Defied Rebels to Kill Him : Ecuador Leader Recounts Death Threats by Captors

President Leon Febres Cordero said Saturday that the renegade air force troops who took him captive kicked, punched, insulted and threatened “to take me out and shoot me” until he agreed to free his chief military rival from prison.

In a dramatic recounting of his 12-hour captivity Friday, after two of his bodyguards died in a shoot-out, the president said he defied the rebels to kill him, then signed an amnesty for retired air force Gen. Frank Vargas Pazos to save the lives of 30 other hostages.

The revolt at Taura Air Base succeeded when Vargas, imprisoned for staging two uprisings last March, was flown there Friday night to join his rebellious paratrooper comrades. It ended with nine presidential guards and a journalist having been wounded by gunfire, the rebels being exempted from any disciplinary action, the 55-year-old Febres Cordero cut and bruised and his authority in question.

Vargas, 52, remained at the base, which is 15 miles southeast of this steamy port city and off limits to outsiders. He planned to stay there under the protection of his active duty allies until the amnesty order is officially published, according to his brother, Publio Vargas Pazos.

“He has done a lot of damage to the country,” Febres Cordero said of Vargas in an interview. “Our history of coups was forgotten, and he has brought this back.”

“But still,” he added, “this is a democratic country with a constitutional president who is in charge.”

The Ecuadorean leader, who is South America’s most conservative civilian chief of state and a firm ally of the Reagan Administration, sounded animated and defiant as he spoke to two American reporters on the overgrown lawn of his one-story white stone house here.

Rooftop Security

In a doubling of normal security, two army troopers with automatic rifles stood on the roof of the carport while eight others prowled the quiet residential block, where four police cars were parked.

The president said that eight men, including a major and a captain, appeared to lead 40 to 50 fatigue-clad paratroopers in the revolt against him Friday but seemed confused about their own ultimate aims.

“When you talk about kidnaping, the possibilities of coming out alive are not very high, so what was behind this whole thing only God knows,” he said.

Asked if they sought to depose him, Febres Cordero said: “They kept calling me Mr. President all the time. They were hitting me and calling me Mr. President.”

Censure Motion Expected

The revolt was the most serious since Ecuador ended seven years of military rule in 1979, and it immediately enlivened this oil-exporting country’s rough-and-tumble civilian politics.

While condemning it, leaders of the center-leftist opposition seized on the uprising to discredit what they call Febres Cordero’s abuse of executive authority. They said a censure motion is expected when Congress convenes Tuesday.

The president had refused to carry out an amnesty voted last October by the opposition-controlled Congress in favor of Vargas and a leftist political leader.

“He has promoted physical and verbal violence against the country’s democratic institutions and this has been turned against him,” commented Rodrigo Borja, the social democrat defeated by Febres Cordero in the 1984 presidential election.

Suffered Cut on Forearm

Febres Cordero declined to comment on the political opposition but noted that hundreds of supporters had turned out in the rain here Friday night to applaud his release.

The president, a stocky, white-haired former businessman, showed reporters a bruise under his right sideburn. A white guayabera sports shirt, monogrammed in blue with his initials, covered a cut on his right forearm.

On Friday, he flew with the defense minister, the air force commander, several friends and political aides to a ceremony at the Taura base marking the 10th anniversary of the air force’s acquisition of supersonic jets.

As Febres Cordero told it, the uprising started as his party alighted on the runway and an air force band finished playing the national anthem.

No Time to Draw Gun

“Right when they were called to present arms, they started shooting and then surrounded us,” he said.

The president, who packs a Colt .45 pistol in his belt, had no time to draw. “I shouted, ‘What the hell is going on here?’ ” he recalled. “Then my security people threw me down. . . . Two bodyguards close to me were seriously wounded. . . . I was disarmed right away.

“They put a rifle to my throat and a pistol to my head,” he said. “I was shouting: ‘Kill me! Kill me!’ But they didn’t say anything. They just swore, you know. They were shouting, ‘You S.O.B.!’ Then they pulled me up and started pushing me toward a bus. I said, ‘Don’t touch me! I am the president of this country!’ But they kept on pushing me.”

Many details of the president’s account coincided with a first-person story in the Guayaquil newspaper El Universo by Hector Rodriguez, an Ecuadorean reporter who was wounded in the attack.

Frequently Threatened

Rodriguez said the shooting lasted about five minutes before the president was taken to the commander’s office. Other hostages were held in a Roman Catholic chapel, an auditorium and a jail at the base, all guarded by about 50 paratroopers, the journalist said.

The base commander joined in resisting the uprising and was among those arrested as rebels seized the entire base. About 500 servicemen and 800 civilians work there.

After those first few minutes, Febres Cordero said, he was not touched but was frequently threatened with death, even after he agreed to free Vargas. He said he turned down a lunch his captors offered.

“They kept adding conditions,” he said. “They said they would take me out and shoot me right away. They brought in an execution team. I saw the one in charge of it. He came in and said, ‘I have been put in charge of killing you.’ ”

Describes ‘Chaos’

The president said he kept insisting on more time to negotiate, but that led only to confusion and more threats.

“The best way I can define what happened yesterday was chaos,” he said. “I had the feeling that this (revolt), even though it was planned tactically, had no command. I had nobody with whom I could talk. It was very difficult for them to reach an agreement.”

Eventually, he said, he rejected as “impossible” all the rebels’ other demands, including the ouster of Defense Minister Medardo Salazar Navas, the entire armed forces high command and the Taura base commander.

A security officer at the base, who identified himself only as Capt. Granja said that life there returned to normal Saturday “as if nothing ever happened.” In a telephone interview, he said Vargas was on the base as “a guest” of the rebels but declined to say what they were up to.

Febres Cordero, who visited wounded bodyguards in a hospital and met with regional military commanders here, said Vargas “is a free man. He can do anything he wants.”

Amnesty to Be Honored

Last March, Vargas, then chief of the air force, occupied an air base for four days after the previous defense minister ordered his retirement.

He ended the revolt under mediation by the president’s secretary, but three days later staged a second mutiny at another base. Four people were killed and nine were wounded in the fighting then, and Vargas was imprisoned at an army base, where he awaited the verdict of a military court that could have sentenced him to 15 years.

In the interview, Febres Cordero said he had not ruled out some kind of action against Vargas and the Taura base rebels.

But later, at a televised press conference, he said the amnesty will be honored.