Puerto Rico militant leader emerges from 36 years in custody
San Juan, Puerto Rico — Puerto Rico nationalist Oscar Lopez Rivera emerged from house arrest Wednesday and was celebrated by supporters after decades in custody, freed in a case that made him a martyr for some but angered those who lost loved ones in a string of bombings.
Wearing black jeans and a shirt decorated with a Puerto Rican flag pin, the 74-year-old left his daughter’s San Juan home escorted by the mayor of Puerto Rico’s capital and New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.
A celebration for Lopez in a plaza near the University of Puerto Rico drew at least 1,000 people by late afternoon, some embracing and wearing T-shirts reading: “Welcome to your homeland!”
Lopez was considered a top leader of the Armed Forces of National Liberation, or FALN, an ultranationalist Puerto Rican group that claimed responsibility for more than 100 bombings at government buildings, department stores, banks and restaurants in New York, Chicago, Washington and Puerto Rico during the 1970s and early 1980s. The FBI classified the Marxist-Leninist group as a terrorist organization.
The most famous bombing was the still-unsolved 1975 explosion that killed four people and wounded 60 at Fraunces Tavern, a landmark restaurant in New York’s financial district.
Lopez, a Vietnam War veteran who moved from Puerto Rico to Chicago as a child, wasn’t convicted of any role in the bombings that killed six people and injured dozens. But those who lost loved ones hold him responsible.
“This guy was convicted of leading the FALN that murdered people,” said Joseph Connor, whose father, Frank, was killed in the Fraunces Tavern attack.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Lopez said he had no regrets about his involvement with the FALN. But he stressed that “the issue of violence is discarded completely” by Puerto Rican “independentistas” and he described their struggle as a peaceful one for many years.