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IN THE MIAMI KINGDOM OF IMPUNITY
Immigrant from Pinar del Río who
dares to arrest terrorists
BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD—Special for Granma International—
IN
Miami, where FBI and immigration authorities
vacillate in response to open threats by the capos
of the terrorist mafia, a 43-year-old Cuban
immigrant woman who heads the regional office of the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
(ATF), a federal police agency, has dared to lock up
ringleader Santiago Alvarez, Luis Posada Carriles’
right-hand man.
While the most notorious international terrorist in
the hemisphere is being protected by the Bush
Administration as he awaits his release, Julie
Torres, the first Hispanic woman to head such an
important ATF office, arrested Santiago Alavarez and
his accomplice Osvaldo Mitat for possession of
terrorist weapons.
In
an article titled “Bullets and bad guys: ATF's top
Miami agent has seen it all,” by Jay Weaver, the
Miami Herald recently celebrated not the arrest
of Alvarez, but the more-than-exceptional event of
seeing a “child of working-class Cuban exiles”
occupy the ATF’s highest post in Miami, in charge of
South Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin
Islands.
Torres was born in Pinar del Río province in 1962,
the article says – without mentioning in what city –
and left Cuba in 1968 when an uncle arranged for her
family to emigrate.
“Those early immigrant years were rough,” the
article says, explaining that her mother, Rosa,
worked in a curtain factory in Hialeah and her
father, José, parked cars at a hotel and operated a
business until “his years of drinking and abusive
behavior broke up the marriage.”
Julie Torres enlisted in the Army in 1982.
“She
eventually joined the Army's Criminal Investigation
Command, which probes military crimes and protects
senior officers,” the article says. In Panama during
the U.S. invasion, “Torres said she worked with a
host of federal agencies: FBI, DEA, ATF and
Customs.” She was assigned to her current post in
April 2004.
FORMER BATISTA OFFICIAL NOW A “HUMAN RIGHTS
ACTIVIST”
That
is how another feat by Torres is described in three
short lines in the Miami Herald article. Here
is the complete story.
In
August 2004, she arrested Raúl Gómez DeMolina, a
former Batista official who in Miami turned into a
“human rights activist.” Actually, Gómez dedicated
himself to arms trafficking between Florida and ...
Venezuela.
According to the official version, the final
destination of the shipments sent by the criminal
were “guerrilla groups and paramilitaries in
Colombia,” according to the best offer.
When
Gómez was detained for the first time, during three
days in February of that year in Maracaibo,
Venezuela, for his alleged association with the
arrival from Miami of a container of 60,000
cartridges, officials noted his characteristics as
“Cuban-American, anti-Chávez,” adding, “shooting
instructor, facilities for purchasing arms in the
United States, contact with weapons’ stores,
collects arms.”
The
following August, the 69-year-old “anti-Castro
militant” was arrested together with a Colombian
buddy, Rafael Samper, 40; a Venezuelan arms dealer,
Edgar Semprun, 53; another Venezuelan, Antonio
Tarrab, 41; and Bilmer Paz, 29, and Miguel Palacio,
both from Hialeah.
Torres’ investigators found 55 firearms in a
warehouse, including 19 AK-47s and nine pistols, as
well as 206,000 military-type rounds, five pounds of
explosives and... combat boots. Later searches of
other sites led officials to confiscate a total of
more than 700,000 projectiles and 200-plus weapons.
In
Cuba, Gómez DeMolina was arrested in 1960 for
terrorist activities and was sentenced to eight
years in prison.
In
March 1989, he left for the United States, where he
worked as a weapons instructor and security guard,
and at the time of his arrest, he was working for
Miami Security Supply, a weapons store with a
federal license.
And
– what a coincidence – apparently, it was the same
store at which Santiago Alvarez bought his AK-47.
In
the English translation of its article, El Nuevo
Herald censored the paragraph explaining that it
was the regional head of the ATF who had arrested
Santiago Alvarez.
The
Spanish-language Herald’s attitude reflects
that of the local FBI, which maintains an attitude
of complicity with the terrorist Cuban-American
ringleaders, to the point of systematically ignoring
their criminal activities.
That
duplicity is even more grotesquely manifest since
Luis Posada Carriles entered the United States, when
he arrived aboard the Santrina shrimping
boat, together several accomplices.
Informed of that extremely illegal act, what the law
calls for in such a case, and of the terrorist
record of the assassin, torturer and terrorist,
Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Michael S. Clemens,
head of the FBI in Miami, apparently had no
authority to locate, arrest or charge the terrorists
who were around him.
Some
years ago, the FBI knew about but preferred to
ignore that Santiago Alvarez himself was supporting
– always with CANF money – Luis Posada Carriles,
Pedro Remón, Gaspar Jiménez, and Guillermo Novo
Sampoll, who were able to peacefully make their
purchases of C-4 explosives with the purpose of
blowing up the University of Panama amphitheater
where the Cuban president was going to speak.
That
is also how Héctor Pesquera, the former head of the
FBI in Miami, and his troops dedicated themselves to
pursuing a group of Cuban anti-terrorist fighters
who had infiltrated the terrorist circles of Miami,
while 14 of the 19 terrorists who caused the Twin
Towers disaster were training not far from their
offices. |
