that when the federal police looked
                   deeper into Remón’s case, they realized that he was in frequent
                   telephone contact with Eduardo Arocena, another Cuban-American
                   and suspected to be the leader of terrorist group Omega-7. At that
                   time, the group’s membership not only included Remón and Sánchez,
                   but also two other dangerous individuals: Andrés García and Eduardo
                   Fernández Losada.

                   Investigations later revealed that Arocena and Remón had rented
                   cars at Newark airport immediately before the execution of various
                   crimes attributed to Omega-7.

                   Comparisons made using New York police files indicate that a car
                   rented by the two accomplices had been ticketed in front of the
                   Cuban Mission to the UN on the very same day that Omega-7
                   assassinated Cuban diplomat Félix García Rodríguez. Investigators
                   even found the check signed by Arocena in payment of the fine.

                   On his arrest and interrogation by the FBI, Arocena refused to
                   answer questions, stating he had no knowledge of Omega-7’s
                   existence. Nevertheless, at the end of 1982 and under pressure from
                   his questioners, he decided to talk briefly to the authorities, giving
                   them essential information on the criminal group that he heads.

                   OMEGA-7’S LEADER MISTRUSTED PEDRO REMON AND
                   GUILLERMO NOVO

                   As part of that information, Arocena identified Pedro Remón as the
                   hit man in the killings of Eulalio José Negrín, a Cuban immigrant
                   involved in a political dialogue with Havana, and diplomat Félix García
                   Rodríguez.

                   García Rodríguez was alone in his car on September 11, 1980, when
                   he stopped at a traffic light and was murdered.

                   On November 25, 1979, Negrín was assassinated in front of his
                   12-year-old son. (From a Venezuelan prison cell, killer pediatrician
                   Orlando Bosch later boasted of having ordered the killing. Bosch was
                   freed thanks to his friend Otto Reich, now undersecretary of state for
                   Latin American affairs.)

                   Both victims were killed with the same weapon — a MAC 10 machine
                   gun.

                   Arocena also denounced Remón as the author of several attempts
                   on the lives of Raúl Roa Kourí, Cuban ambassador to the UN, and
                   Ramón Sánchez Parodi, head of the Cuban Interest Section in
                   Washington, among others.

                   The attack on Roa Kourí took place on March 25, 1980, when Pedro
                   Remón placed a remote control bomb on top of the fuel tank of the
                   diplomat’s car. The bomb, attached with magnets, fell on the ground
                   when the car’s driver accidentally hit the car behind.

                   The plan to assassinate Sánchez Parodi was called off when Remón
                   and Eduardo Fernández Losada were arrested in Belleville, New
                   Jersey, while trying to steal a car to use in the operation.

                   Arocena explained to his interrogators that Omega-7 had splintered
                   at the beginning of 1981, when Pedro Remón, Eduardo Ochoa,
                   Ramón Sánchez, Alberto Pérez and José García Junior became close
                   with Huber Matos, whom Arocena considered an opportunist. They
                   also suspected that Remón and Sánchez dreamed of taking over the
                   group’s leadership.

                   What’s more, the former leader of Omega-7 believed that he had
                   been fingered to the FBI in 1979 by another terrorist, Guillermo Novo
                   Sampoll – now under arrest in Panama with Luis Posada Carriles and
                   one of the masterminds of the assassination of former Chilean
                   Minister Orlando Letelier and human rights activist Ronnie Moffit.

                   Finally arrested in 1986 and brought before a grand jury, Pedro
                   Ramón refused to cooperate and was sentenced to 10 years in
                   prison and a $20,000 USD fine.

                   Once freed, this dangerous personality did not wait to join terrorist
                   Luis Posada Carriles, holed up in El Salvador with the blessing of the
                   highest authorities of that country’s mafia. He settled in Miami,
                   without any more trouble from the authorities.

                   He reappeared in Panama at the time of the failed assassination
                   attempt against the leader of the Cuban Revolution, which, had it
                   been successful, could have caused thousands of deaths.

                   Meanwhile in Puerto Rico, the Truth and Justice Commission
                   (www.verdadujusticia.org) was created after a Senate resolution
                   requested an "investigation into the participation, supplying and
                   exchange of information by authorities of the Puerto Rican
                   government, in a joint effort with federal agencies, to prepare files,
                   records or any other method of collecting information about
                   individuals, groups and organizations in Puerto Rico for political and
                   ideological reasons."

                   This commission is made up of friends and relatives of the victims of
                   political assassinations, endorsed by institutions of the Puerto Rican
                   and U.S. governments such as the police, the FBI, the CIA and U.S.
                   naval intelligence.

                   Thus, on January 23, 2002, several reports were presented by
                   members of the commission in public hearings of the Puerto Rican
                   Senate Judicial Commission. This first hearing was dedicated to the
                   murders of Santiago Mari Pesquera and Carlos Muñiz Varela, for
                   which Rosi Mari Pesquera, Raúl Alzaga and Leila Andreu, as well as
                   independence leader Juan Mari Bras, were called to appear.

                   Raúl Alzaga presented information about the murder of Carlos Muñiz
                   Varela, which took place on April 28, 1979, when that young Cuban,
                   who managed the Viajes Varadero travel agency in San Juan,
                   organized trips to Cuba for Cuban exiles, in the context of improving
                   relations between immigrants and the Cuban authorities. He recalled
                   that Muñiz Varela had arrived in Puerto Rico at the age of seven, as
                   part of the CIA-sponsored Operation Peter Pan, which criminally
                   separated 14,000 Cuban children from their parents by sending them
                   to the United States.

                   Since 1974, Alzaga explained, Carlos Muñiz Varela had been
                   connected to a movement of young Cubans grouped around Areíto
                   magazine and the Antonio Maceo Brigade. This allowed him to travel
                   to Cuba on three occasions, facilitating relations with people in Cuba
                   and the United States who were working on a project of
                   rapprochement between the Cuban communities in Cuba and
                   abroad.

                   "With the information we possess today, we can assert that the
                   conditions prevalent at that time made it difficult to clearly identify
                   the circumstances of Carlos’ murder. But today there is a new
                   contest in the country which favors a different course of action,
                   Alzaga clarified to the Senate commission. He also asked the Senate
                   commission to demand that the FBI files, among them those related
                   to Pedro Remón, be turned over under the Freedom of Information
                   Act.

                   THREE ASSASSINATIONS AIMED AT SABOTAGING A
                   RECONCILIATION PROCESS

                   Why has the name of this veteran Omega-7 terrorist and accomplice
                   of Luis Posada Carriles come up during a Puerto Rican Senate hearing
                   in relation to a murder committed in 1979, while he is currently
                   detained in Panama?

                   Many of Muñiz Varela’s relatives, friends and others familiar with the
                   case, are convinced that a sort of trilogy of assassinations took place
                   in response to the political process that sparked the dialogue
                   between the Cuban government and representatives of the Cuban
                   community abroad, at the end of the 1970s. The three victims are
                   Carlos Muñiz Varela, in April 1979 in Puerto Rico; Eulalio José Negrín,
                   in New Jersey in November of the same year; and Félix García
                   Rodríguez, in January 1980 in New York. Muñiz and Negrín were
                   members of the Cuban community abroad and active participants in
                   the growing dialogue. García Rodríguez was an official in the Cuban
                   Mission to the UN, in New York.

                   Muñiz Varela’s killing was attributed to the organization called
                   Commando Zero, and those of Negrín and García Rodríguez to
                   Omega-7. Many are convinced that the two organizations were
                   really one and the same.

                   In the case of young Carlos Muñiz Varela, there’s evidence that at
                   least two of the participants in his assassination are originally from
                   the United States.

                   If one combines the facts that the murderers were young, that two
                   lived in the United States, that the two organizations accused of the
                   assassinations were really one and the same, and that Pedro Remón
                   was implicated in the two previous murders, tied to the campaign
                   that existed to stop the dialogue process, these elements lead many
                   in Puerto Rico to consider the possibility that he could have been tied
                   to the murder of Carlos Muñiz Varela.

                   Pedro Remón is now in Panama, being held along with Posada
                   Carriles and two other killers: Guillermo Novo, responsible for the
                   murders of Orlando Letelier and Ronnie Moffit; and Jiménez
                   Escobedo, assassin of Cuban official D’Artagnán Díaz Díaz, carried
                   out in Mexico on July 23, 1976.

                   The entire Miami mafia, friends of the CIA and FBI, are working hard
                   to hastily free those killers by any means necessary. The Panamanian
                   prosecution has already reduced the seriousness of the accusations,
                   after a detonator valve proving their guilt mysteriously
                   "disappeared." The Salvadoran government has requested the
                   extradition of Posada on the simple charge of using forged
                   documentation.

                   While five Cubans have been granted very harsh prison sentences in
                   the United States for fighting the terrorism of the Miami mafia, will
                   four killers be allowed to be freed in Panama, to continue
                   indiscriminately perpetrating their criminal plans with impunity?