California Man With Arsenal Claims Alpha 66 Ties (Cuban exile terra group)

[Mika]

California Man With Arsenal Claims Alpha 66 Ties
More Than One Thousand Guns Siezed
The Owner Claims He's A Member Of Anti-Castro Group Alpha 66
http://cbs4.com/topstories/local_story_110131059.html

A Cuban exile arrested for allegedly stashing more than a thousand guns in his home says he's a member of Alpha 66, and that the weapons were intended to help liberate Cuba. From it's Miami headquarters, the anti-Catro group issued a strong denial.

Robert Ferro was arrested after authorities raided his home last week and found dozens of assault weapons, machine guns and handguns. Authorities believe Ferro may have been running a black-market gun ring.

Court documents show Ferro told investigators the organization paid for the guns and had other caches of weapons.


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Miami anti-Castro activists Santiago Alvarez and Osvaldo Mitat were arrested on unrelated illegal weapons and explosives charges five months ago.

Both men have pleaded not guilty and are being held without bail. They are scheduled to stand trial May eighth in federal court in Fort Lauderdale.

Background: Alpha 66 & terrorism

[leveymg]

1. OMG. A-66? Thought they went away three decades ago.

Still playing with their toys. Wonder what Mr. Negroponte knows about this?

[Mika]

3. They still run maneuvers in the Everglades.

They train children to pick up hate where they left off.

Alpha Males
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/Issues/1998-08-27/news/feature.html

Hustling down a dirt road surrounded by miles of farmland, Leslie Fernandez struggles to keep a rifle balanced on her shoulder. Dressed in bell-bottom jeans and a white T-shirt, she catches up with her fellow commandos -- five men dressed in military fatigues and also toting weapons.

"What kind of gun is this?" she asks Jesus Hoyos, who is leading the team.
"That's an M-1," Hoyos explains curtly. He's cradling a semiautomatic Bushmaster AR-15.

The group stops and huddles. "This is the rally point," Hoyos tells them. He reviews the plan: Leslie will remain behind to guard the backpacks under cover of darkness while the men sneak into a Cuban military base and shoot at two MiGs parked in a large grassy field. "Let's go," Hoyos says quietly.

Leslie watches the men creep down the edge of the road -- two in front, three behind -- then disappear through an open metal gate surrounding a small military camp. Moments later machine guns pop. They pop again, faster. "Retreat! Retreat!" Hoyos shouts. The commandos pull back, turning and firing as they go. They scurry down the road and regroup, breathless, at the rally point, where Leslie has been patiently waiting. "Okay, enemy troops have the beach blocked," Hoyos pants. "Contingency plan A -- the helicopter -- was shot down. So we have to walk five miles to a point where they're going to pick us up at 0600."

But there are no enemy soldiers, no MiGs in the field. Only stacks of old tires. The bullets are blanks. It is not night, but Sunday morning. And Leslie is no companera; she's an eleven-year-old who has never been to Cuba and scarcely speaks Spanish. Her father Mario, one of the fighters, left the island during the Mariel boatlift in 1980. Though Leslie thinks she would be willing to join a raid on Cuba when she gets older, she's still a bit uncertain about logistics -- like how she would get there. "I have no idea," she shrugs. "Maybe by boat." But she does have a firm grasp of the objective. "Fidel Castro shouldn't be there, treating those people like he does. He's just really bad to them," she declares. She learned to shoot semiautomatic weapons earlier this year.

Then the thoughtful, articulate sixth-grader at Miami Lakes Middle School confesses the real reason she attends the Sunday training sessions: "I really don't have anything to do at home, so I decided to come here to learn about Cuba and how they train and stuff."

Welcome to Rumbo Sur -- a secluded South Dade training camp belonging to Miami's best-known anti-Castro militia, Alpha 66. The group's secretary general, 78-year-old Andres Nazario Sargen, says Leslie is far too young to go on a real commando raid. But in the next few months he plans to recruit about twenty new troops in their late teens and early twenties.

[Rich Hunt]

2. wow...

I guess the "hapless" feds do -some- things right.

[AlphaCentauri]

4. He was trying to hire Mexicans to overthrow Castro

Ferro, a retired Army Special Forces officer, had previously been accused of running a paramilitary camp on a Pomona chicken ranch to train Mexican nationals to overthrow Castro.

Authorities found five pounds of C-4 explosive at the ranch, and he was convicted of possessing illegal explosives in 1992 and sentenced to two years in prison.

:rofl:

[Mika]

5. Kick

:kick:

Kick for related info on this thread on a developing story:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2253396