***** VIVA Ben Linder ***** April 28, 1987, Reagan mercenaries shot Oregonian in the head at close

[L. Coyote]

range in Nicaragua. Justice remains to be served. Muerte al mal gobierno!
SHOUT OUT for Justice and an end to war criminal governance!

The Reagan presidency was froth with illegal conduct an egregious war crimes.
The murder, literally an assassination of a liberal activist, was one of many.
Benjamin Linder was shot in the temple a close range, on April 28, 1987.
At that time I lived in the same city as his family state side, Portland,
Oregon, where Benjamin Linder will always be presente! We remember.
Also, let us not forget that Justice yet awaits.

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Who was Ben Linder? | Casa Ben Linder
http://casabenlinder.org/?q=node/5

Benjamin Ernest Linder (July 7, 1959—April 28, 1987), born in California, was a young American engineer who was killed in an ambush on April 28, 1987, by a group of CIA-funded Contras while working on a small hydroelectric dam that was to bring electricity and running water to a village in the middle of Nicaragua's war zone. Linder's death made front-page headlines around the world and polarized opinion in the United States.

Linder graduated from the University of Washington in 1983 with a degree in mechanical engineering. He left his Oregon home that summer and moved to Managua. In 1986, Linder moved from Managua to El Cuá, a village in the Nicaraguan war zone, where he helped form a team to build a hydroplant to bring electricity to the town.

Linder and two Nicaraguans -- Sergio Hernández and Pablo Rosales -- were killed in the Contra ambush while working at the construction site for a new dam for the nearby village of San José de Bocay. The autopsy showed that Linder was first wounded by a grenade, then shot at point-blank range in the head. The two Nicaraguans were also murdered at close range, Rosales by a stab wound in the heart.

Linder's electrification project was typical of Contra targets. Near El Cuá, the agricultural cooperative of El Cedro had been attacked three times resulting in a number of deaths. On March 19, 1987, four coop members tried to fend off a Contra attack, providing cover for residents as they escaped. Two of them were killed, one a close friend of Linder's. The health clinic at the coop, its food supply center, and a house were burned to the ground.

The ambush was a deliberate strategy on the part of the Contras to undermine support for the Sandinistas by engaging in a campaign of sabotage against the nation's economy, and demonstrating the cost to the people if they continued to support their government.

The murder of Linder and the growing distaste in the U.S. for the covert war in Nicaragua finally led to the U.S. Congress prohibiting military aid to the Contras. But the Contra attacks, conscription into the army, the complete U.S. economic embargo on the impoverished country, and the Sandinista response of eliminating civil liberties in the mid-1980s all combined to cause the defeat of the FSLN in February 1990 elections.

In July 1995, Joan Kruckewitt, an American journalist who lived in Nicaragua from 1983 to 1991 and covered the war between the Sandinistas and the Contras for ABC Radio, located and interviewed one of the men who killed Ben Linder. The story became the basis for an article in The New Yorker and was later expanded into a book, The Death of Ben Linder.

Benjamin Linder, Sergio Hernández, y Pablo Rosales, presente!

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George Bush Sr. May Face Charges: Conspiring to Kidnap and Murder Political Activists
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2459135

[L. Coyote]

1. Presente!

[L. Coyote]

2. Vice President George Bush stated that Linder was on "the other side."

Book Excerpt - http://www.scripter.net/backpages/blinder.htm

On April 30, 1987, under a fierce afternoon sun, a funeral procession wound its way through the cobbled streets of Matagalpa, a small city in Nicaragua. Daniel Ortega, the country's president, and his wife, Rosario Murillo, followed the casket, slowly walking arm in arm with two Americans, David and Elisabeth Linder from Portland, Oregon. The Linders' son and daughter, John and Miriam, walked beside them. Oscar Blandón, a hydroplant operator and electrician from the remote village of El Cuá, walked alone, head hidden underneath a baseball cap, a sentinel that never strayed from the casket. Clowns from the Nicaraguan National Circus followed behind, their painted mouths turned downwards. Behind them walked thousands of Nicaraguans and foreigners. The funeral procession stretched for more than seven blocks.

In the coffin lay Benjamin Ernest Linder, a twenty-seven-year-old American engineer. ... President Ronald Reagan, who had earlier proclaimed "I'm a Contra too," made no comment, but Vice President George Bush stated that Linder was on "the other side."

CBS News correspondent Dan Rather had a very different take on the first murder of an American by the Contras: "Benjamin Linder was no revolutionary firebrand, spewing rhetoric and itching to carry a rifle through the jungles of Central America. He was a slight, soft-spoken, thoughtful young man. When, at 23, he left the comfort and security of the United States for Nicaragua, he wasn't exactly sure what he would find. . . . But he wanted to see Nicaragua first-hand, and so he headed off, armed with a new degree in engineering, and the energy and ideals of youth. " . . . This wasn't just another death in a war that has claimed thousands of Nicaraguans. This was an American who was killed with weapons paid for with American tax dollars. The bitter irony of Benjamin Linder's death is that he went to Nicaragua to build-up what his own country's dollars paid to destroy -- and ended up a victim of the destruction. . .The loss of Benjamin Linder is more than fodder in an angry political debate. It is the loss of something that seems rare these days: a man with the courage to put his back behind his beliefs. It would have been very easy for this bright, young man to follow the path to a good job and a comfortable salary. Instead, he chose to follow the lead of his conscience."

Ben followed his conscience when he moved to El Cuá, a small village .....

[L. Coyote]

3. Presente!

[bananas]

4. k&r nt