SANDINISTAS ATTRACT A WHO'S WHO OF TERRORISTS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706620003-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 13, 2011
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: March 3, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
I Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706620003-1
ARTICLE A'
ON PAGE
MIAMI HERALD
3 Marcn 1985
Around the Americas
Sandinistas attract a Who's
Who of terrorists
By JUAN O. TAMAYO
Herald Stall writer
MANAGUA, Nicaragua - He is
a 5-foot-11, gray-eyed surgeon,
treating children in a Managua
slum. She is a petite journalist,
writing for a Paris magazine. Both
are fugitives, wanted in their
native Italy for leading left-wing
guerrilla gangs.
Two West Germans linked to
battalion.
guerrilla, widow of the Argentine
rebel who led the commando team
e of a
ence unit. The other
commands an artile
Army. One is in char
Managua after the 1979 Sandinista Sandinistas- have named a geother-
revolution, seeking safe haven and mal power plant after Arguello.
it
left-wing extremists from Europe for hostages . seized by another
and Latin America who came to group of PFLP hijackers. The
El
in Paraguay, is dating a ranking hijack an Israeli jetliner from
Nicaraguan official trained as a Amsterdam to New York on Sept.
guerrilla by the PLO in Lebanon in 6, 1970. Israeli security agents
the early 1970s. killed Arguello and captured
The are but a few of the Khaled who was later exchanged
that assassinated former Nicara- most notorious terrorist, Leila
"an President Anastasio Somoza Khaled in a botched attempt to
`It's a lie,' Defense
Minister Humberto
Ortega says of
reports that
Nicaragua harbors
leftist fugitives from
around the world.
`We do not require
that type of support
to defend our
principles.'
The PLO now has a fully
accredited embassy in Managua.
And the Sandinista Front has
"fraternal" relations with leftist
groups from Italy, West Germany,
Spain's Basque region, Argentina,
Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay, Peru,
Colombia, Libya, El Salvador,
Honduras, Guatemala and Costa
Rica.
The Italian government on Feb.
8 gave the Sandinistas a list of 22
was at the PFLP camps that the
-gent once based in Nicaragua said Minister Rene Vivas. He is now.
At least 150 Sandinistas were dating an Argentine Montonero
trained in the 1970s in Lebanon guerrilla, the widow of Julio
camps run by the P^rmlar Front Alfredo Irurzun, head of the
for the Liberation of Palesttne the Montonero team that assassinated
PLO faction most committed to Somoza in Paraguay in September
terrorism in Europe and the 1980, in what the killers called a
dle show of "revolutionary solidarity"
Veteran Sandinistas say that it with Nicaragua.
the Israeli state in 1948. Yet another Sandinista trained
signed a pact with the Palestine
.Liberation Organization to train
Nicaraguan guerrillas in Lebanon.
Somoza was a steadfast supporter
.,f icrePL- and Nicaragua was one
It is the same kind of revolution-
ary "networking" - leftist mili-
tants call it "internationalism" -
that benefitted the Sandinistas
during their long guerrilla struggle
to topple Somoza.
in the late 1960s, the Sandinistas
y
a chance to prove their solidar
with the Nicaraguan government.
Nicaraguans Gfirst ermans met from uropean
the
leftists
Baader-Meinhof Gang and its
spin-offs; Italians from the Red
Brigades and other radical groups
- and began establishing the
close personal relationships that
persist today .
The European leftists believe
that the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the
Quebrada del Yuro run through
their countries, too," said one
Sandinista official, referring to a
key guerrilla supply line in the
Vietnam War and the Bolivian
gully where famed guerrilla chief
Ernesto "Che" Guevara was killed
in 1967.
One PLO-trained Sandinista. Pa-
tricio Arguello, joined the PFLP's.
Another PLO-trained Nicara-
guan was Communications Minis-
ter Enrique Schmidt, killed in
combat with anti-Sandinista guer-
rillas -last November. Schmidt's
widow,- a West German citizen
born in the Basque region of
Spain, now works for the Sandi-
nista Front's Department of Politi-
cal Education. Health Ministry
workers say she lectured them last
year on.the ideology of the Basque and Liberty guerrilla
group, known as ETA, fighting for
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706620003-1
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706620003-1
= a.
Italian leftists believed to be living
in Nicaragua - about half of them
wanted fugitives, the rest de-
scribed only as "extremists." The
Foreign Ministry said it knew
nothing about the Italians but
would investigate.
Topping the list, obtained by
The Herald, is Guglielmo Gugliel-
mi, 39, a one-time Rome surgeon
facing five arrest warrants for
crimes between 1979 and 1983
ranging from kidnapping to illegal
weapons possessions to "participa-
tion in armed gangs."
last month that five Brigadisti are Costa Rican Justice Ministry
now serving as officers in the officials say Jimenez, still await-
Sandinista army. "That's a lie," ing trial, has confessed that a
Defense Minister Humberto Orte- Managua-based group of ETA
ga said last week. "We do not rebels planned Pastora's assassina-
require that type of support to tion, without authorization from
defend our principles and our the Sandinistas, but as a sign of
flags." "revolutionary solidarity."
Sandinista government sources Since the revolution triumphed,
said two West Germans who have Nicaragua has also been visited for
bragged of having been part of the varying periods by a string of
Baader-Meinhof Gang are now leftist militants from Europe and
serving in the army - one as a Latin America, many of them
captain in an artillery unit sta- simple political exiles, some of
tioned at the Montelimar base them well-known guerrilla lead-
southwest of Managua and the ers.
other attached to a military coun-
terintelligence unit. ' Mario Firmenich, head of Argen-
A West German known only as tina's Montoneros, traveled legally
"Fitz" has told friends there is a through Nicaragua - once staving
warrant for his arrest in Germany. several days in the home of
"Fitz," described as an anarchist, Interior Minister Tomas Borge -
fought in the Sandinista revolution as well as Mexico and Costa Rica
and later worked as an administra- before the Buenos Aires govern-
tor at the government-owned Julio ment put out a warrant for his
Buitrago sugar mill. arrest. He was detained in Brazil
Also living in Nicaragua is Peter last year and extradited to Argen-
Paul Zahl, a well-known West tina.
German writer with former links Two Baader-Meinhof gang
to Baader-Meinhof who spent four members visited Nicaragua in
years son for the attempted 1980 to express their support for
murder of prison
a a policeman in Cologne, the Sandinistas and explain the
Germany. Friends said Zahl, who reasons for their own struggle.
not wanted d for any other
up a They sought out three foreign
crimes, group in Bluefields for the port's setting West t journalists living in Managua and
Indian blacks. tnfor the granted them interviews, one of
dan baNicaraguan government officials the reporters said.
said a handful of Basque ETA
guerrillas also lived in Managua And Lauro A7zolini, 41, a Red
until 1983, when Spanish Prime Brigades founder sentenced in
Minister Felipe Gonzalez, a strong absentia to 30 years in prison for
kidna
Sandinista 1978
o to the Manag apgov~ernmen Sest eed Ithe t lian Prime M n stersAldo'Mo of
eral ETA members moved to visited Nicaragua in early 1980
the officials encet to e xto ho a p ain Moro's news slaying.
went neighboring Venezuela, Rica
Journalists invited to the confer-
said.
Gregorio Jimenez, 32, an ETA ence said the Sandinistas blocked
militant wanted by the Spanish it.
in Azzolini, alleged to have been
Costa Rica charges,
woase arrest do in terrorism
the man who killed Moro with a and charged with September to assassinate Eden Pasto- close range blast from a Czecho-
Slovak-made Skorpion machine , of g
ra
uerril aefg group anbased Si nd Costa pistol, was later captured in Italy
and is in prison.
Rica?
merit accuseore than 200 wanted harboring m Italian militants.
The woman journalist in Maria-
gun declined comment when two Italian journalists tried to inter=
Brigades France in 1993 of
view
view her last month. "I am not
who you think I am," she said. Her name is known but omitted here because of the absence of proof
that the journalist and the fugitive
are the same. Roberto Sandalo, 27, a Red
defector living in Kenya, told Italy's Oggi news magazine
international terrorism records
show that Guglielmi, now work-
ing at a government-run children's
clinic in the Managua slum of
Ciudad Sandino, was a top leader
of the Unita Combattente Comu-
nisti, a guerrilla band that spun off
from the Red Brigades in the late
1970s. He was convicted in absen-
tia last June of kidnapping and
sentenced to 22 years in prison.
Also on the list is a 33-year-old
Milan sociologist wanted on a
warrant charging her with "orga-
nizing and leading armed gangs in
Italy and abroad." An Italian
woman with the same name as the
fugitive is a journalist accredited
in Managua as correspondent for a
Paris-based magazine that special-
izes in Third World issues.
The fugitive is also described in
the international records as a
member of a group that helped
Guglielmi and three other Italian
fugitives move from Paris to
Nicaragua after the Italian govern-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706620003-1