CUBAN Robert Ferro, arrested with an arsenal of more than 1,000 weapons in a house in Upland, California, claims to be a member of Alpha 66, a U.S.-based terrorist group with offices in Miami, with a long history of criminal actions against Cuba.

However, authorities have not yet pressed charges invoking anti-terrorism laws. Ferro is being charged only with arms trafficking. Neither have the leaders of Alpha 66 been questioned in relation to this spectacular capture.

Ferro, a retired member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, was accused in the early 90’s of running a paramilitary camp on a chicken farm in Pomona, California. He then bragged about being dedicated to "overthrowing" the Cuban Revolution. On that occasion, the authorities found five pounds of C-4, a potent military explosive.

The Alpha 66 member was then convicted, in 1992, for "possession of illegal explosives" and sentenced to two years in prison.

Now, at 61 years old, he was arrested after authorities raided his house and found hundreds of rifles, machine guns and pistols. It was then when Ferro told federal investigators that he belongs to the commando group Alpha 66, according to a judicial statement presented before a federal court by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms.

Ferro said that Alpha 66 paid for these weapons and other similar consignments, according to this judicial document.

His spouse, María Ferro, affirmed to the police that she knew nothing about her husband’s terrorist activities. She declared that she was aware of his political orientation "but I didn’t know about the other things he was involved in."

The authorities searched the location as part of an investigation concerning Frank Fidel Beltrán, 36, resident of La Verne, who was detained March 27 at a house in Rancho Cucamonga, owned by Ferro, after having shot at police officers.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Special Agent Supervisor of the Justice Department, Shirley Lesslak, found a wine cellar in the house converted into a weapons depository and firing range. The weapons were hidden in disguised panels in several rooms.

The arrest of Robert Ferro occurs while the case of mafia ringleader Santiago Alvarez and his partner Osvaldo Mitat is being heard by a Florida court; both were caught with a large quantity of hidden weapons, gas masks, munitions, grenades, and explosives along with a false Guatemalan passport last November. Luis Posada Carriles will testify in this trial behind closed doors, according to reports.

The San Bernardino County prosecutor has filed eight charges against Ferro, including possession of arms by a felon, possession of destructive substances, possession of a silencer, and possession of a deadly weapon.

For the Glendora Police, this was the largest weapons bust ever:

"We went in search of couple of weapons," said Detective Joe Rodríguez. "The quantity found was way beyond what anyone imagined."

The officials said that they found Uzis and AK-47s in the master bathroom. "The majority of the weapons were found fully loaded," Rodríguez told the LATimes, adding that the firing range in the basement had been recently used, "with silencers on the weapons so that the neighbors didn’t find out."

According to the California newspaper, Ferro, a Cuban immigrant, was accused in the early 60s of having used explosives to train a group of Mexicans to "invade" Cuba.

Created in 1961, Alpha 66 has participated in several of the so-called "autonomous operations" directed by the CIA from its Miami operations base JM/WAVE. The criminal activities of the group have included various assassination plans against the President of Cuba; pirate attacks on fishing vessels, and death threats against individuals linked to Cuba in Mexico, the United States, Ecuador, Brazil, Canada, and Puerto Rico. Miami police intelligence documents have shown for years that this group is "one of the most dangerous and active organizations" in Miami.

Since the death of their former leader Nazario Sargen, Alpha 66 has been headed by 66-year-old Ernesto Díaz Rodríguez. Trained by the CIA in the Dominican Republic, Díaz was captured in Pinar del Río on December 4, 1968, in a failed armed infiltration and was convicted for terrorist activities. Freed, he returned to the United States and hooked up with several well-known extremists such as Eusebio de Jesús Peñalver Mazorra, René Cruz Cruz and Mario Chanes de Armas, and began developing criminal plans. In 1999, he was involved, with this same gang, in a plan to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

On May 20, 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush invited to the White House 11 members of the Cuban American extreme right-wing of southern Florida. Among them was Ernesto Díaz Rodríguez; his partner Eusebio de Jesús Peñalver Mazorra who was arrested in California on December 12, 1995 with an arsenal as he participated in the preparation of a terrorist attack in Cuba; and Angel Francisco D'fana Serrano, another notorious terrorist.

In a letter to Alpha 66, dated June 2, 2005, the U.S. president thanked the anti-Cuba terrorist organization for their "support" and said that he "appreciated learning about" the ideas of the paramilitary group, according to one of their principal leaders.