August 19, 1984

PUERTO RICO CASE STIRS NEW APPEAL

(SAN JUAN, P.R.)  The Commonwealth Senate and professional organizations here have asked that the Federal authorities find out why two Justice Department investigations failed to solve a case in which two advocates of independence for Puerto Rico were shot by the police.

The demands arose after a former president of the Puerto Rico Bar Association, Noel Colon Martinez, released memorandums from
the Federal Bureau of Investigation that recommended that the deaths of Carlos Soto Arrivi, 18 years old, and Arnaldo Dario Rosado,
24, not be investigated.

They were killed July 25, 1978, on the top of a mountain, Cerro Maravilla, where they were said to have gone to sabatoge a
commercial television station's relay transmission tower.

For five years, Gov. Carlos Romero Barcelo has defended the Police Department's version, that the men were killed after ignoring an
order to surrender and trying to shoot their way out.

Alejandro Gonzalez Malave, a police undercover agent, accompanied the young men on their trip to the mountain. The police were
waiting.

The police said that after the two young men stepped out of a taxi they had commandeered, they defied an order to surrender and
opened fire.

Doubts were raised after Mr. Soto's body was found, covered with bruises. The owner of the taxi, Julio Ortiz Molina, said he saw
both young men, alive, being beaten by the police, and then heard shots after he was taken from the scene.

F.B.I. Memos Sent to U.S.

As part of activities commemorating the sixth anniversary of the shooting, Mr. Colon Martinez of the bar association released the
memorandums from the F.B.I. office in San Juan. The documents, sent to Washington, asked that the police version be accepted and
the driver's accounts ignored.

A memorandum dated July 31, 1978, from John J. Hinchcliff, the agent in charge of the bureau's San Juan office, read: ''While it is
bureau policy to initiate a civil rights investigation when information of a possible violation comes to the attention of a division through
the media, nevertheless the following circumstances indicate a situation where an exception should be made.''

It added that ''certain newspaper reporters'' had interviewed the driver and said: ''Some statements attributed to this individual have
appeared in the local press which tend to portray the police action in an unfavorable light. The clear intent of these reports has been to
imply that the police acted improperly and with undue harshness.''

Federal Inquiry Is Begun

Tomas Stella, a reporter for the San Juan Star, interviewed Mr. Ortiz Molina and found witnesses who said they had heard two volleys
of shots. The civil rights division of the Justice Department began an investigation in 1979.

The F.B.I. did the field work, but the investigation was suspended in early 1980 for lack of evidence. It was reopened after a police
officer said he would tell the truth. It was terminated after he failed lie detector tests, the Federal authorities said.

Mr. Colon Martinez said the bureau had sabotaged the Justice Department investigation because it had been involved in the Cerro
Maravilla operation. Efforts to obtain comment from Mr. Hinchcliff were unavailing.

The Puerto Rican Senate, controlled by the opposition Popular Democratic Party, opened public hearings on the controversy last year.
In November, three officers granted immunity testified that Mr. Soto and Mr. Rosado had surrendered unscathed after a brief
exchange of gunfire, and then were shot.

The civil rights division opened a new investigation that led to the indictments of 10 officers for perjury, conspiracy and obstruction of
justice. The 10 could not be indicted on a Federal civil rights charge because a five-year statute of limitations had run out.

Governor Changes Stand

After the three officers testified, Governor Romero Barcelo, a member of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, dropped
opposition to the Commonwealth Senate hearings and said he would go along with a Senate plan to name a special independent
prosecutor. But he and the Senate could not agree on how much authority the prosecutor should have.

Arturo Negron Garcia, the president of the bar association, said it would look into the possibility that Hector M. Laffitte, a lawyer who
had represented the policemen and is now a Federal district judge, had violated the bar's code of ethics.

An F.B.I. memorandum published by The Star Tuesday said that in November 1980 Mr. Laffitte told the F.B.I. he had ''personal
knowledge'' that a police lieutenant who had said it was an unnecessary killing had been motivated to change his mind by an offer of a
promotion to captain by the opposition Popular Democratic Party.

In an interview, Judge Laffitte said he could not remember the conversation with the F.B.I. agents.

Among other appeals to the United States authorities, the Puerto Rico Policemen's Association has asked Senator Strom Thurmond,
chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that the committee investigate the failure of the Federal investigations.