Journalists file $44M suit against Contras

Press, 24 June 1986, Page 21

Journalists file $44M suit against Contras

From

MIGUEL ACOCA,

in Washington

Two American journalists are charging the head of the Nicaraguan rebels and 29 Americans, Cuban Americans, and an antiGadaffi Libyan in a Miami Federal Court with trying to assassinate the dissident rebel leader, Eden Pastora, in 1984 in Costa Rica, with plotting to kill the United States Ambassador to Costa Rica, and with engaging in drug trafficking to finance illegal weapons purchases and shipments from the United States to Central America.

The detailed complaint by Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey, who are married and report from Costa Rica, reads like a spy novel set in the intrigue, violence, chicanery, and rivalries spawned by the ideological civil wars raging in Central America.

The Justice Department said, in response to the accusations, that it had found no evidence of drug or arms smuggling by the Contras and their American backers. The defendants include Adolfo Calero, a Nicaraguan exile who is the C.1.A.-picked civilian chief of the United States-supported Contra rebels and a political enemy of Pastora, and a number of Americans with C.1.A.-United States intelligence backgrounds. Among the Americans named are the retired General John Singlaub, head of the American chapter of the World Anti-Com-munist League and a leading Contra supporter; Robert Owen, a former Congressional aide with access to high Reagan Administration officials who advises the Contras; John Hull, an American

businessman whose ranch in Costa Rica was allegedly the scene of misdeeds; Ronald Martin, a Miami gun dealer; Tom Posey, a soldier of fortune; and several former members of the C.I.A.

The legal action filed in Miami and explained by the couple’s lawyer in a Washington press conference, is bound to renew demands for a fully-fledged investigation of a rash of accusations of illegal activities by the Contras and their American supporters. The journalists charge that the person who planted a bomb intended to kill Pastora during a

press conference two years ago was Amac Galil, a Libyan known as “El Moro” who was posing as a Scandinavian journalist. Pastora survived the explosion, but it killed eight persons and badly injured another 24. Among the wounded were Avirgan and Susan Morgan, an Englishwoman on assignment for the “Observer,” who suffered severe burns and crippling injuries. The civil suit, which asks for $U.5.23,840,000 in damages, alleges that the defendants not only brought Galil into Costa Rica with fake papers but helped to sneak him out after the bloody

but failed assassination attempt. The plotters, according to the complaint, wanted to kill Pastora because he would not join forces with Calero’s United States-sup-ported rebel group, which operates from bases in Honduras. They tried to blame the bombing and the deaths and injuries on Nicaragua’s Sandinista Government.

The 63-page complaint also alleges that the defendants planned to kill the United States ambassador to Costa Rica, Lewis Tambs, and to bomb the United States embassy in Honduras and blame the Sandinistas for antiAmerican terrorism in an attempt to inspire United States retaliation against Nicaragua’s Sandinistas. It describes how the Contras and associates in Costa Rica and

tire United States smuggled thousands of kilograms of cocaine from Colombia into Hull’s ranch in Costa Rica, how the drug was then shipped into the United States aboard shrimp boats, and how the money received from drug dealers was laundered and employed to buy weapons from a Miami gun dealer. The charges are the result of an investigation in Costa Rica by Avirgan and Honey, who say that Contras threatened them and their Costa Rican sources, and kidnapped and murdered David “X”, a Contra who became an informer. They wrote a book about their conclusions and last month a Costa Rican court threw out a libel suit against them by John Hull.

Copyright — London Observer Service.