Red Flag (Bandera Roja) is a former Marxist terrorist insurgent group now active on the center-left of Venezuelan politics. The group split from Venezuela's Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR  --  in English, Movement of the Revolutionary Left) in 1969 or 1970 when the MIR accepted an offer of amnesty from Venezuela's President Caldera and returned to electoral politics. Red Flag, led by Carlos Betancourt and Gabriel Puerta Aponte, remained dedicated to the violent overthrow of the Venezuelan government and its replacement with a Maoist/Communist regime. Red Flag had links with both the Cuban communist regime and other Latin American terrorist groups, particularly Colombia's M-19. M-19 was itself linked to other groups in Colombia, El Salvador, and elsewhere. The group also shared a training facility in Venezuela with Basque separatist group ETA in the early 1980s. <P><br />Red Flag's earliest actions included low-level clashes with the Venezuelan military and police and kidnappings of prominent Venezuelan businessmen. In 1976, the group garnered international attention when it kidnapped William Niehous, an American manager of the Venezuelan division of the Owens-Illinois Glass Company. Niehous remained in Red Flag's custody for more than three years before he was released. Red Flag may also have masterminded a triple airline hijacking in December 1981, although some sources say the hijacking was the work of Punto Cero, another terrorist group. The hijackers claimed the operation was carried out "to alert the Venezuelan people to what is happening in El Salvador," where the United States was supporting the government in a civil war against Marxist rebels. <P><br />In the mid-1980s, government crackdowns began to reduce the footprint of Red Flag. A 1982 clash with government forces saw more than 20 Red Flag members killed. Leader Gabriel Puerta Aponte was arrested in May of that same year. 24 alleged group members were arrested when a cell was broken up in June 1983. Although attacks claimed by or attributed to the group continued, such as twin bombings of a radio station and newspaper office on September 16th, 1984, the group's operational capacity was substantially reduced by the government's campaign. Remnants of the group survived, but Red Flag largely disappeared as a major terrorist organization. <br />