‘Death Squad’ Threat Prompts FBI Inquiry

The FBI, acting in the aftermath of new death threats against Salvadoran activists here, announced Friday that it has opened an investigation to look into “the possibility of terrorist activity” in Los Angeles.

The bureau’s action came hours after Father Luis Olivares, pastor of Los Angeles’ largest Latino parish, disclosed that he had received a letter reminiscent of those sent to some of the 14 priests killed by death squads in El Salvador.

The letter, which Olivares said he received Wednesday, contained a single piece of paper with large block initials “E. M.,” and the number 1 below. The initials are those of the Escuadron de la Muerte (Squadron of Death), one of a number of names used by right-wing military and paramilitary groups in El Salvador.

“I do not see this threat as a personal attack, but rather an attack on the church,” Olivares said at a news conference.

Many priests, nuns and lay church leaders have been killed by right-wing terror squads in El Salvador because they are perceived as communists in demanding social change.

Los Angeles Police Detective Ron Borunda, who interviewed Olivares, called the letter “ominous.” He said the letter will be tested for fingerprints and shared with the department’s anti-terrorist and criminal-conspiracy divisions, as well as U.S. postal inspectors.

FBI spokesman Jim Nielson, who earlier in the week said the bureau was not investigating the spate of apparently politically motivated incidents against Salvadorans here, said in a brief statement Friday:

“The Los Angeles FBI has opened an investigation into allegations of possible ‘El Salvador death squads’ operating in the Los Angeles area. . . . Recent information reflects the possibility of terrorist activity within the FBI’s jurisdiction.” He declined to elaborate.

The incidents apparently began with the kidnap and rape July 6 of a Salvadoran refugee who said she was tortured by two Salvadoran men who interrogated her about her activities here with the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador.

That incident has been followed by threats to other activists. The most recent of the threats, it was also disclosed Friday, were two identical messages left on the answering machine of a Salvadoran woman whose name had appeared on a death list last week. The name of the woman was not released.

Both messages said in muffled tones in Salvadoran-accented Spanish: “For being a communist, we will kill you.”

The tape was played at the news conference, the second organized by the Southern California Ecumenical Council’s Inter-Faith Task Force on Central America to denounce both the threats and U.S. military aid to El Salvador.

“These threats are intimately related to U.S. policies that have supported repression and violence in El Salvador,” asserted the Rev. Ross Kinsler, a Los Angeles-based Presbyterian minister who worked 13 years in Central America. “Now the United States has to deal not only with refugees fleeing the violence . . . but with the violence that is following them here.”

Olivares has been active in helping Central American refugees here. His parish, Nuestra Senora Reina de Los Angeles at Olvera Street, is a sanctuary church that has hidden illegal Central American immigrants to protect them from deportation. The church’s refugee program is named after Rutilio Grande, the first priest who was killed by a death squad in El Salvador in 1977.

Olivares recently returned from a trip to Washington, where he and other religious activists turned in a petition he said was signed by 500,000 people asking to stop U.S. military aid to Central America.