Christine Lamont, 39, of Vancouver B.C. and David Spencer, 35, of Moncton N.B. were given full parole yesterday by the Canadian prison authorities on the condition that they not associate with groups or individuals who espouse violence as a means to social revolution. They had served a little over 10 years of the life sentences they were given in Brazil for the kidnapping of supermarket magnate Alberto Dinz.They were released a little over a month after returning to Canada under a new prisoner exchange treaty signed by the Canadian and Brazilian governments. The kidnapping was a Chilean MIR operation directed at raising funds for the FMLN for their 1989 country wide offensive. Later, Tomas Borge's interior ministry was implicated when an FMLN weapons cache was discovered in Managua in 1992 that contained false I.D.'s for Lamont and Spencer. There is some speculation that the operation was under the direction of Borge's interior ministry as was the Argentinian EPR operation that elimated Somoza in Asuncion, Paraguay. The kidnapping operation was a disaster since it occurred during the 89 Brazilian election campaign. Predictably, the kidnappers were painted as PT members with one of the accused put on Globo TV with a PT T-shirt on. The Brazilian right got a lot of political capital out of this. Lula narrowly lost the election to Collor who was later impeached for corruption( a friend of a friend's father prosecuted him). The others implicated in the kidnapping were; Chilean Miristas Maria Marchi, engineer, Ulises Gallardo, sociologist, Hector Tapia, mechanic, Pedro Lembach, economics professor, Sergio Olivares, electrician, Brazilian Raimundo Freire, and Argentinian EPR leaders Humberto and Horacio Paz. I do not know what has happened with these revolutionaries except that there was a lot of talk of sending them back to their home countries. In an interview in the Jan 9/97 edition of the Chilean journal Punto Final, Chilean MIR leader Roberto Moreno claimed that the operation was nicknamed 'Carmelo' and was aimed at securing $US30 million for the Salvadorean FPL. Moreno also had this to say: " Fue un grave error politico y etico. La idea del secuestro es una infiltarcion de la mentalidad capitalista en la logica revolutionaria: se coloca un precio y se cobra por la mercancia. Es el tipo de error en que existe el mayor vicio ideologico, en toda la histroia de la guerilla latinoamerica....Justo en el momento en que la Izquierda Brasilena tenia las mayores posibilidades de victoria. Nuestra accion perjudico gravemente esa perspectiva y afecto no solo a la Izquierda Brasilena sino a toda la Izquierda latinoamerica." I hope Lamont and Spencer write about their experiences and continue their commitment to social change in L.A. Their experience and dedication is badly needed in the movement here. Sam Pawlett
