La Penca bombing

A press conference had been arranged in the guerrilla outpost of La Penca by Pastora, a former Sandinista who had switched allegiance to the Contras. The press conference took place in an enclosed hut on stilts, near the northern bank of the San Juan River, which separates Costa Rica from Nicaragua. The press conference had been convened by Contra officials in the Costa Rican capital of San José, and the journalists arrived to La Penca in the middle of the night after traveling all day over land and by canoe from San José. Because of the late hour, Pastora initially asked for the press conference to start in the morning, but as the reporters began peppering the guerrilla leader with questions, an impromptu press conference began, and the reporters and television news crews gathered with Pastora around a chest-high table situated in the main room of the hut.

The bomb is believed to have been hidden in an aluminum camera case and planted by an individual carrying a stolen Danish passport. According to witnesses, the bomber used the name "Per Anker Hansen" and claimed to be a Danish photographer.[2]

Afterwards, bombing survivors commented that they found it odd that "Hansen" had so zealouly guarded his "camera equipment" by wrapping the unwieldy aluminum box in plastic. "Hansen" is believed to have deposited the camera case containing the bomb under the table. News footage later showed the suspected bomber gesturing to his camera, as if to indicate an equipment malfunction as a pretext to leave the room. The bomber is suspected to have detonated the bomb remotely using a Walkie-Talkie signal as a detonator. Seconds after "Hansen" left the room, an explosion ripped through the hut, which left the injured and dying crying out in pain and calling for help in sudden darkness.

Those killed in the bombing were an American journalist, Linda Frazier; a Costa Rican cameraman, Jorge Quiros; his assistant, Evelio Sequeira; and four rebels.

Also, Pastora was seriously injured in both legs. About a dozen other people were seriously injured.[1]

The bombing led to an investigation by Tony Avirgan, an American journalist injured in the bombing, and his wife, Martha Honey. Both concluded that the CIA was responsible.[3] In 1986, the Christic Institute filed a $24 million lawsuit on their behalf against several individuals all associated with Oliver North, including Rob Owen, John Hull, Richard Secord, Albert Hakim, and Thomas Clines.[3] However, the case was thrown out in June 1988, and the Christic Institute was ordered to pay approximately $1 million in costs to the defendants.[4]

In 1990, the government of Costa Rica accused the CIA of orchestrating the bombing by two intermediaries. Charges of murder were laid against Felipe Vidal, a Cuban-American, and John Hull, an American farmer who lived in Costa Rica at the time[2] and had been previously named in the Christic Institute lawsuit.[4]

In 1993, Miami Herald reporter Juan Tamayo and Doug Vaughn, a freelance journalist working for the Christic Institute, established the identity of the alleged bomber to be an Argentine lefitist named Vital Roberto Gaguine, who had worked with the Sandinista militia in the early 1980s. Tamayo got a tip from a former member of Argentina's People's Revolutionary Army, who defected and was living in Europe and recognized news photographs of "Per Anker Hansen" to be a former member of the leftist group. Around the same time, Vaughn unearthed a photo of "Hansen" along with a right thumbprint from Panamanian government files. Argentine journalists obtained fingerprints of Gaguine from Argentine authorities and Vaughn and Tamayo took the two sets of prints to a fingerprint expert in Miami, who found a perfect match. Vaughn showed newsphotos of Gaguine to the alleged bomber's brother and father who confirmed the identification. According to Argentine journalists cited by Tamayo, Gaguine was among a group of guerrillas who died in an attack on the Argentine military base of La Tablada in 1989.[5] However, in 2008, Costa Rica's chief prosecutor who saw Gaguine's file in Buenos Aires said that Argentine authorities never made a positive identification of Gaguine's body and that the case remains open.[6] The association between the perpetrator and the FSLN led Tamayo to conclude that the Sandinistas were solely responsible.[2] In an article in The Nation, Tony Avirgan concurred.[7]

In 2009, Swedish journalist and La Penca survivor Peter Torbiörnsson broke 25 years of silence to reveal that he knew in advance of "Hansen"'s connection to the Sandinistas. He reported that he was introduced to the bomber in Managua by the Chief of Sandinista intelligence, a Cuban named Renan Montero. Torbiörnsson took "Hansen" under his wing and provided journalistic cover as the two traveled throughout northern Costa Rica in search of Pastora. The Swede, who admitted sympathy with the Sandinista cause, said that he suspected his travel companion was a spy but that he had no idea he was an assassin. Even as journalists and news organizations spent years trying to crack the La Penca mystery, Torbiörnsson kept silent about his knowledge of the bomber's Sandinista connection. However, tormented by the idea that he had been used as an unwitting accomplice to a terrorist attack, Torbiörnsson finally broke his silence by traveling to Managua in January 2009, to present an accusation before Nicaraguan police authorities pointing to Montero, former Sandinista Minister of Interior Comandante Tomás Borge and Lenín Cerna, ex-chief of state security as intellectual authors of the attack.[8]

In 2011, Torbiörnsson released a documentary film, Last Chapter, Goodbye Nicaragua, which premiered in the DocsBarcelona International Film Festival and renewed his accusation that Sandinista leaders Borge, Cerna, and Montero ordered the bombing. Torbiörnsson also claimed that Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega admitted to him five years after the attack that the bombing had been orchestrated by his government but that Ortega later chose to cover it up and buy Pastora's silence and co-operation in exchange for a position within the second Sandinista administration.[9]

• La Penca: Thirty years later (Tico Times article on the 30th anniversary of the bombing)