American Notes Puerto Rico

When Puerto Rican police gunned down two radical supporters of independence in 1978, the executions kicked off a scandal that helped bring down a Governor and resulted in the convictions of ten policemen for perjury. Last week in San Juan, U.S. District Court Judge Carmen C. Cerezo sentenced former Police Agent Luis Reveron Martinez to the maximum 25 years. A witness has accused Reveron Martinez of killing one of the independentistas with a twelve- gauge shotgun as the victim knelt before him. Earlier three other policemen had each received 20-to 30-year prison sentences.

The former lawmen, and six others who will be sentenced in the next two weeks, were convicted of lying to federal grand juries investigating the killings, which occurred when police were staking out a mountaintop television tower threatened with sabotage. The officers are also facing murder charges in a trial scheduled to start in August. During their perjury trial, they insisted that they had been fighting for democracy and against Communism. Former Governor Carlos Romero Barcelo, who had at first called the policemen "heroes," then reversed himself as they began to confess, was defeated in last November's election, in part because of the public outcry over the handling of the case.