COLOMBIA : Castro Helps Crack Case of Guerrilla Terrorism

A mysterious group that has terrorized Colombia for two decades is being dismantled this month as police round up the remnants of “Dignity for Colombia”--with help from Cuban President Fidel Castro.

Once a supporter of “internationalizing” the struggle for socialism, Castro helped Colombian authorities break up the fanatically pro-Cuban group, thought to number three dozen. Its members had kidnapped a state governor, assassinated a prominent conservative politician and wounded President Ernesto Samper’s lawyer to protest what they called corruption and an alleged increase in U.S. influence on the government here.

Those attacks left no clues for police. Some prominent law enforcement officials had even begun to doubt that Dignity existed, theorizing that different bands simply used the name.

Dignity, though, turned out to be not only real but political in its motivation. It was, authorities now say, a Colombian version of the Weather Underground, which bombed American buildings in the 1960s and ‘70s. Instead of bombing, Dignity staged kidnappings.

Based on a tip, linked to Dignity’s threat to murder a kidnap victim unless its demands were met, police were finally able to crack the case, said Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano, the compact, graying National Police chief. “After so many years, we ended it all in a single week, but it was the longest week of my life,” he noted.

With help from Castro, the kidnap victim--Juan Carlos Gaviria, brother of the country’s former president--was returned alive; eight members of Dignity were exiled to Cuba; and police are in the process of arresting those who remain.

Group members turned out to be dissidents from the National Liberation Army, one of Colombia’s oldest, most radical guerrilla organizations, led by former Spanish priest Manuel Perez. They are mainly middle-class professionals . . .,” Serrano said, “but very [politically] conscious, very convinced of their cause, in short, very dangerous.”

They lived from ransoms they had received--and they did not live badly. Police have confiscated houses in middle-class Bogota and Cali neighborhoods, as well as a vacation ranch outside Cali.

The group was so disciplined and secretive that even after Hugo Toro was sentenced to 25 years of prison on a murder charge, police did not learn he was Dignity’s leader. He was known as “Bochica,” the name of the divine creator in the mythology of the Chibchas, the people who lived in northern Colombia when the Spanish arrived.

From La Picota prison, Toro continued to run Dignity and wrote two books. He also sent a letter to the Cuban Embassy in Colombia, addressed to Castro. While criticizing him for “abandoning socialism,” the letter was clearly admiring.

Still, the murder, the books and the prison sentence proved to be Dignity’s undoing. The catalyst was the group’s last high-profile kidnapping, the April abduction of Gaviria. The search for him took on an urgency after Dignity kidnapped a reporter May 29, setting him free with a message: If Congress refused to impeach President Samper for his alleged ties to drug dealers, the group warned, Gaviria would die.

About that time, an individual--identified only as a friend of the man Toro killed--gave police copies of the two books that Bochica’s followers had smuggled out of prison. Similarities between the books and Dignity communiques convinced police that Toro was their man.

He watched Toro’s visitors and followed them.

Knowing, from the books, that the group admired Castro, the former Colombian president asked the Cuban leader to intercede in his brother’s behalf.

“It is my duty and that of my country,” Castro replied. Privately, Castro sent a message to Toro asking that Gaviria be spared.

Castro also told his ambassador to Colombia: “You are authorized to commit the Cuban government in any way that will contribute to a solution.”

That proved a key. Once the police, who were following people who visited Toro in prison, were able to raid a house and find other Dignity leaders, all the captured guerrillas asked in exchange for their hostage’s release was to be sent to Cuba. That request was granted; Gaviria was freed.

Confirming the story to a Cuban radio station, Castro said he does not know what Dignity members will do in Cuba. But, he said, “They will obey the law.”

* STAYING POWER: Colombian President Ernesto Samper hangs on despite scandal. A6