October 21, 1984

PUERTO RICAN GOVERNOR SEEN AS HURT BY OFFICERS' ARREST

(SAN JUAN, P.R.)  A six- year-old controversy surrounding the deaths of two young radicals at the hands of the police is causing problems for the  re-election campaign of Gov. Carlos Romero Barcelo as it did in 1980.

The two radical advocates of independence for Puerto Rico, Carlos Soto Arrivi, 18 years old, and Arnaldo Dario Rosado, 24, were
killed July 25, 1978, on a mountaintop called Cerro Maravilla, Marvelous Mountain, where they allegedly planned to sabotage a
commercial television station's relay tower.

Accompanying the radicals on the mission was an undercover agent, Alejandro Gonzalez Malave, who had alerted the police to the
reported plot. According to the official Government accounts, the police staked out the area and were forced to kill Mr. Soto and Mr.
Rosado when they refused to obey an order to surrender and attempted to shoot it out.

Armed Men Approached Taxi

Two days later, Governor Romero Barcelo referred to the police action in a televised address as ''heroic.'' The same day, however, an
English-language newspaper, The San Juan Star, published an interview with Julio Ortiz Molina, a taxi driver who had been abducted
by the radicals and the undercover agent. Mr. Ortiz Molina contended that he ducked under the dashboard of the car after the three
men left the car and he saw ''10 heavily armed men'' approaching.

When he emerged from the car, he said, he saw the three men alive and two of them were being beaten by the armed men, who were
later identified as policemen.

Mr. Romero Barcelo ordered two investigations by the Justice Department. The investigations cleared the police despite glaring
inconsistencies in the police account. The opposition parties insisted that the investigations were coverups and demanded that a special
prosecutor be named to investigate.

The United States Justice Department also investigated the incident on two occasions but suspended the inquiries for lack of evidence.

On July 25, the sixth anniversary of the incident, a series of internal Federal Bureau of Investigation memorandums were released that
showed the local bureau office did not want the case investigated.

F.B.I. Accepted Police Account

The San Juan F.B.I. office accepted the police contention that the two radicals were killed by the police acting in self-defense. One of
the memorandums stated that the controversy was being fanned by pro-independence elements in the press trying to cause
''embarrassment to the pro-statehood government'' of Mr. Romero Barcelo, the head of the New Progressive Party.

The Governor rejected demands that he name a special prosecutor to investigate the case. He contended that the local and Federal
investigations had proved the police fired in self-defense.

On election night of 1980, when the preliminary results were too close to say whether he had won or lost, Governor Romero Barcelo
blamed his poor showing on the ''defamation campaign'' carried out against him over what had become known as the Cerro Maravilla
case.

Weeks later he was proclaimed the winner by a 3,000-vote margin but his party lost control of the Legislature to the opposition
Popular Democratic Party.

Senate Opened an Inquiry

Migul Hernandez Agosto, the president of the Senate, ordered an investigation of the Cerro Maravilla. In November, three police
officers who testified after receiving immunity from prosecution, said that the two radicals had been shot by a police firing squad as
they were on their knees pleading for mercy.

Governor Romero Barcelo later announced that the Commonwealth Justice Department would carry out a criminal investigation of the
police action.

Friday, the Commonwealth Justice Department filed first-degree murder charges against eight former policemen in the shooting. Two
others are expected to be indicted next week.

The president of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, Ruben Berrios, called the indictments a desparate effort by Governor Romero
Barcelo to rescue his flagging campaign.

Rafael Hernandez Colon, the Popular Democratic Party candidate for Governor, expressed the fear that Mr. Romero Barcelo was
attempting to defuse the issue before the November elections, and that a poor case would be presented after the elections so that the
police would be absolved.

More Public Hearings Set

Meanwhile, the top investigator for the Senate panel, Hector Rivera Cruz, kept trying to determine who had ordered the coverup. And
the criticism of Governor Romero Barcelo was overshadowed by an announcement by Mr. Hernandez Agosto, a Popular Democrat,
that the Senate would hold public hearings on the coverup phase of its investigation Monday.

The resurgence of the case so close to the election campaign is expected to further strain Mr. Romero Barcelo's campaign, which has
also been marred by charges of corruption made by witnesses at legislative hearings. It is the consensus of most political leaders that
the Governor is now the underdog in the four-candidate race. Those sharing that belief are Mr. Berrios of the Puerto Rico
Independence Party as well as Mayor Hernan Padilla of San Juan, a member of the Puerto Rican Renewal Party.