Virgilio Paz Romero

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Virgilio Paz Romero is an anti-Castro Cuban exile, involved in various terrorist acts. He has been accused of taking part in Operation Condor, carrying on Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier's murder in Washington, D.C. in 1976, and having assisted to Bernardo Leighton's assassination attempt.

According to the National Security Archive, Virgilio Paz met DINA agent Michael Townley and Italian terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie in Madrid, in 1975, to prepare, with the help of Francisco Franco's secret police, the murder of Christian Democrat Bernardo Leighton. Leighton and his wife were severely injured on October 5, 1976, in Rome [1].

On an undated letter to Augusto Pinochet, Michael Townley advised him that Virgilio Paz Romero was taking photographs of British internment camps in Northern Ireland in 1975 as a DINA assignment. The photographs were to be used by the Chilean government at the United Nations in New York to discredit the United Kingdom and accuse them of human rights violations. But they arrived too late to be used, and were finally published in El Mercurio ^[1].

Virgilio Paz was one of the five anti-Castro Cuban exiles that Michael Townley has confessed hiring to carry out Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier's assassination in Washington, D.C. in 1976. According to various sources, including the "Miami Herald", one meeting where anti-Castro Luis Posada Carriles was present decided on both Letelier's assassination and Cubana Flight 455's bombing. According to Jean-Guy Allard, during this meeting between CORU leadership, including Luis Posada Carriles & Orlando Bosch, and Michael Townley, those elected to booby-trap Orlando Letelier's car would have been José Dionisio "Bloodbath" Suárez, Virgilio Paz Romero, Alvin Ross Díaz and brothers Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll [2][3].