Filiberto Ojeda Ríos

Who was Filiberto Ojeda Ríos?

Filiberto Ojeda Ríos was the commander-in-chief of the Boricua Popular Army, a clandestine paramilitary organization that considers United States rule over Puerto Rico to be oppressive colonization and advocates the latter's independence.

Ojeda Ríos was a fugitive from 1990 to 2005, wanted by the FBI for his role in the 1983 Wells Fargo depot robbery in West Hartford, Connecticut as well as a bail bond default in September 1990. He was killed on 23 September 2005, a date that coincided with Los Macheteros's venerable anniversary of a Puerto Rican pro-independence uprising known as El Grito de Lares, when members of the FBI, claiming an attempt to serve an arrest warrant on him, surrounded a house in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico, where Ojeda Rios was living. The FBI operation, still not entirely laid clear, was questioned by both local Puerto Rican authorities as well as international organizations.

The killing of Ojeda Ríos has been mourned by members of the Puerto Rican Independence movement and by Puerto Ricans in general, who have expressed their indignation through repeated protests. Members of the statehood movement and supporters of the Commonwealth have also joined in the criticism of the federal and local handling of the FBI's shooting incident. In late March 2006, the Puerto Rico Department of Justice sued federal authorities, including FBI Director Robert Mueller and US Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, seeking an injunction to force the federal government authorities to provide the Commonwealth government with information related to the operation in which Ojeda Ríos died, as well as another one in which the FBI searched the homes of independence supporters affiliated with Los Macheteros. The lawsuit was dismissed in the summer of 2007. However, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico Civil Rights Commission forged on with its own investigation of the incident. Their investigation has been ongoing for several years and a report was due out on December 31, 2009.