Orlando Bosch Ávila

He was born on August 18, 1926. His terrorist record against Cuba over more than 40 years compares to no one. From the very first months of 1959 he began conspiring against the Revolution. Bosch opposed the sentences condemning, as war criminals, the pilots that during the war of liberation had bombarded numerous cities and caused thousands of civil victims.

By the middle of 1960, period during which Bosch falsely claimed having had a long and outstanding participation as leader of an insurgent band in the Escambray mountains that included murderers such as Sinesio Walsh and Porfirio Ramirez, he left the camps and went to Miami, allegedly, to collect money and weapons, but he never returned to Cuba.

According to his own memoirs, published in Miami in 1999 under the title, "40 years fighting, 40 years with a reason," in August of 1960 he was elected as the representative of the organization Insurrection Movement of Revolutionary Recovery (MIRR).

In 1961 he unsuccessfully tried to organize several plans to infiltrate into Cuba and encourage criminal acts in the island. With the support of the CIA, Bosch created three training camps in Florida to train groups to be infiltrated into Cuba.

Starting 1963 he was involved in the organization of dozens of terrorist air attacks against economic objectives in the country resulting in the death or wounding of innocent people, and causing considerable damage to the economy.

Orlando Bosch boasts about his participation in these actions which are presented as achievements of his fight against the Revolution, and had the consent of the CIA. Bill Johnson, quoted by the press in Miami as a former CIA pilot, has acknowledged having been hired by Bosch to fly over the island to carry out air attacks against Cuban sugar mills.

January 17, 1965, Bosch credited himself for having launched napalm and live phosphorus bombs on the Niagara sugar mill in the Pinar del Rio province. He made the following statement to the press in Miami: "If we had the necessary resources, Cuba would burn in flames from one end to the other."

June 11, 1965, the Miami News published an article on the terrorist actions Orlando Bosch Avila – with the support of the MIRR— had been carrying out for the last three years from the United States. The journalist stated that this terrorist, and five of his men, had been arrested in Zellwood, Orlando and Tampa, by local authorities because they were trying to export, without the due permit, 18 air bombs from the U.S. territory.

The above-mentioned facts bear witness to the true political will of the U.S. authorities regarding terrorist attacks against Cuba: flying from Miami to carry air attacks against Cuba was not considered a crime, nor was the fact that they were dropping bombs against a country that was not at war with the United States. However, to export bombs without permission constituted sufficient reason to arrest them. The charges were typified from then on as a violation of a federal law that bans the export of war equipment without a license.

There was ample proof as well that the detainees’ planned to launch an air attack against the oil refinery in Havana. Two 50-caliber machine guns, 32 hand machine guns, 230 grenades and 300 pounds of C-4 explosives was seized by the US authorities. But, apparently, that was not a crime either.

During the legal process, Orlando Bosch, flagrantly challenging the U.S. authorities, declared to the local press that the Cuban vessel "Aracelio Iglesias" had been sabotaged by members of his organization when she passed the Panama Canal, causing severe damage valued in 145,000 dollars. The whole process ended up with a 7,000 dollar bail for the whole group, which they refused to pay. By then, Orlando Bosch had already been tried in Miami courts on two similar charges.

In October 1965, on orders of Orlando Bosch, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, a bomb was placed in the helm of the Spanish tourist vessel "Satrustegui", carrying 101 passengers and 109 crew members. Bosch "officially" declared war on Spain and Great Britain for maintaining commercial relations with Cuba.

That same month Bosch was arrested in Hartford, Connecticut, for extortion against Cuban business people who refused to contribute financially to his terrorist acts against Cuba.

September 30, 1966, airplanes at the service of Bosch threw explosives over Punta Pastelillo and Puerto Tarafa in Camagüey, and on November 15 over the "Cepero Bonilla" chemical and electric plant in Matanzas.

In 1967 MIRR carried out other actions against Cuba and became the terrorist organization Cuban Power, with Bosch as its leader. During 1968 that organization carried out 82 terrorist acts, (bombings and assassinations) the majority of them inside the United States against Cuban and U.S. interests, and of third countries with some kind of relationship with the island.

January 21, 1968.- Followers of Bosch dynamited a B-25 airplane at the Miami international airport carrying medicines for Cuba . Due to a delay in its departure the C-4 explosive blew up when the craft was still on the runway causing damage only to the wing, not to any human.

The terrorist group Cuban Power had put a bomb inside a postal valise that exploded January 8, 1968 in the warehouses of the Cuban Ministry of Communications and wounded three mail workers.

In February of the same year a company in Miami that sent packages of medicines to Cuba was the target of a bombing by Poder Cubano.

On June 7, the same terrorist band used the written press in Miami to threaten all the agencies sending packages of medicines to Cuba. In an ultimatum they declared the war on all companies involved in these shipments, as well as against the aircraft and ships that transported them.

They also threatened the governments of Mexico, Spain and Great Britain. They even acknowledged having sabotaged, on May 5 that year, the ship "Granwood Coma" berthed 20 miles southeast of Key West.

On May 30, 1968, the Japanese merchant ship "Asaka Maru" was dynamited in Tampa.

On July 11 another Japanese ship, the "Mikagesan Maru", was sabotaged, because she carried goods to Cuba, from Texas.

The English ship the “Lancastrian Prince” was also the target of a terrorist act, while the Canadian textile company Morton Textile Company of Montreal, Canada suffered serious damage to its merchandise destined to the Cuban market. Incendiary explosives were placed in several textile bundles and, as they were being unloaded from the Cuban ship “Rio Damuji” at the Nuevitas port in Camaguey, these were activated starting a fire.

On August 3, the British merchant ship “Caribbean Venture,”in route from Newcastle, England, was dynamited in the port of Miami.

Prior to this, on February 8, the Miami residence of Mr. Francis Pelly, the British consul, had been attacked with explosives, destroying two cars in the residential neighborhood of Coral Gables.

From April 22 and until that date, dozens of explosions took place in of New York City, all accredited to Cuban Power under the leadership of Bosch; six others in Los Angeles, and two in Chicago. Bombs were also placed at the Mexican consul in Miami, at a Spanish tourist agency in Miami, and in numerous businesses of Cuban immigrants.

September 13, 1968, the Spanish freighter “Coromoto” was the target of a dynamite attack in San Juan, Puerto Rico, by terrorists from Poder Cubano. Three days later, the September 16, the Polish ship “Polianica,” anchored at the Dodge Island port, received the impact of a 57 millimeter cannon projectile shot by terrorists in the service of Bosch causing the vessel light damage. This incident happened very near a U.S. coast guard patrol. This terrorist band took credit for that terrorist attack counting it as its 36th.

In November 1968, a grand jury declared Bosch guilty of several terrorist acts against merchant ships, of having signed threatening notes delivered to the press, as well as having participated in 40 terrorist acts carried out in the Miami Dade County that year. Orlando Bosch was sentenced to 18 years in prison under five different charges, but was released on December 15, 1972 after spending hardly four years in prison.

Bosch was still on parole when he reinitiated his terrorist activities, though he had never ceased controlling them from jail. In doing so, he violated the supposed limitations on his parole and the legal restrictions that had been placed on him.

To avoid control, he changed the name of his terrorist band. It would no longer be the MIRR or Cuban Power; the organization would from now on be called Cuban Action, and would from then on get the credit for all terrorist actions. The terrorists under his command, however, were to remain the same, while enjoying from the possibility of acting with total freedom and tolerance from local authorities. Later the organization reached a tacit agreement with the authorities: they would be allowed to carry out terrorist acts outside the U.S. and organize similar acts against Cuban organizations and the Cuban people elsewhere.

Bosch left Miami illegally in June 1974 to solicit the support of the military junta in Chile, which had been in power since the bloody fascist coup d'etat of September 11, 1973. In Chile, he became involved in all sorts of criminal acts. These included:

• The murder in Argentina in 1974 of the former commander of the Chilean armed forces, General Carlos Prats and his wife.

• From January 1974 to November 1975, he organized 14 terrorist acts against different Cuban diplomatic missions and employees, as well as an attack against the Cuban ambassador in Argentina , Emilio Aragones, and the placement of a bomb at a tourism agency (Empresa Venezolana de Turismo) in Venezuela.

• In October 1975, gun fire was opened against Bernardo Leighton, the vice president of the Chilean Christian Democratic Party in exile, and his wife while in Rome.

• In September 1976, the former Chilean chancellor, Orlando Letelier and his assistant Ron Moffitt were murdered in Washington DC by Guillermo Novo Sampoll, the terrorist arrested in Panama.

The climate of terror and intolerance reached in Miami was out of proportion; not even the local authorities could control such a situation.

In a Senate hearing in May 1976, some representatives of the Public Security Department of Florida –particularly the Bureau of Criminal Organizations, Terrorism and Security– appeared before the subcommittee to investigate the implementation of the Internal Security Act. It was acknowledged there that in Miami the prevailing climate was one of terror could be associated to Bosch, as well as a crime wave that occurred in previous years.

Those officials said: “... and, particularly, after the invasion in the Bay of Pigs, ‘hundreds of organizations, of a social and political nature, have been created among Cubans in the Dade County. Some of their militants have carried out their militancy to the point of being involved in terrorist acts both in the United States and else where...”

“Some of these groups of Cubans, allegedly involved in terrorist acts against the Cuban government, are nothing but criminals that are nourished by the funds the Cuban public raises.”

And, they went on to say, “The Public Security Department of Dade County has the responsibility of investigating, arresting and following up on all acts that violate the current laws against crimes that could be carried out within our jurisdiction, whether these violations are in favor or against Castro, or whether they relate to any other political ideas...”

Apparently this “obligation” to fight terrorist acts against Cuba is only a dead letter in U.S. law.

Journalist Dick Russell wrote a very revealing article in the New Times on October 29, 1976, entitled: “The Little Havana’s Reign of Terror.” The story describes Cuban terrorists of those days in their frenetic campaign and depicts some of its most outstanding exponents.

The article pointed to the fact that “with more than 100 bombings in the last 18 months and an average of an assassination a week since last April, Miami's 450,000 Cuban-emigré community is in the throes of civil war.”

The article also pointed out that CIA machinations were tangible. It mentioned that at the beginning of the year, when the state of terror began to heat up in Miami, the local police sent a request to CIA headquarters requesting them to send a list with the names of Cubans in exile that had been trained in making bombs. Also, if possible, they requested another list with all C-4 and C-3 plastic explosives left when the CIA closed its school. The answer to that request has not yet been received.