Former DePaul professor guilty in bomb plot
By Teresa Puente
Tribune Staff Writer

Información enviada al Director de Tlahui. Puerto Rico 13 Mar 1999. A former DePaul University professor was found guilty this afternoon on charges that he planned and carried out a bombing outside a military recruiting center on Chicago's Northwest Side in 1992.

The former professor, José Solis Jordan, was found guilty on four counts -- conspiracy, attempted destruction of government property, destruction of government property and possession on illegal explosives. He could be sentenced to between five and six years.

The trial was in the Chicago courtroom of U.S. District Judge Blanche M. Manning, who also ruled that Solis will remain in custody until his July 7 sentencing date. Solis was accused of carrying out the bombing with a group called the Frente Revolucionario Boricua, which prosecutors called a terrorist cell that operated in Chicago in support of independence for Puerto Rico, a U.S. commonwealth. No one was hurt in the blast.

Solis and his attorneys denied that he had anything to do with the bombing and said the trial was an attempt by the FBI to discredit the Puerto Rican independence movement. While he supports independence, Solis said that does not make him a "terrorist."

Solis also said the government wanted Solis to implicate José LÓPEZ, director of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, in the bombing.

"It's what I said all along, an attempt to try to get other people and to use me," Solis said while waiting for the verdict. "The (FBI) told me you are all alone when they arrested me. They said you help us and we will make all of this disappear."

But during the two-week trial, three FBI agents testified that Solis confessed to them after he was arrested in Puerto Rico in November 1997. Eight FBI agents testified that they never heard Solis ask for an attorney. Solis testified that he never confessed and that he repeatedly asked for a lawyer. Defense lawyer Jed Stone pointed out that Solis never signed a confession, nor did he write his own confession.

The case has been closely watched in the Puerto Rican community where the political status and future of the island has long been debated. Almost every day of the trial the courtroom has been packed with Solis' supporters. "I will continue to struggle whether it be from behind a desk at the University of Puerto Rico or at home with my family, or whether it be from behind prison bars," Solis said before the jury came back with a verdict.

"I am a free man. They can't take that away from me."
Copyright Chicago Tribune (c) 1999.

From: National Committee to Free Puerto Rican Prisoners prpowpp@aol.com
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