Before he was a “humble Puerto Rican grandfather,” Oscar López Rivera was the grandaddy of terror.
López Rivera — who Thursday declined to be honored in the Puerto Rican Day Parade and instead said he would march as “humble Puerto Rican and grandfather” — plotted to kill guards and blow up government buildings in an escape scheme from a federal prison where he was doing time for trying to overthrow the US government, according to a 1999 report from the House Government Reform Committee.
First locked up in 1981, Lopez Rivera spent more than two years masterminding a violent plot to escape Kansas’ Leavenworth Penitentiary along with several other members of his Puerto Rican terrorist group FALN.
While imprisoned, López Rivera gave a fellow inmate with connections to weapons smugglers a shopping list that included “fragmentation grenades, smoke grenades, phosphorous grenades, eight M-16 rifles, two silencers, 50 pounds of plastic C-4 explosives, eight bulletproof vests, 10 blasting caps to use with plastic explosives, and 100 30-shot clips for use with automatic weapons,” according to the report.
The plan called for FALN members to shoot guards and lob grenades at guard towers while members on the outside airlifted prisoners out with a helicopter.
Former President Barack Obama in January freed López Rivera, 74.