Pubdate: Sun, 10 Apr 2005
Source: Greensboro News & Record (NC)
Copyright: 2005 Greensboro News & Record, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.news-record.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/173
Author: Taft Wireback, Staff Writer

INDICTED MECHANIC 'HERO' IN DRUG WAR

GREENSBORO -- Percy A. Vega, the aircraft mechanic, is biding his time
these days in the Guilford County jail in High Point awaiting trial in
U.S. Middle District Court.

But 20 years ago, he was Percy A. Vega, commandante in the Peruvian
naval air forces and an ally in the United States' efforts to wipe out
the cocaine trade in his homeland.

Vega ranked as "one of the best friends" the U.S. government had in
Peru at that time; his exploits against narcoterrorists won praise
from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Embassy in
Peru and the Peruvian government, said Creighton Dennis, then a
narcotics officer with the U.S. Embassy.

"While I don't know the full circumstances of Mr. Vega's arrest, I
hope this sheds some light on his pro-American feelings and may be
taken into account at his trial," Dennis said.

Vega's daughter, Lisseth Mocoso, disputes the government's contention
that her father is an illegal immigrant who falsified his application
for a mechanical license from the Federal Aviation
Administration.

"I have all the proof that he did get the license and met all the
requirements of the FAA," said Mocoso, 26, a legal permanent resident
of the United States. "He is a smart man who maybe has done too much
for the U.S. government and so, now, this is how they are paying him
back."

Vega was arrested a month ago in a sting led by the U.S. Bureau of
Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the TIMCO aviation maintenance
plant at Piedmont Triad International Airport. Of 24 people arrested
on immigration charges, he is among the two or three facing the most
serious charges.

Vega, now 53, risked life and limb during the mid-1980s to save a DEA
agent and some Peruvian forces who were pinned down by armed drug
traffickers, said Dennis, who now lives in Nassau, Bahamas.

"Cmdr. Vega organized a rescue mission to relieve the DEA and Peruvian
personnel who were under attack from narcoterrorists," Dennis said.
"Under fire and at great personal risk, Cmdr. Vega and his crew landed
the aircraft, set up a defensive perimeter and rescued the DEA and
Peruvian personnel."

For his efforts, Vega ended up with a price on his head by Colombian
"narcotraffickers" and other terrorists, including the Maoist Shining
Path insurgents, he said.

Mocoso, who lives in northern Virginia, said that is a key reason her
family left Lima, Peru, in the early 1990s. A background check by the
News & Record showed that Vega's first known address in this country
was 11 years ago in Miami on Southwest 107th Avenue.

"His life was threatened," she said. "Due to what? All this that he
had done for the United States. They said they were going to come after us."

"It all happened in a weekend," said Mocoso, who was 14 or 15 at the
time. "We woke up one Saturday morning. He said, 'We're going to take
a long, long trip. We're going to see Mickey Mouse.' "

A grand jury indicted Vega on March 28 allegations he lied to the FAA
about having experience with complex repairs on three types of jets
commonly used in passenger service.

He is accused of exaggerating his experience so he could take the test
for the FAA's airframe and powerplant license, commonly called the
A&P, which allows a mechanic to work on the more complex mechanical
parts of an airplane.

Vega also is charged with possessing a counterfeit Social Security
card and a fake green card when he was taken into custody March 8.

TIMCO said Vega did not use his license to work on those components
during the five years he worked there. He worked in the interiors
shop, which focuses on seating and other aspects of the areas occupied
by passengers and crew, the company said.

Vega's lawyer, Walter L. Jones of Greensboro, declined to comment on
the case.

In a recent telephone interview, Dennis, the former embassy narcotics
officer, said he is available to testify on Vega's behalf.

Dennis said he met Vega in 1982 when he was first sent to Peru to help
curb the production of coca leaf in the country's Upper Huallaga
Valley. Vega provided naval infantry escorts as U.S. government
photographers documented reductions in the crop, he said.

Vega's efforts brought him to the attention of Colombian drug
traffickers and two Peruvian terrorist groups, the Shining Path and
the MRTA, Dennis said. They put a $10,000 bounty on his head, he said.

Later, Dennis worked with Vega as U.S. advisers helped the Peruvian
military "in jungle raids against cocaine labs," Dennis said.

In one of those raids, narcoterrorists shot down a helicopter with a
rocket-propelled grenade, triggering a gunbattle that Vega and his
troops broke up, he said. After that, the bounty on Vega was increased
to $50,000, Dennis said.

Because of that, Vega sought political asylum in the United States but
was denied for reasons that Mocoso, Vega's daughter, said were never
clarified.

The charges against him say that Vega left the United States
voluntarily in late 1999, returning to Peru before re-entering this
country on a work visa good through November 2002. But Vega didn't
leave, instead continuing to work at TIMCO.

He recently married a legal permanent resident and, because of that,
was seeking to have his immigration status changed at the time of his
arrest, Mocoso said.

She said that as a result of that application, her father had obtained
a permit from immigration authorities that entitled him to work here
through September. A spokesman for the federal office of Citizenship
and Immigration Services said that could be true, but it doesn't
necessarily mean Vega was using the permit in a legal way.

Mocoso has a thick file detailing her father's past, including letters
of commendation about Commandante Vega from the U.S. Embassy in Peru
to his superiors, which she intends to employ if Vega faces trial.

The file also includes letters of recommendation to the FAA from other
A&P license holders attesting to his expertise working "in all phases
of structural repair," as one puts it, on a variety of planes. The
paper trail dates to a letter from the captain of a Peruvian navy
aviation-maintenance hub where Vega apparently was posted in the late
1980s.

Manny Van Pelt, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security, said it is impossible to speculate on the relative
uniqueness of Vega's story of drug-war heroics among the hundreds the
federal agency has arrested on immigration charges in its continuing
crackdown in the aviation industry.

All have their unique stories to tell, said Van Pelt, whose department
includes agencies involved in the investigation at TIMCO.

But if it comes to a trial, federal prosecutors will contend that
Vega's letters of recommendation were inaccurate, that he knew it and
that he admitted as much after his arrest.

However it all comes out, Mocoso said her father is a good man and she
believes in him. It could be a death sentence to send him back to
Peru, she said.

"We fear for his life in Peru just as much as we fear for him in jail,
maybe more in Peru," she said. "He will be at risk because he is Percy
Vega. He will be at risk because of everything he did fighting for the
U.S. and fighting against narcoterrorism."
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MAP posted-by: Derek