Lamont and Spencer Freed.

[Sam Pawlett]

Christine Lamont, 39, of Vancouver B.C. and David Spencer, 35, of
Moncton N.B. were given full parole yesterday by the Canadian prison
authorities on the condition that they not associate with groups or
individuals who espouse violence as a means to social revolution. They
had served a little over 10 years of the life sentences they were given
in Brazil for the kidnapping of supermarket magnate Alberto Dinz.They
were released a little over a month after returning to Canada under a
new prisoner exchange treaty signed by the Canadian and Brazilian
governments. The kidnapping was a Chilean MIR operation directed at
raising funds for the FMLN for their 1989 country wide offensive. Later,
Tomas Borge's interior ministry was implicated when an FMLN weapons
cache was discovered in Managua in 1992 that contained false I.D.'s for
Lamont and Spencer. There is some speculation that the operation was
under the direction of Borge's interior ministry as was the Argentinian
EPR operation that elimated Somoza in Asuncion, Paraguay.  The
kidnapping operation was a disaster since it occurred during the 89
Brazilian election campaign. Predictably, the kidnappers were painted as
PT members with one of the accused put on Globo TV with a PT T-shirt on.
The Brazilian right got a lot of political capital out of this. Lula
narrowly lost the election to Collor who was later impeached for
corruption( a friend of a friend's father prosecuted him).

   The others implicated in the kidnapping were; Chilean Miristas Maria
Marchi, engineer, Ulises Gallardo, sociologist, Hector Tapia, mechanic,
Pedro Lembach, economics professor, Sergio Olivares, electrician,
Brazilian Raimundo Freire, and Argentinian EPR leaders Humberto and
Horacio Paz. I do not know what has happened with these revolutionaries
except that there was a lot of talk of sending them back to their home
countries. In an interview in the Jan 9/97 edition of the Chilean
journal Punto Final, Chilean MIR leader Roberto Moreno claimed that the
operation was nicknamed 'Carmelo' and was aimed at securing $US30
million for the Salvadorean FPL. Moreno also had this to say: " Fue un
grave error politico y etico. La idea del secuestro es una infiltarcion
de la mentalidad capitalista en la logica revolutionaria: se coloca un
precio y se cobra por la mercancia. Es el tipo de error en que existe el
mayor vicio ideologico, en toda la histroia de la guerilla
latinoamerica....Justo en el momento en que la Izquierda Brasilena tenia
las mayores posibilidades de victoria. Nuestra accion perjudico
gravemente esa perspectiva y afecto no solo a la Izquierda Brasilena
sino a toda la Izquierda latinoamerica." I hope Lamont and Spencer write
about their experiences and continue their commitment to social change
in L.A. Their experience and dedication is badly needed in the movement
here.

Sam Pawlett