1. The autopsy report stated that Ben Linder had gunshot wounds to the back of the legs, while on the ground he suffered multiple wounds to his face and died from a close range gunshot to the head.
13 Facts About Ben Linder
1. 2.
The California-born Ben Linder was raised in a secular Jewish family in San Francisco and later Portland, Oregon.
3.
Ben Linder graduated from Adams High School in Portland, Oregon in 1977.
4.
Ben Linder graduated in 1983, with a degree in mechanical engineering.
5.
Ben Linder left his Oregon home that summer and moved to Managua, the capital of Nicaragua.
6.
Ben Linder felt inspired by the 1979 Sandinista revolution, and wanted to support its efforts to improve the lives of the country's poorest people.
7.
In 1986, Ben Linder moved from Managua to El Cua, a village in the Nicaraguan war zone, where he helped form a team to build a hydroelectric plant to bring electricity to the town.
8.
The autopsy showed that Ben Linder had been wounded by a grenade, then shot at point-blank range in the head.
9.
Ben Linder was posthumously awarded the Courage of Conscience award on September 26,1992.
10.
Ben Linder was murdered because he had a dream and because he had the courage to make that dream come true.
11.
The Village Voice reported one exchange between Republican Congressman Connie Mack of Florida and Elisabeth Ben Linder, who had just given emotional testimony about her son's work and motivations.
12.
The death of Ben Linder, coming as Congressional hearings investigated the Iran-Contra Affair, fueled the debate in the US over the covert war in Nicaragua.
13.
In 2001 journalist Joan Kruckewitt, who lived in Nicaragua from 1983 to 1991 and covered the war between the Sandinistas and the Contras for ABC Radio, wrote a book entitled The Death of Ben Linder giving a more sympathetic portrait of Linder's life, work, and death.