José Luis Merino o "Ramiro"
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- Messages in the computer of a Colombian guerrilla leader suggest Jose Luis Merino, a senior figure in El Salvador's main opposition party and a supporter of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, may have helped the guerrillas try to procure weapons for use in their battle to overthrow the Colombian government.Emails found in the computer of Raul Reyes after he was killed by Colombian forces in March say someone in El Salvador code named "Ramiro" helped the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or the FARC, contact two Australian arms dealers.Senior Colombian, Salvadoran and U.S. officials say the Ramiro cited in the emails is Mr. Merino. During El Salvador's civil war in the 1980s, Mr. Merino led the Communist Party's guerrilla contingent and was known by his nom de guerre, Ramiro Vasquez. In El Salvador, Mr. Merino is still known as Ramiro.Mr. Merino, 55 years old, is considered the dominant force in the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, a party that evolved from the Marxist guerrilla groups that battled the U.S.-backed El Salvador government for more than a decade in one of the world's bloodiest Cold War battlegrounds.Mr. Merino, who has given only a handful of interviews in his political career, declined to comment. Mauricio Funes, the FMLN candidate in the March 2009 presidential elections, said Mr. Merino had assured him he had nothing to do with the FARC, which is considered a terrorist group by the U.S. and the European Union. "There is no reason why I shouldn't believe him," said Mr. Funes, a former news broadcaster who is leading in opinion polls against the candidate of the ruling right-wing Arena party.Mr. Merino has also forged an alliance with Venezuelan President Chavez, whose ambition is to add El Salvador to a bloc of Latin American countries -- Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua -- that view Washington with suspicion and are tightly allied with Caracas.In 2005, Mr. Merino told the online newspaper El Faro that El Salvador should model itself after Mr. Chavez's Venezuela. He spoke with longing about the vanished Soviet Union, which he called "one of the most just" political systems on earth.In 2006, Mr. Merino helped negotiate a deal with Mr. Chavez under which mayors from the FMLN in El Salvador get cut-rate diesel from Venezuela's state oil company. The deal allows the FMLN, which now sells about 20% of the diesel fuel sold in the country, to sell the fuel at 30 cents a gallon less than other dealers -- and possibly win the hearts of voters.U.S. and Salvadoran officials say they fear the deal also provides the FMLN with cash it can plough into the 2009 election. In February, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell warned Congress that Mr. Chavez will provide "generous campaign funding" to the FMLN this year."Chavez . . . sees the potential of an FMLN win as an important step forward," a senior U.S. official said. An increase in Mr. Chavez's regional influence would be a setback for the U.S., since Mr. Chavez opposes free markets and is urging the region to turn its back on the U.S.Since March, intelligence analysts in Colombia and elsewhere have been poring over the thousands of documents recovered from the late Mr. Reyes's computers. The documents indicate a wide network of support for the guerrillas and a close alliance between the FARC and Mr. Chavez, who emails indicate offered the FARC money, arms and diplomatic support. At first, Mr. Chavez said the documents were fabrications, but he soon changed his rhetoric and called on the guerrillas to disarm. Interpol and U.S. intelligence services said the documents are genuine.The FARC computer documents, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, include an email written in September by Ivan Marquez, the guerrillas' main contact with the Venezuelan government. In the email, Mr. Marquez says he met two Australian arms dealers "thanks to Ramiro (Salvador).""The friends of Ramiro," writes Mr. Marquez, "have everything we need at very favorable prices: rifles, PKM machine guns, Russian Drugunovs with sights for snipers . . . and missiles. Everything Russian and Chinese made. . . . They have a thermobaric grenade that destroys everything in closed spaces, (like the bombs the gringos use against al Qaeda hiding places) for $800." Also available, according to the email: the latest Chinese ground-to-air missiles, at $93,000 each.It is unclear whether the weapons deal, which was to have gone through Venezuela, was consummated. The email did not name the Australian dealers.The documents could complicate the FMLN's campaign to convince voters it has left behind its violent past. Already the governing Arena party has seized on the issue, which came to light shortly after the computer was found in March."We are worried about the FMLN's involvement in the arms trade," El Salvador President Tony Saca said in an interview. "We are talking about the most important person in that party," he said, referring to Mr. Merino. El Salvador's attorney general is probing the allegations, he said.Mr. Merino, the son of a farm foreman, joined the Communist Party's youth wing, studied intelligence at an elite Soviet military academy and guerrilla warfare in Cuba, former guerrillas say. During the war, the Russian-speaking Mr. Merino fielded some 400 fighters on volcano slopes near the capital. There, he demonstrated his penchant for secrecy. When a television news crew showed up in 1991, Mr. Merino sent a lieutenant to play the role of commander while he looked on a short distance away, a former guerrilla recalls.Mr. Merino also commanded urban cells that carried out assassinations and kidnappings of high-level Salvadoran officials, according to other guerrillas and former Salvadoran security officials. The guerrillas demobilized after a 1992 peace deal, ending a war that claimed more than 75,000 lives. But the Communist Party kept Mr. Merino's network of safe houses intact and continued to kidnap for ransom, intelligence officials and former guerrillas say.In 1995, kidnappers grabbed 15-year-old Andres Suster, the son of a prominent businessman, and kept him in a tiny underground chamber for 354 days before his father secured his release by paying a $150,000 ransom. Raul Granillo, Mr. Merino's top lieutenant during the war, was convicted in absentia for that kidnapping as well as two others.According to Salvadoran intelligence reports and former security officials, El Salvador's security agencies have believed since then that Mr. Merino was one of the masterminds behind the abductions. He was never charged. Former officials involved in the investigation say the probe was stymied by pro-FMLN judges. A witness was murdered days after agreeing to testify against FMLN leaders, the officials say.Over the years, Mr. Merino apparently kept contact with the FARC, emails indicate. Mr. Reyes recounts a visit in 2005 from Ramiro, who boasts that he has gained full control of the FMLN and reoriented the party to "the conquest of real power."Emails indicate the two organizations were pursuing joint ventures. A 2003 email from Mr. Reyes appears to propose a joint kidnapping operation in Panama, to fund the FMLN's 2004 presidential campaign. "We can suggest they gather intelligence on an economic target in Panama for 10 or 20 million dollars that we can do jointly and split the profits down the middle," the email says. There is no record of such a kidnapping taking place at the time.A 2004 email written by an unknown FARC official tells of a meeting in Caracas with Ramiro and a Belgian associate about the possibility of the FMLN and the FARC obtaining, through front companies, Venezuelan government contracts in areas including waste management and tourism. "We agreed to split the profits, between . . . FMLN, the Belgians, and us," the FARC official wrote.In El Salvador, intelligence officials say, Mr. Merino oversees Capsa, a company that operates the country's second-largest landfill and has garbage-removal contracts with 52 municipalities. The officials say Capsa is used to generate revenue for the FMLN's political campaigns.Capsa's director is Mr. Merino's half-brother, Sigfredo Merino, 40. The younger Merino said his brother isn't involved with Capsa and the business does not fund the FMLN.Orlando Mena, the mayor of Santa Ana, El Salvador's second-largest city, disagrees. Mr. Mena says Jose Luis Merino sought him out in 2003, when the mayor was a member of the FMLN, to renew Santa Ana's $1 million garbage contract. "He said 15% would go to the FMLN," Mr. Mena says. "He told me it was the municipality's contribution to the party."Mr. Mena did not renew. Shortly after, he was drummed out of the party. "In the FMLN, they do what Ramiro says," Mr. Mena says.(The Wall Street Journal, 28 August 2008).