La Penca bombing

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The La Penca bombing was a terrorist attack that occorred in Nicaragua during the early days of the Civil War in Nicaragua in 1984.

The bombing was carried out (in similar fashion to the July 20 Plot) using a suitcase bomb planted to kill revolutionary Edén Pastora during a private meeting with several journalists.the attempt only wounded Pastora but killed three journalists and permanently injured several others. A Miami Herald investigative report pointed that the person who planted the bomb was a member of a pro-Sandinista Argentine group named Vital Roberto Gaguine. Supposedly he was killed in a 1989 attack on an Argentine military base. The reports states that Gaguine was posing as a journalist with the stolen passport of a Dane named Per Anker Hansen at la Penca at the time of the bombing. The association between the perpetrator and the FSLN led the Herald reporter, Juan Tamayo, to conclude that the Sandinistas were solely responsible.

Other sources indicates that the bomb was planted by an individual named "Tony" whose reale name was "Amac Galil."

The bombing led to an investigation by the Christic Institute, set against the backdrop of public hearings on the Iran-Contra Affair. The Institute filed a lawsuit against several individuals, many of them reputed illegal drug dealers and mercenaries, whom it is alleged were engaged in trafficking and terrorism on behalf of the U.S. government through several CIA operatives. Part of this campaign involved the illegal shipment of arms by airplane, for whom the CIA enlisted known traffickers in illegal drugs —notably cocaine and marijuana. Arms provided by sources within the U.S. government intended for the Contras were shipped on the return flights of cocaine shipments. The final investigation report named John F. Hull, identified as a CIA associate who had properties in Nicaragua and Costa Rica ostensibly used as Contra supply bases, and Felipe Vidal, a Cuban-American contra figure, as planners of the assassination attempt against Pastora.The U.S gouvernment has refused to un-classify documents related to the case.

The United States government under Ronald Reagan had disliked the resurgence of Leftist governments in Latin America, regardless of their democratic popularity. In Nicaragua, the United States had chosen to support the rebel Contras and used its connections to U.S. based right-wing expatriate Cuban militant groups to help them in their anti-Sandinista campaign.

Besides the violations of laws that made the sale of arms to Iran illegal, the Iran Contra affair suggested a connection between the Central Intelligence Agency and the illegal drugs trade.

[edit] Sources

• http://www.skepticfiles.org/socialis/cia_murd.htm
• THE MIAMI HERALD, 1/6/90, "Cost Rican Prosecutor Links Two Americans to Fatal Bombing," by John McPhaul, p 19A;
• PROPAGANDA REVIEW, Winter 1990, "La Penca Cover-up Continues," by Johan Carlisle, pp 40-41.