Hartford: Blunted Machetes

Police sharpshooters patrolled rooftops as 13 suspected members of the Macheteros, a Puerto Rican terrorist group, were brought to the U.S. District Court in Hartford last week on charges of robbing $7 million from a Connecticut Wells Fargo depot in 1983. The precaution was prompted by the violent history of the group. In Puerto Rico, the Macheteros (machete wielders) blew up nine aircraft in 1981, and authorities say they staged a 1979 attack on a U.S. Navy bus that killed two sailors. %

More than 200 FBI agents were involved in raids on the group in Puerto Rico and Boston just before Labor Day. Those captured included Filiberto Inocencio Ojeda-Rios, 52, the suspected mastermind of the Hartford robbery. But the FBI dragnet failed to find Victor Manuel Gerena, 27, a former wrestler accused of leading the robbery. Behind Gerena and the Macheteros, says the FBI, is Fidel Castro. The agency believes that Gerena fled to Cuba with much of the Wells Fargo booty. Ojenda-Rios is also thought to have worked closely with Cuba's intelligence agency: in San Juan, his nickname is G-2 Cubano.