Nicaraguan commandos make getaway
By Stephen Marks
MANAGUA — Hundreds of people waved clenched fists, arms and flags and shouted support as the Dignity and Sovereignty Commandos made their escape from the city. People lined the road while 40 vehicles, including television and radio crews, the police and army, sped along Managua's North Road to the Augusto Sandino Airport.
The commandos left UNO headquarters the morning of August 26, after the last of their right-wing hostages were released, thus ending the crisis that began a week earlier when right-wing recontras seized members of a government peace commission, including prominent Sandinistas.
The commandos were accompanied by negotiators from the Organisation of American States Verification Committee, the Nicaraguan Centre for Human Rights and FSLN leaders Daniel Ortega and Miguel Descoto, who had secured the release of the hostages and guaranteed that the government would abide by its promise of a safe getaway.
The response by onlookers was impressive. At the last traffic lights before the airport, police stopped our vehicle to allow the convoy through. Hanging out of the door of a jeep an obviously elated Commando 31, the leader of the group, sped by and acknowledged the salutes of the bystanders by waving his FAL rifle and smiling broadly.
At the airport the seven commandos posed on the tarmac for a near frantic press before boarding two waiting army helicopters. Commando 31 then flew off to meet with the Revolutionary Front of Workers and Peasants, led by another former Sandinista, Army Major "Pedrito the Honduran".
The rest of the commandos flew to join up with other left-wing forces of the National Urban Resistance Movement based in the government's guaranteed security zones in the mountains in the north.