Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front

The Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez) (FPMR), also known as El Frente Patriótico, or simply El Frente, is a far-left urban guerrilla movement in Chile. At its height, the FPMR was estimated to have between 1,000 and 1,500 members.

Activities
On September 7, 1986, the FPMR attacked Pinochet's car in an assassination attempt. Five of Pinochet's body guards were killed and eleven wounded. Pinochet, however, only suffered minor injuries. Also in 1986, Chilean security forces caught the FPMR smuggling an 80-ton shipment of weapons in Carrizal Bajo, including C-4 plastic explosives, RPG-7 and M72 LAW rocket launchers as well as more than three thousand M-16 rifles.

The failure of Pinochet's attempted assassination led to an internal crisis in the FPMR, leading to splits and to the complete autonomy of the group towards the PCCh.

On 8 April 1986, FPMR guerrillas kidnapped and held captive for 48 hours carabineros corporal Germán Obando but freed him after 48 hours after nationwide coverage of the incident resulted in mass condemnation reported by the press as including political groups normally sympathetic to the cause of the FPMR.

On 13 April 1987, the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front (FPMR) simultaneously assaulted the offices of Associated Press (AP) and eight radio stations in Santiago, killing an off-duty security guard.

In the period 1988-1994, the FPMR conducted 15 attacks against LDS Chapels and temples.

On 5 November 1990, FPMR guerrillas detonated a bomb inside a restaurant in this seaside resort of Viña del Mar, wounding three sailors from the United States aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. Three British tourists and two waitresses were also injured in the attack. In 1993 was reported that, FPMR guerrillas bombed two McDonald's restaurants and attempted to bomb a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.

Transition to democracy
After the restoration of democratic rule in Chile in 1991, main FPMR targets included LDS Chapels and temples, the kidnapping of Cristian Edwards, son of the owner of the nation's most prominent newspaper, El Mercurio, and US businesses in Chile such as McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant franchises.

In 2005 FPMR member Patricio Ortiz received political asylum in Switzerland. He was sentenced in Chile to ten years of prison for the assassination of a police officer in 1991, during the beginning of the transition to democracy. Ortiz escaped from a Chilean prison in 1996, and reached Switzerland the following year. Following an extradition request by Chile, he was detained by Swiss authorities, who later refused to extradite him as his physical integrity could not be assured (i.e. possibility of torture: extraditing him would have violated article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights ). Swiss authorities then freed him and granted him asylum. In 2007 the Socialist President Michelle Bachelet, who had been herself tortured by the army, criticized the political asylum given to Ortiz, which lifted indignation of human rights NGOs.

Extradition proceedings
On 13 September 2011, judge Mario Carroza of the Appeals Court of Santiago, requested the Chilean Supreme Court the extradition from Belgium of former FPMR guerrilla Miguel Ángel Peña, accused of the April 1, 1991 killing of Independent Democratic Union (UDI) Senator Jaime Guzmán.