Terror ‘hero’ plotted to kill his way out of jail

Before he was a “humble Puerto Rican grandfather,” Oscar López Rivera was the grandaddy of terror.

López Rivera — who Thursday declined to be honored in the Puerto Rican Day Parade and instead said he would march as “humble Puerto Rican and grandfather” — plotted to kill guards and blow up government buildings in an escape scheme from a federal prison where he was doing time for trying to overthrow the US government, according to a 1999 report from the House Government Reform Committee.

First locked up in 1981, Lopez Rivera spent more than two years masterminding a violent plot to escape Kansas’ Leavenworth Penitentiary along with several other members of his Puerto Rican terrorist group FALN.

While imprisoned, López Rivera gave a fellow inmate with connections to weapons smugglers a shopping list that included “fragmentation grenades, smoke grenades, phosphorous grenades, eight M-16 rifles, two silencers, 50 pounds of plastic C-4 explosives, eight bulletproof vests, 10 blasting caps to use with plastic explosives, and 100 30-shot clips for use with automatic weapons,” ac- cording to the report.

The plan called for FALN members to shoot guards and lob grenades at guard towers while members on the outside airlifted prisoners out with a helicopter.

Former President Barack Obama in January pardoned López Rivera, 74.