From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Re: Christic Vows to keep fantisizing, etc.
Organization: University of Missouri
Date:  8 Apr 92 04:39:38 GMT

In <167C1DA7B.MEDELMA@cms.cc.wayne.edu> you.talking.to.me.buddy (?) writes:
>Myself, I thought the Christic setbacks were a wonderful demonstration
>that perhaps the justice system *did* work. They tried to sue citizens
>using fabricated "evidence" that was only backed up by their own books.

You're very mistaken.  The costa rican government confirmed the bulk
of the ci's case over two years ago.  Funny how most people don't seem
to know this.
The following excerpts indicate that the cr legislature independently
came to the same basic conclusions as the christic institute when they
pursued their own iran/contra investigation (a real investigation, not
the whitewash conducted by our own legislature)  Their conclusion
that pastora was bombed by a right wing terrorist working with the cia and
the contras is the essense of the ci suit.
Of course, the us govt has taken no action on cr's extradition request.

------------------ 

From the Washington Post, 2/1/90 page 16:
 
In a case that could prove embarassing for both the US and Costa Rican
governments, local courts are considering seeking the extradition of
John Hull, a supporter of the Nicaraguan contras and alleged CIA
operative who fled Costa Rica for his native Indiana last year.
 
A Costa Rican prosecutor recently recommended that Hull, 69, a dual
Costa Rican-US citizen, be charged with first degree murder for the 1984
bombing at a press conference in a Nicaraguan hamlet called La Penca,
located across the San Juan river from Costa Rica.
 
The bomb, planted by an assassin posing as a journalist, only wounded
its intended target, rebel leader Eden Pastora, but killed three
journalists and at least one Nicaraguan rebel and wounded dozens.  The
report identified the assassin as Amac Galil.  His whereabouts are
unknown.
 
Based on the first substantive investigation by a Costa Rican agency
[interesting how they put this ... see below] into the bombing, the
report links contras, narcotics traffickers of various nationalities,
then-Panamanian strongman Gen.  Manuel Noriega, former lieutenant
colonel Oiver North, Cuban-american exiles, and Costa Rican officials.
 
Pastora, who won fame in the Sandinista revolution as "Commander Zero,"
left the Nicaraguan government to mount an insurgency in the early 1980s
from Costa Rica.
 
Prosecutor Jorge Cavarria charged that because Pastora refused to
coordinate his forces with contras based in Honduras or to cooperate
with drug traffickers using rebel arms pipelines to run cocaine through
northern costa rica, a conspiracy to murder him mushroomed-led by Hull
and Cuban exile Felipe Vidal [another cia op].  Vidal also has not been
located.
 
Costa Rican authorities arrested Hull a year ago on charges of drug
trafficking and neutrality violations for his support of the contras.
While free on $36,000 bond, Hull, who had lived in Costa Rica for more
than 20 years, fled this country, claiming health problems.
 
The charges of drug trafficking were dropped after Hull fled.  This made
extradition on the neutrality charge difficult under the 1922 treaty in
effect, said local lawyers.  But the latest accusation of first-degree
murder has brought renewed pressure on the country's highly respected
judicial system to seek Hull's extradition.
 
"I think they have to do it," said Roberto Cruz, a Costa Rican
journalist who lost an eye and a leg in the 1984 bombing.  "If they
don't try to extradite John Hull, Costa Rica won't be a real republic."
 
Costa Rica's normally conservative newspaper La Nacion demanded in an
editorial that the courts follow up this case because there is "an
imperative need for justice in this crime."
 
A letter praising the prosecutor's report was sent to Cavarria by the
Journalists' association, the Foreign Journalists' association and a
committee of La Penca victims.  The letter encouraged the prosecutor to
push for more cooperation from the US judiciary, despite washington's
"negative attitude."
 
During a telephone interview from Indiana, Hull denied the murder charges
and charged that the Costa Rican judiciary is full of "communists."
 
... The report recommeded that 23 persons be charged with neutrality
violations, including military trainer Thomas Pose and North's courier,
Robert Owen.  North was not charged, but he was officially declared not
welcome in Costa Rica ...
 
Last July, a legislative assembly commission investigating trafficking
recommended that North, arms dealer Ricard Secord, former national
security advisor John Poindexter, former ambassador Lewis Tambs and
former CIA station chief in costa rica Joe Fernandez should be declared
personae non gratae in costa rica.  These five, said the commission,
were responsible for building the arms network, which because of its
cloak of secrecy, allowed traffickers to run cocaine to the US.
 
The recent prosecutor's report enlarges the findings of american
journalists Martha Honey and Tony Avirgan, who probed the bombing in
1984 and 1985.  Hull sued the husband and wife investigative team in a
Costa Rican court for libel, but lost.
 
The Christic institute, a washington-based public law firm, took on the
couple's case and sued Hull and 28 others over the La Penca bombing.  A
miami judge threw the suit out of court in 1988, a few days before the
trial was to begin, declaring it was never proven that Galil was the
bomber.
------------
From the Miami Herald, 1/6/90 page 19:
 
The report connects Hull, Vidal, anti-castro cubans and Manuel Noriega
in a broad-ranging conspiracy that combined contra arms flights and
cocaine runs thorugh northern costa rica.
 
... the report alleges that initial investigations into the incident
were stymied in part by local police officials with close ties to the US
embassy.  The report also describes in detail the infiltration of Costa
Rican security services by the US.
----------
From In These Times, 2/24/90:
The prosecutors report, based on a six-month investigation by the OIJ,
the Costa Rican FBI, supports the central allegations of the Christic
Institute's 1986 civil racketeering lawsuit against Hull and 28 others.
 
...  Based out of his 5,000 acre ranch in northern Costa Rica, Hull
helped manage the contra resupply effort- an effort financed in part by
turning the ranch with its six airplane runways into a transit station
for the Medellin cartel.  It is alleged that the contra supply planes
would arrive from the US with guns and return laden with cocaine. ...
-----------
From the Progressive, 3/90:
... under the guise of helping Costa Rica protect its "national security"
from neighboring Nicaragua, the US embassy offered to train fifteen
special intelligence agents for the costa Rican equivalent of the CIA.
Known as "the Babies," they grew into a force unto themselves,
functioning as a substation of the CIA.  Heading up the operation was
Dimitrius Papas, a CIA agent known as "Papi."  According to the costa
rican prosecutor, Papas moved his proteges out of their ministry offices
into a building financed by the US embassy, which also provided desks,
telephones, typewriters, and two vehicles.  "This group of officials,"
he charges, "supposedly answering to the orders of vice-minister Johnny
Loaiza, practically lost all connections with that authority, obeying
the direct command of Papas.
 
By the time of the La Penca bombing, Papi and the Babies had in place an
intricate network of illegal telephone taps and an apparently bottomless
slush fund for payoffs and extralegal activities. ... [specifics of
actions taken to throw CR investigators off the track] ... "Dimitrius
Papas's actions in trying to disorient the investigation," says
Chavarria's new report, "had, as its purpose, to protect Oliver North's
net and the operation that the US was carrying out in the southern
front, in the northern front, and in costa rica."
 
Tony Avirgan charges that there has been "a defacto conspiracy to
protect the covert activities of the US government, and John Hull
particularly.  Hull is the link between covert activities to support the
contras and drug dealing.  I mean, in that one person you have the link
right there.  And I think there's a big operation to protect him."
 
Members of congress have participated in the attempt to suppress the
[trafficking] charges against Hull-the charges on which he jumped
bail last year.  Nineteen US legislators wrote to Oscar Arias, Costa
Rica's president, urging him to go lightly.  In a letter dated January
26, 1989, Lee Hamilton, co-chair of the House subcommittee that
investigated the Iran Contra affair, wrote, "It is our hope that Mr.
Hull's case can be concluded promptly and that it will be handled in a
manner that will not complicate US-Costa Rican relations. ... [we] want
to avoid situations or incidents that could adversely affect our
relations at this time."
 
[further specifics of congress's (active or passive) involvement in
covering up Hull's activities, by conducting a very superficial
investigation and ignoring evidence dumped in their laps by others]
 
Until the Washington Post carried a story in early february- three weeks
after the release of the costa rican prosecutor's report and buried on
page 16, the news had been all but totally ignored by the mainstream
newspapers, wire services and television networks in the US, which, says
Avirgan "is incredible."

Xref: sparky alt.conspiracy:6136 alt.censorship:3182 alt.discrimination:1371 soc.history:3478 sci.research:475 alt.activism:7324