Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

MARXIST-LENINIST ARMED PROPAGANDA UNIT • 417the National Liberation Action. He was killed in a police ambush on4 November 1969, and the group he helped found was smashed byBrazilian security forces within a year of his death.MARTYRS’ AVENGING COMMANDO (COVEMA). The Comandode Vengadores de Mártires (Martyrs’ Avenging Commando),was a Chilean pro-state death squad that attacked andsometimes killed suspected leftists or other opponents of the Pinochetregime. In August 1980 about 14 people were seized by theCOVEMA, which was formed following the 15 July 1980 assassinationof Colonel Roger Vergara, director of the Army IntelligenceSchool, by members of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left(MIR). Two of those whom they captured in downtown Santiagoincluded Guillermo Hormazábal, the director of Radio Chilena, andMario Romero, the head of Radio Presidente Ibañez. Both werereleased, but Eduardo Jara, a journalism student from CatholicUniversity, was tortured so badly that he later died. According toa former COVEMA member, Celso Eduardo Quitero Martinez, thegroup had been formed by General Ernesto Baeza, then directorgeneral of the investigative services, specifically to target thoseresponsible for the assassination of Vergara and disbanded shortlyafter accomplishing this goal.Another related group was the Gamma Commando, which murderedthe artist Hugo Riveros Gómez, a member of the MIR who hadbeen detained from November 1980 to March 1981 by the CentralNacional de Informaciones (CNI), or National Intelligence Center.After his release, he sketched from memory the faces of the agentswho had interrogated him and attempted to send the sketches to comradesabroad. After CNI agents intercepted this mail, he was killedalong with Oscar Polanco, another MIR member.The Eleventh of September Commando allegedly killed four leftistsin reprisal for the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front’s (FPMR)attempted assassination of General Augusto Pinochet on 7 September1986. This Commando also assassinated Jécar Neghme, the leader inexile of the MIR, on 4 September 1989.MARXIST-LENINIST ARMED PROPAGANDA UNIT (MLAPU).The Marksist Leninist Silahli Propaganda Birligi (Marxist-LeninistArmed Propaganda Unit) was a nonstate group seeking to overthrowthe Turkish Republic in favor of a Communist state. It was founded