Orlando Bosch Avila

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Orlando Bosch Ávila (born August 18, 1926 in Potrerillo , Las Villas , Cuba ; † April 27, 2011 in Miami ) was a Cuban pediatrician and underground fighter, first against the regime of Fulgencio Batista , then against that of Fidel Castro . From 1960 he carried out terrorist attacks as a CIA agent and was a representative of Cuban exile opponents of Castro in Miami.

Life

Bosch studied medicine at the University of Havana from 1946 and, as chairman of the student council of the medical faculty, met Fidel Castro, who was at the same time a student representative of the law faculty. In 1948 he won the election for secretary of the student union Federación Estudiantil Universitaria (FEU) against the incumbent, Alfredo Guevara - who became internationally known after 1959 as responsible for the Cuban film sector. After completing his doctorate in 1953, he first completed a medical internship in Toledo, Ohio (USA) and later worked as a pediatrician in the Cuban province of Las Villas . In April 1955 he was the first Cuban doctor to introduce the polio vaccination.

From mid-1957, he took part in an underground cell of the rebel organization Movement of July 26 (M-26-7) in his home region in the fight against the rule of Fulgencio Batista , who had ruled Cuba since his military coup in 1952. Part of the strategy was the planting of bombs, in which Bosch was also directly involved. When the coordinator of the M-26-7 for Las Villas, Enrique Oltuski , moved to the government as communications minister at the beginning of 1959 after Batista had fled, Bosch took over the position of governor of the province until mid-1959 as the previous deputy. After that of Fidel Castro While the forces of the Cuban Revolution began to set up an authoritarian system rather than a liberal-democratic system, as had been hoped, Bosch, like numerous other former comrades-in-arms in the fight against Batista, turned away from Castro with disappointment. According to his own statement, a key experience was an encounter with Ernesto "Che" Guevara , when he had two prisoners suspected of being spies in Batista's service shot after he had rejected Bosch's objection that the men should first be tried. Bosch called on Castro personally, described his rejection of the mass shootings and confiscations and announced his resignation. However, instead of resuming his previous work as a pediatrician as announced to Castro, he immediately procured weapons from the arsenal of the armed forces in Santa Clara with the authority of his governor's office . Together with former officers of the rebel army, he founded the "Insurrection Movement for the Recovery of the Revolution" (Movimiento Insurreccional de Recuperación Revolucionaria - MIRR), which fought from the Escambray Mountains against the Castro rule from August 1960 .

Since he was threatened with execution because of his conspiratorial activities, he left Cuba in July 1960 and became an agent of the MIRR in Miami / Florida in the USA, where the center of the Cuban exile opponents of Castro was formed. Bosch organized financial and logistical support, as well as air strikes with rented small aircraft and acts of sabotage. The MIRR was soon defeated because the supply of supplies could not be guaranteed and the area of ​​operations was still familiar to former combatants from the anti-Batista guerrillas, who were now fighting on the other side. The four leaders were executed as early as October 1960, 150 others were sentenced to up to 30 years in prison. Most of the MIRR fighters who escaped joined another resistance group in Escambray. However, among the Cubans in exile, from whom Bosch continued to seek support, the CIA-prepared invasion of the Bay of Pigs was favored as the more promising one at this point .

In 1968 Bosch founded the organization “Poder Cubano” (Cuban Power), which was suspected of numerous violent crimes such as bomb attacks in various countries. Orlando Bosch was arrested in the United States and sentenced to ten years in prison on November 15, 1968 in Florida for shooting a Polish freighter with a grenade launcher.

He was paroled in 1972 and left the United States in 1974 in violation of his parole terms. In 1974, in a newspaper interview, he declared himself to be the leader of the militant resistance struggle against Fidel Castro. For the new group he led, "Acción Cubana", he boasted several bomb attacks on Cuban consulates in Latin American countries and announced an escalation of the international struggle against the Cuban government and its representatives. In 1976, Bosch's group joined forces with other Cuban exile groups to form the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU), which he led. In a failed CORU operation to kidnap the Cuban ambassador to Mexico, one of his companions was shot dead, according to FBI documents that have since been released. According to CIA documents from 1976, which have since been released, CORU was involved in the assassination attempt on the former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier .

Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles were tried in Venezuela , first in a military and then in a civil court, on suspicion of being involved in the Cubana airliner bombing on October 6, 1976, in which 73 people died . Both trials ended with acquittal, so that he was released in 1987 after almost eleven years in custody. In 1988 he entered the USA. There he was held in custody for 3 months because of the violation of the 1974 probation requirements. After his release on May 17, 1988, he was taken into deportation detention by the immigration authorities because he had never acquired a permanent residence permit or obtained US citizenship. His application for political asylum, which was then made, was rejected. After the US rejected a Cuban extradition application, around 30 states declared that they would not accept Bosch due to its terrorist past, on which the US authorities also relied when rejecting the asylum application. The future governor of Florida, Jeb Bush , initiated negotiations between the Cuban congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and his father, the then US President , George HW Bush , about the release of Bosch. On July 20, 1990, Orlando Bosch received an official revocation of his exit order by the president. Since then, Bosch lived undisturbed in Miami until his death due to illness. During his pre-trial detention in Venezuela, the Miami City Council honored him in 1983 with an official “Orlando Bosch Day”.

He left behind a second wife and six children, all of whom live in Florida.

literature

  • Orlando Bosch: Los años que he vivido (autobiography), Miami: New Press, 2010, ISBN 9780918901538 (Spanish)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Passion for Free Cuba Drove Bosch to Extreme (English) In: Miami Herald, June 29, 1989, accessed April 29, 2011
  2. Julio W. Carreras: La mala memoria (de Max Lesnik)  ( Page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Spanish) In: EmilioIchikawa.com, September 9, 2010, accessed April 30, 2011@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / eichikawa.com  
  3. a b Luis T. Panero: Bosch en 26 ( Memento of the original from February 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in: Emilio Ichikawa of December 11, 2010, accessed December 18, 2012 (Spanish) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / eichikawa.com
  4. Cuban anti-Castro militant Orlando Bosch, this aged 84 (English) BBC News on 28 June 2011, accessed April 29, 2011
  5. a b Interview statement by Bosch in the documentary Tell me Cuba (USA 2006) (English, partly available online )
  6. a b c Héctor D'Avanzo: Bosch y El Escambray, ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / eichikawa.com archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in: EmilioIchikawa.com, October 14, 2010, accessed June 11, 2014 (Spanish)
  7. Orlando Bosch Avila and MIRR (English) In: Cuban Information Archives o. D., accessed on May 1, 2011 (excerpt from files from a hearing of the US House of Representatives in 1979)
  8. Bosch Is Guilty In Plot on Ship ( Memento of the original from November 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English) In: Miami Herald, November 16, 1968, accessed April 29, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.latinamericanstudies.org
  9. Bosch Declares War On Castro ( Memento of the original from November 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , in: Miami News from June 1974, accessed via LatinAmericanStudies.org on October 2, 2012 (English) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.latinamericanstudies.org
  10. Peter Kornbluh: The Posada File: Part II , in: National Security Archive from June 9, 2005, accessed on October 2, 2012 (English)
  11. Criminal Occurrence description , short report in the Aviation Safety Network database , accessed on October 2, 2012 (English)