Filiberto ojeda rios biography
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In this Chapter of the report, the OIG sets forth the historical background regarding Ojeda and the Macheteros and details the FBI’s planning for the Ojeda arrest operation.
I. Historical Background Regarding Ojeda and the Macheteros
- Filiberto Ojeda Ríos and the Macheteros
Filiberto Ojeda Ríos was born in Puerto Rico in 1933. According to FBI records and press accounts, Ojeda spent several years in Cuba in the 1960s and received training from the Government of Cuba as an intelligence officer. Ojeda returned to Puerto Rico in the mid-1960s and allegedly organized the Movimiento Independentista Revolucionario Armado, a pro-independence group suspected of several bombing attacks on the mainland United States during 1970-1971. In the 1970s, Ojeda allegedly fled to New York to avoid prosecution in Puerto Rico, and helped to funnen the Fuerzas Armadas dem Liberación Nacional (FALN), whose stated goal was an armed struggle for Puerto Rican inde
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Filiberto Ojeda Ríos | |
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| Personal details | |
| Born | (1933-04-26)April 26, 1933 Naguabo, Puerto Rico |
| Died | September 23, 2005(2005-09-23) (aged 72) Hormigueros, Puerto Rico |
| Nationality | Puerto Rican |
Filiberto Ojeda Ríos (April 26, 1933 – September 23, 2005) was the commander-in-chief ("Responsable General") of the Boricua Popular Army (Ejército Popular Boricua, a.k.a., Los Macheteros), a clandestine paramilitary organization that considers United States rule over Puerto Rico to be oppressive colonization and advocates the latter's independence.
Ojeda Ríos was a fugitive from 1990 to 2005, wanted by the FBI for his role in the 1983 Wells Fargo depot robbery in West Hartford, Connecticut as well as a bail bond default in September 1990. He was killed on 23 September 2005, a date that coincided with Los Macheteros's venerable anniversary of a Puerto Rican pro-independence uprising known as El Grito de Lares, when members of the FBI, claiming an
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Five Years Later: Remembering Filiberto Ojeda Ríos
Few incidents have galvanized the Puerto Rican nation as much as the FBI’s extra-judicial killing of independence leader Filiberto Ojeda Ríos in September 2005. Indeed, the politically divided country exploded in outrage over the incident, and Ojeda Ríos’s funeral procession was the largest ever attended in the island’s history. Since then, his image and his message have been repeatedly projected by supporters of independence. Indeed, striking student activists across the island who have shut down the public university system protesting increases in tuition are revisiting his speeches, communiqués, writings, and interviews to inform their developing activism. As the U.S. Congress reviews legislation this month proposing a change in the island’s status, independence supporting organizations continue to grapple with the revolutionary’s final call for unity as the necessary ingredient to move their agenda forward. To an increasing num