FOUND" HANGED IN CARACAS: JAIL CELL
Fabricio Ojeda, one of the main leaders of the Venezuelan: guerrilla front, was captured by government forces June 17. Four: days later the Leoni regime announced that he had hanged himself: that day in his cell in San Carlos: prison. According to the author= ities, he had used the cord of a venetian blind.
The government story was met with complete disbelief throughout the country. Ojeda was well known for his militancy. He became a legendary: figure when, after being given a 19-year sentence three years ago for guerrilla activities, he bided his time for a. year and then staged a daring and successful prison break.
Ojeda' s friends believe that the Leoni regime did not want to take any more chances with the courageous fighter and they also wanted to make an example. Recently Leoni has been releasing: political opponents who have advocated giving up guerrilla war. Jests Faria, secretary general of the Venezuelan Communist party, as well as Domingo Rangel, former head of the MIR [Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria], who changed their positions on guerrilla war and began arguing against it, were released and went into exile. By murdering Ojeda, the regime not only rid itself of a determined political opponent. but sought to demoralize the fighters who have — upheld guerrilla war as a correct tactical course in seeking freedom for their country from imperialist domination and capitalist-_ landlord rule.
A journalist, Fabricio Ojeda was:one of the main leaders in the uprising. that toppled dictator Pérez Jiménez. The Cuban Revolution exercized a powerful influence ‘én his political views and he moved from the bourgeois Unién Republicana Democraética to the tendency that was to form the MIR. In 1963 he resigned from Con-": gress and joined the guerrilla fighters in the west of Venezuela.
The anger and bitterness of the guerrilla fighters over ‘the fate of Ojeda can be judged from the fact that the day after the authorities announced that he had committed "suicide," two youths opened up with machine guns on a patrol car near Central University in Caracas, killing two policemen.