[PEN-L:2706] Re: Lamont and Spencer Freed.

[Sam Pawlett <epawlett@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I forgot to add that  the Paz brothers and Maria Marchi confessed under
torture thus invalidating their confessions under international law.

SP

Sam Pawlett wrote:

> Christine Lamont, 39, of Vancouver B.C. and David Spencer, 35, of
> Moncton N.B. were given full parole yesterday by the Canadian prison
> authorities on the condition that they not associate with groups or
> individuals who espouse violence as a means to social revolution. They
> had served a little over 10 years of the life sentences they were given
> in Brazil for the kidnapping of supermarket magnate Alberto Dinz.They
> were released a little over a month after returning to Canada under a
> new prisoner exchange treaty signed by the Canadian and Brazilian
> governments. The kidnapping was a Chilean MIR operation directed at
> raising funds for the FMLN for their 1989 country wide offensive. Later,
> Tomas Borge's interior ministry was implicated when an FMLN weapons
> cache was discovered in Managua in 1992 that contained false I.D.'s for
> Lamont and Spencer. There is some speculation that the operation was
> under the direction of Borge's interior ministry as was the Argentinian
> EPR operation that elimated Somoza in Asuncion, Paraguay.  The
> kidnapping operation was a disaster since it occurred during the 89
> Brazilian election campaign. Predictably, the kidnappers were painted as
> PT members with one of the accused put on Globo TV with a PT T-shirt on.
> The Brazilian right got a lot of political capital out of this. Lula
> narrowly lost the election to Collor who was later impeached for
> corruption( a friend of a friend's father prosecuted him).
>    The others implicated in the kidnapping were; Chilean Miristas Maria
> Marchi, engineer, Ulises Gallardo, sociologist, Hector Tapia, mechanic,
> Pedro Lembach, economics professor, Sergio Olivares, electrician,
> Brazilian Raimundo Freire, and Argentinian EPR leaders Humberto and
> Horacio Paz. I do not know what has happened with these revolutionaries
> except that there was a lot of talk of sending them back to their home
> countries. In an interview in the Jan 9/97 edition of the Chilean
> journal Punto Final, Chilean MIR leader Roberto Moreno claimed that the
> operation was nicknamed 'Carmelo' and was aimed at securing $US30
> million for the Salvadorean FPL. Moreno also had this to say: " Fue un
> grave error politico y etico. La idea del secuestro es una infiltarcion
> de la mentalidad capitalista en la logica revolutionaria: se coloca un
> precio y se cobra por la mercancia. Es el tipo de error en que existe el
> mayor vicio ideologico, en toda la histroia de la guerilla
> latinoamerica....Justo en el momento en que la Izquierda Brasilena tenia
> las mayores posibilidades de victoria. Nuestra accion perjudico
> gravemente esa perspectiva y afecto no solo a la Izquierda Brasilena
> sino a toda la Izquierda latinoamerica." I hope Lamont and Spencer write
> about their experiences and continue their commitment to social change
> in L.A. Their experience and dedication is badly needed in the movement
> here.
>
> Sam Pawlett