Bolivia, Aided by FBI, Seizes 8 Terror Suspects : Zarate Willka Group Tied to Killing of 2 Americans, Bombings

American FBI agents have helped track down members of a terrorist group wanted for a bomb attack last August on the U.S. secretary of state’s motorcade and for the slaying in May of two Mormon missionaries from Utah.

The self-styled Zarate Willka Armed Forces of Liberation, a Marxist group named after an obscure Indian rebel of the late 1800s, claimed responsibility for both attacks. At week’s end, authorities said that eight front members were under arrest and that at least three of them had participated directly in the bombing or the killings.

Some of those arrested had once worked in a military government’s “paramilitary” intelligence service, Bolivian officials said. The U.S. Embassy said that at least one had received training in Cuba.

In 1967, Cuba sponsored a guerrilla band led by revolutionary hero Ernesto (Che) Guevara in rural Bolivia. With the aid of U.S. advisers, Bolivian army rangers hunted the guerrillas down and killed Guevara in October, 1967.

First Group Since 1970s

Other small Bolivian guerrilla groups were defeated early in the 1970s. Since then, Zarate Willka is the first armed rebel organization to surface in this landlocked country, the poorest in South America.

Few people had heard of the Zarate Willka group when it claimed responsibility for the dynamite bomb that damaged four cars in the motorcade bringing George P. Shultz, then secretary of state, into La Paz on Aug. 8. No one was injured in the blast.

In January, the group set off a bomb at the National Congress Building. Again, no one was hurt.

But on May 25, the terrorist band announced the “execution” of two young Mormon missionaries minutes after they were shot to death on their doorstep with an automatic assault rifle.

A handwritten statement delivered to a newspaper declared that “the violation of our national sovereignty” by “Yankee invaders” would not go unpunished. “Our hate is implacable and our war is to the death,” the message said.

The victims were roommates Todd Ray Wilson and Jeffrey Brent Ball, both 20 and both from small towns in Utah. They had been in Bolivia about a year, doing door-to-door proselytizing for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

There are about 400 Mormon missionaries in Bolivia, half of them young Americans who have saved their own money to pay for their missions.

Wilson and Ball were returning to their rented room in a house near the La Paz cemetery when a yellow Volkswagen station wagon stopped nearby. Witnesses said that a man got out of the car and opened fire on the two as they prepared to enter the house.

Dr. Ramiro Donoso, a Bolivian physician who is active in the church, said other missionaries in Bolivia were horrified by the slayings.

“There was fear, to the point that the missionaries didn’t go out to work for several days,” Donoso said.

But now they are working normally and have had no more trouble, he said. “I think the thing has been against Americans instead of against the church.”

U.S. Ambassador Robert S. Gelbard said that Bolivia’s extreme left, unable to win mass allegiance, uses the United States as a scapegoat for its failure. Marxist politicians accused the United States of violating Bolivian sovereignty with anti-drug and military aid programs.

Gelbard said the terrorists struck out at the missionaries “because the Mormons in their eyes are symbolic of the United States.”

After the slayings, a special six-member team of FBI agents came to work with Bolivian police in the investigation. The FBI brought lie detectors, ballistics laboratory equipment and other instruments.

Some observers say that a $500,000 reward offered by the United States for information leading to the conviction of the killers also may have helped in the investigation.

On Thursday, the interior and information ministers announced the arrests of several Zarate Willka members, including two university students and a medical doctor.

Constantino Yujra, a sociology student, “confessed having participated in the attack on Mr. George Shultz,” Interior Minister Eduardo Perez Beltran said.

On Friday, police arrested two brothers, Felix and Nestor Encinas, accused of killing the Mormons.

Still at large are the group’s leader, identified only as “Horacio,” and his second-in-command, “Sapo”--the Spanish word for toad.

Information Minister Herman Antelo said that there is no evidence that the Zarate Willka band is linked to any Bolivian political party or foreign organization. There had been speculation that it received support from the Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrillas of neighboring Peru, who assassinated the Peruvian naval attache in La Paz last December.

Trained in Cuba

Ambassador Gelbard said in an interview that one man under arrest, Julio Penaranda, received bomb training in Cuba.

“It’s pure Cuban terrorism, I don’t think there is any question about it,” the ambassador said. He added that the Zarate Willka group has been wounded but not crushed.

“My concern is that in the short term this will cause the group to lash out and show they are still effective,” Gelbard said. “I think they still would like to do something spectacular.”

ZARATE WILLKA’S TARGETS AUG. 8, 1988: Claims responsibility for dynamite bomb that damages four cars in a motorcade bringing then-Secretary of State George P. Shultz to La Paz, the capital. No one injured.

JANUARY, 1989: Claims responsibility for a bomb blast at the National Congress Building in La Paz. No one injured.

MAY 25, 1989: Announces “execution” of Jeffrey Brent Ball and Todd Ray Wilson, two young Mormon missionaries from Utah.