American Working for Sandinistas Killed by Contras

An American engineer working for the Nicaraguan government was reported killed Tuesday in an attack by U.S.-backed contras at the site of a hydroelectric power plant he was building in a rural war zone.

The victim was identified as Benjamin Ernest Linder, 27, of Portland, Ore. He was the first American killed in the service of the Sandinista government during the five-year-old conflict.

Two of the six Nicaraguans working with Linder also died in the attack near the village of La Camaleona, 192 miles northeast of Managua, according to one of the survivors.

Friends said Linder and his construction crew knew they were marked for death by the rebels and carried AK-47 assault rifles for protection at the government’s insistence.

Foreign Minister Miguel d’Escoto sent a protest note to U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz, blaming the Reagan Administration for a deliberate rebel policy of killing civilians.

“The fact that mercenary forces created, trained, financed and directed by your government have killed a civilian collaborator dedicated to rural electrification again demonstrates the terrorist and criminal character of actions promoted by the U.S. Administration,” the note said.

A government spokesman, Manuel Espinoza, said six rebels staged the 8 a.m. attack. The foreign minister’s note said Linder was “kidnaped and later killed.”

But Ed Griffin-Nolan, a Witness for Peace activist, said two of the group’s members were given a sketchy account by a survivor who denied anyone was abducted. Witness for Peace calls itself an independent, religiously based group advocating nonviolence.

The survivor, identified as Cecilio Rosales, said the contras launched five grenades at the construction crew as it was surveying the power plant site.

Linder was mortally wounded in the head by grenade shrapnel and two Nicaraguans were shot to death, according to Griffin-Nolan.

Adolfo Calero, chief of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, the largest rebel group, said in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, that he had no information on the attack but denied that his forces aimed at pro-Sandinista Americans.

He added: “Where there are armed people and it is a war zone, they are subject to being attacked whether they are North Americans or whoever.”

Salary $13 a Month

Linder, an engineering graduate of the University of Washington, came here in 1983 to work for the Nicaraguan Electricity Institute designing small hydroelectric plants. He earned a government salary equivalent to $13 per month.

Last year he settled in El Cua and helped build the plant that introduced electricity to the grain growing community of 1,500 people.

The village where he died, 25 miles up the Bocay River from El Cua, is the site of a planned 200-kilowatt plant in the same hydroelectric complex. It will light the town of San Jose del Bocay, population 3,000.

“The people of El Cua had incredible respect for him,” said David Ramaley, an American resident of the town. “He had a bubbly personality and a personal rapport with the peasants, a genuine love for the Nicaraguan people.”

Two weeks ago Linder told friends the contras had kidnaped a woman in El Cua and sent her back with the message that “everyone working on the hydroelectric project is marked.”

“He couldn’t understand that,” Ramaley said. “He asked me: ‘Why is it that teachers and others who work hardest for the betterment of the people have to go armed? Why are we the biggest target of the contras?’ ”

Four American pilots involved in supplying the contras and three American journalists covering the war have been killed in Nicaragua since 1983.

In the same period, nine Western Europeans working as doctors, nurses, agronomists and engineers have died in the war zones.

While foreign embassies do not keep exact count, it is estimated there are more than 1,000 such volunteers from Western countries in Nicaragua at any given time. Several hundred are Americans.

Sympathetic to the revolution, many pay their own way to Nicaragua and work for little or no compensation. Others are paid by their governments or private organizations.

The contras have infiltrated thousands of fighters into Nicaragua and focused on sabotaging such economic targets as power plants since Congress resumed their U.S. military aid late last year. The Bocay River valley has been a principal infiltration route.

In its protest note, Nicaragua said the rebels have resorted to attacking economic and civilian targets “as a result of their military failure.”

The U.S. Embassy had no comment on the note and said it has been unable to confirm Linder’s death.

In Portland, friends said Linder’s parents, David and Elizabeth Linder, were unaware of their son’s death because they were on a camping trip, United Press International reported. Linder is also survived by a sister.

Times staff writer Marjorie Miller in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, contributed to this report.