Thousands attend funeral of fugitive

NAGUABO, Puerto Rico -- Thousands of mourners attended the funeral Tuesday of a fugitive Puerto Rican nationalist killed in a shootout with the FBI, an incident that has shocked this island territory and stoked anger against the U.S. government.

About 5,000 people crowded into a cemetery to pay tribute to Filiberto Ojeda Rios, who was killed Friday by FBI agents who came to arrest him at his farmhouse in the town of Hormigueros for the 1983 armed robbery of a Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Conn.

Cries of "FBI assassin!" and "Unity, Unity!" rose up as mourners followed the hearse carrying Ojeda Rios's body from San Juan to the cemetery in his hometown of Naguabo in southeastern Puerto Rico.

The shooting has triggered an angry backlash against the U.S. government. The militant nationalist group he led, the Macheteros, or Cane Cutters, vowed to avenge his Ojeda Rios' death.

The FBI said it was requesting a Justice Department investigation because Puerto Rico's government made allegations about the bureau's handling of the incident.

The FBI statement did not specify who fired first, but agents agents said Saturday that 72-year-old Ojeda Rios fired first. But his wife, Elma Beatriz Rosado Barbosa, who emerged unharmed from the shootout, said the FBI fired first.

Independence activists see Ojeda Rios as a martyr whose death will re-energize their splintered movement. A group of men took down the U.S. flag in front of the legislative building Tuesday and replaced it with the green banner of the Macheteros.