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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Terrorist or Hero? Puerto Rican Nationalist to Be Freed

A Puerto Rican nationalist is set to be freed after decades behind bars for his role in a violent struggle for independence from the U.S.

COLLEEN LONG

NEW YORK (AP) — A Puerto Rican nationalist is set to be freed after decades behind bars for his role in a violent struggle for independence from the U.S.

Oscar Lopez Rivera is expected to be released in Puerto Rico on Wednesday, and the 74-year-old is also slated to be honored as a hero at New York City's Puerto Rican Day parade next month.

But not everyone sees him as a hero. Lopez Rivera was a member of the leftist group FALN that claimed responsibility for more than 100 bombings across New York, Chicago and Washington, as well as in Puerto Rico in the 1970s and early '80s.

One still-unsolved bombing at a New York tavern in 1975 killed four people and injured more than 60.

Lopez Rivera was never tied to any specific bombing.

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This story has been corrected to show Lopez Rivera's first name is Oscar, not Jose.

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Categories / Criminal, Government, International, National, Politics

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