Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

MANUEL RODRÍGUEZ PATRIOTIC FRONT • 413put the number at less than 20,000, with command over units contestedby as many as six different leaders. It is believed to have infiltrated thenew Iraqi security forces and to be involved in the widespread murdersand evictions of Sunnis from various majority Shi’ite areas of Baghdadand other cities. U.S. military leaders believe that the Mahdi Armyreceived training and sophisticated armor-penetrating explosives fromIran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Complicating this situationwas the fact that Sadrists were partners in the coalition formingthe new government of Nouri al Maliki, which the U.S. had been seekingto support. From 17 February to 25 May 2007, al Sadr remained inhiding, in anticipation of U.S. efforts to arrest him, and was suspectedto be in Iran during part of that period. When al Sadr emerged in Najafand later addressed about 6,000 followers in al Kufa, he continued todenounce the U.S. presence in Iraq but nonetheless urged his followersto continue to lie low during the U.S. troop surge, which had beenunder way since 14 February 2007.MANUEL RODRÍGUEZ PATRIOTIC FRONT (FPMR). The FrentePatriótico Manuel Rodríguez was the armed wing of the ChileanCommunist Party, formed originally with the aim of overthrowingthe Augusto Pinochet regime by urban guerrilla warfare. One of itsfactions, the Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez Disidentes (FPMR-D), continued to seek the overthrow of the post-Pinochet democraticChilean government. The group relied on bombings and assassinationsdirected at the Chilean government and police targets, formerPinochet regime officials, and the U.S. diplomatic and economicpresence in Chile. Although the group first appeared only in 1983,it had access to impressive quantities of high-quality weapons andexplosives and was very well organized. Apparently it enjoyed materialassistance from Cuba and other Communist states. The FPMRrecruited its members from Chilean Communist activists who hadfled during the Pinochet period but who became actively engaged inthe Nicaraguan revolution and in the later conflict in El Salvador asmembers of the Chilean Battalion. The leader of the Chilean Battalion,Raul Pellgrín Friedman, later became leader of the FPMR.In the period 1983–1985 the FPMR conducted simultaneous bombingcampaigns in the eight largest cities in Chile, including higheryieldattacks on power substations, an attack on the U.S.-ChileanCultural Institute in Valparaíso on 7 August 1984, and a car bombing