Oscar Lopez-Rivera was one of the leaders and founders of
the fringe Puerto Rican nationalist domestic terrorist group known
as the FALN (Armed Forces of National Liberation). In a highly
controversial move in August of 1999, Bill Clinton offered clemency
to 12 members of that group (including Lopez), along with four
other members of their closely allied group the Macheteros
(machete-wielders), who were based primarily on the island
nation.
The 11 other members of the FALN finally accepted the
conditions of the clemency a month later by expressing remorse (in
a move that was engineered by then Deputy Attorney General Eric
Holder). However, in a surprising move, Lopez refused the offer.
This was even after he had made two previous escape attempts (the
sentence added for the second attempt would have delayed his
immediate release).
Lopez had been sentenced to 70 years for seditious
conspiracy and a variety of weapons charges as well as the second
thwarted escape attempt (which included plans for the use of
violence).
However, he is now attempting to gain his freedom, and a
parole hearing is set for January 5th. It may be instructive to
understand more about who Oscar Lopez is, and why an early release
is not only an insult to the victims of the FALN, but an affront to
justice and quite literally an act of madness.
OSCAR LOPEZ HAD FIRST MET Carlos Torres in Chicago in
1972, and before long the two had forged a bond that led them to
become leaders of the fledgling Puerto Rican terrorist group, the
FALN. The first bombings began in 1974, and the group’s most noted
early action was the bombing of the historic Fraunces Tavern in
lower Manhattan in January of 1975. The lunchtime bombing killed
four diners and injured 60.
The bombings continued at a furious pace including targets
in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Newark and Miami. Attacks were
sometimes co-ordinated with the Macheteros, with that group setting
off bombs at various locations in Puerto
Rico.
In 1977, a warrant was issued for Oscar Lopez on charges
of dealing with and the possession and storage of explosives. That
same year, both Torres and Lopez were indicted in Chicago for the
receiving of 200 sticks of dynamite from Colorado and concealing
them at their Chicago apartment.
On April 4, 1980, a major break for authorities came when
11 FALN members were arrested in Evanston, Illinois, while
preparing to rob an armored truck. They included Torres and his
wife Marie, new FALN recruit Alfredo Mendez, and Ida Rodriguez, the
wife of Oscar Lopez. Carlos Torres later told an interviewer that
upon his arrest, “prison was not a deterrent to us.… I was angry
because I realized that I was going to be in jail for a very long
time.”
Documents discovered after the arrest led to a raid three
days later of a house in Milwaukee that was rented by Oscar Lopez
and Ida Rodriguez. The residence was loaded with bomb-making
material, and authorities thought that they had just missed
capturing Lopez. The next day, authorities searched an apartment in
Jersey City, N.J., that was rented by Carlos Torres and found even
more bomb-making material.
It should also be noted that bombings in the Chicago area
immediately ceased after the Evanston arrests. There had been 29
bombings and 10 people had been injured, some of them
grievously.
After the conviction of his ten compatriots in Chicago,
the remaining at-large members of the FALN began to reconstitute
under the leadership of Lopez. One of them was Alejandrina Torres,
the stepmother of Carlos Torres. In May of 1981, however, Lopez was
arrested after being stopped for making an illegal left-turn. The
next day, FBI agents discovered bomb-making material in a Chicago
apartment rented by Lopez.
At the opening of his trial, Lopez stated that, “this is
not a trial, it’s a kangaroo court.” FALN member Alfredo Mendez,
who had since started co-operating with the government, testified
at length about Lopez. Mendez stated that Lopez taught him how to
make a bomb using dynamite, convert a battery and a wrist watch
into timed bombing-detonation devices and how to make gun
silencers.
Mendez added that Lopez told him that “everybody in the
organization has to know how to make bombs… in case they have to
survive and keep the organization
alive.”
After his conviction, Lopez addressed Judge McMillen prior
to his sentencing. “I am an enemy of the United States government.”
Lopez also added, “I show respect for human beings but I don’t
think it is reciprocated.” Judge McMillen called Lopez “an
incorrigible law violator,” and then sentenced him to 55 years in
prison.
By 1983, the few at-large members began plotting to break
Lopez out of Leavenworth, including Edwin Cortes and Alejandrina
Torres. On March 8, the two were captured on FBI surveillance tape
at their rented Chicago apartment making bombs.
On March 19, the two traveled with a third unidentified
member to Wadsworth VA Hospital, near the Leavenworth prison. Lopez
had feigned illness, and was to be transferred there, and the three
terrorists would attempt to effect a rescue.
The FBI had been aware of the plot, and held Lopez at the
prison. The three others returned to Chicago, and Cortes, Torres
and Alberto Rodriguez (the latter two currently working to free
Lopez), would be arrested that June, after specific bombing targets
had been chosen.
But Lopez would not give up on his plan to escape from
prison. In 1985, he began plotting with a small group of other
individuals, including two members of “Prairie Fire,” a group with
direct ties to the Weather Underground. The plan included flying a
helicopter to the prison, and use that to effect Lopez’s
escape.
Lopez had made up a list of materials to be used in the
plot. It included grenades, rifles, plastic explosives, bulletproof
vests, blasting caps and armor-piercing rockets. The FBI had known
of the plot since the beginning, and made arrests in
1986.
At his trial in 1987, Lopez portrayed himself as a
“valiant freedom fighter,” but prosecutor Deborah Devaney argued
that Lopez and his co-defendants were “terrorists who operated
without conscience.” Lopez was sentenced to 15 more years in prison
— bringing the new total to 70 years.
Lopez continued to make unrepentant comments well into the
1990s. He told the AP in 1998 that he had no regrets. “The whole
thing of contrition, atonement, I have problems with that.” In
1995, Judge McMillen had told the Chicago Tribune that
pardoning terrorists would send out the wrong message and that the
FALN had “used weapons and bombs… they should serve out their
sentences.”
Besides the numerous felonies that Lopez and the other
members of the FALN were convicted of (which included numerous
weapons and bomb-making charges), all of them also shared one
underlying crime: seditious conspiracy. It is described in the U.S.
Code as to “conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force
the Government of the United States…”
In other words, a pure definition of terror. The FALN
would set off nearly 140 bombs over nine years, killing six and
injuring scores more. A police officer was also killed in Mexico
after a shootout with FALN members.
Their closely allied group, the Macheteros, would kill six
more. Their members have continued to foment violence over the
years, and some of them remain at large, including Victor Gerena,
who has been on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list for a record 26
years. Fellow Machetero Filiberto Ojeda-Rios, who is also suspected
of having direct ties to the FALN, died in a violent shootout in
2005. A third member of the group remains in prison.
And some of the former FALN members working to obtain
Lopez’s release who expressed “remorse” in the past in order to
obtain their own freedom now show none, including Carlos Torres and
Alberto Rodriguez. Another FALN member, bomb-maker William Morales,
escaped from custody in 1979 and is currently in Cuba.
As for Oscar Lopez, he is a dangerous terrorist as well as
a sociopath, and has never been known to express any regret or
remorse. He was a co-founder of a deadly terrorist group, who
constructed bombs (their weapon of choice) and trained others in
both how to build them and how to use them. He twice attempted to
escape from prison, and the latter attempt included plans of
violence and murder.
Lopez is currently scheduled for release from the Terre
Haute Federal Correctional Institute (in Indiana) in June of 2023.
Again, his parole hearing is set for January 5th before the U.S.
Parole Commission. If you wish to contact the commission, their
number is 301-492-5990.
