Arocena, Eduardo (1943-)

Eduardo Arocena was the leader of the anticommunist Cuban terror group Omega 7, which carried out several attacks against Cuban government officials in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Born in Cuba in 1943, Arocena fled that country in 1965 as a stowaway on a cargo boat to Spain. He later immigrated to the United States, where he worked as a dockworker in Union City, New Jersey. A fervent anticommunist, Arocena soon became involved in the movement to overthrow Fidel Castro, Cuba's Communist dictator. In the early 1970s, Arocena came to feel that the existing anti-Castro groups were doing too little to actively attack the Castro regime. With the support of the larger organizations, he began to recruit a small elite force to carry out assassinations and bombings against those deemed to be pro-Castro.

Founded on September 11, 1974, Arocena's group became known as Omega 7, after the original number of members. The organization seems to have had no more than 20 members at any time. Omega 7 received funds from Cuban businessmen and by conducting surveillance and other activities for a wealthy Cuban marijuana trafficker, though the group did not aid in the actual selling or transport of drugs. The FBI found the group extremely difficult to penetrate—for several years, the FBI thought “Omega 7” was merely a cover name for the larger Cuban Nationalist Movement (CNM), an impression that the CNM actively fostered.

Omega 7 carried out its first attacks on February 1, 1975, bombing the Venezuelan consulate in New York City. Over the next seven years, its targets included Soviet businesses and ships, Latin American embassies, and pro-Castro Cuban exiles and businesses in New York, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and Florida. In the more than 30 attacks attributed to Omega 7, two people were killed and a few were injured, though property damage was extensive. Its most devastating attacks were against the Cuban Mission to the United Nations. On March 25, 1980, [Page 66]the group attached a radio-controlled bomb to the car of Dr. Raul Roa Kouri, the Cuban ambassador to the United Nations. While he was parking the car, the device was jostled loose from the undercarriage, and Arocena decided not to detonate it. On September 11, 1980, an Omega 7 gunman killed a Cuban attaché, Felix Garcia Rodriguez.

FBI agents investigating the attacks on the consulate approached Arocena, asking for information about the group's activities. Apparently convinced that his comrades were informing on him in an attempt to oust him from the leadership, Arocena submitted to an interview by the FBI, in which he admitted to being “Omar,” his nom de guerre as Omega 7's leader, and implicated himself and several colleagues in the murder of Rodriguez and the attempted murder of Doctor Kouri.

After five days, Arocena fled New York for Miami, where he resumed his anti-Castro activities. Found and arrested on July 22, 1983, Arocena was tried in New York for murder and attempted murder; in addition, he was twice tried in Miami for charges relating to the hundreds of pounds of weapons and explosives seized from his Florida apartment. Found guilty in all three of his trials, he is currently serving a life sentence in federal prison.

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