Orlando Bosch Ávila

Pseudonym: Ernesto

Profession: Pediatrician

He was discretely involved in the struggle against Fulgencio Batista.

He steals a weapons shipment from the Leoncio Vidal barracks in Santa Clara and transports it to his ranch, La Guanaja, in the outskirts of the city, working with the late counterrevolutionary Florencio Vidal. He opposed the conviction of the pilots who massacred peasants in the Sierra Maestra during Cuba’s struggle for liberation. On 5 June 1960, he joins counterrevolutionary bands in the Escambray range and participates in the Fomento Conspiracy, which erroneously calls itself the first uprising against the revolution in the region. He leaves for the United States at the beginning of August 1960.

In Miami in 1999, he published the book 40 years of struggle, 40 years in the right, in which he brings to light a document, dated 31 August 1960, that names him MIRR’s representative in Miami.

From 1960 to 1966, he is the head of MIRR, an organization which bombed dozens of civil facilities in Cuba, using light aircrafts which took off from Miami and dropped thousands of bombs on Cuban soil.

He and Marcelino García claim responsibility for the bombing of the Jaronú sugar mill on 9 September 1963.

He, José Díaz Morejón, Marcon Rodríguez Ramos, Gervelio Gutiérrez, William J. Jonson and Frank Bafferty were detained in June 1965, while he attempted to bom a sugar refinery in Havana. The two Americans were to be the photographers of the mission. This took place in Zellwood, Orlando, Tampa. 18 bombs, 2 50-calibre machineguns, 32 hand machineguns, 230 grenades and 399 pounds of C-4 explosives were confiscated from him.

On 25 March 1983, the Miami Commission proclaimed a “Dr. Orlando Bosch Day”.

Bosch returned to Miami, where he was detained in 1974 for violation of his parole, granted him in connection to his conviction for firing a bazooka at a Polish cargo ship that had anchored in Miami in 1968. Celebrated as a hero in Miami, Bosch’s cause was defended in 1989 by republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, then on the road to becoming the first Cuban-American to join Congress, and by Jeb Bush, son of the president who headed Ros-Lehtinen’s campaign.

In his deportation order, Associate Attorney General Joe D. Whitley wrote, “For 30 years Bosch has been resolute and unwavering in his advocacy of terrorist violence. He has threatened and undertaken violent terrorist acts against numerous targets, including nations friendly toward the United States and their highest officials. He has repeatedly expressed and demonstrated a willingness to cause indiscriminate injury and death. His actions have been those of a terrorist, unfettered by laws or human decency, threatening and inflicting violence without regard to the identity of his victims.” He received a presidential pardon from Bush on 20 July 1990.

Thus is annulled the decision of the Justice Department, which had expressed that “…it would be detrimental to US public interests to offer Bosch safe haven, as the security of this nation would be affected in its capacity to urge other nations, in a credible fashion, to deny aid and haven to terrorists”.

In February 2004, during a long interview aired on Channel 22, Bosch justified the bombing of the Cuban commercial airliner and boasted of his role in eleven attempts at carrying out military actions against Cuba over the previous 10 years and his three attempts to assassinate President Castro: in Chile, Nicaragua and Spain. Bosch receives ovations every time he appears in public with important politicians.

He is a terrorist superstar.