POSADA Picked-up?

[Don Roberdeau]

Good Day All....

http://www.local10.com/news/4498567/detail.html

<QUOTE>

Local 10 At Secret Meeting With Anti-Castro Militant

Man Who Is Focus Of Fidel Castro's Fury Meets With Reporters

POSTED: 1:13 pm EDT May 17, 2005

UPDATED: 3:20 pm EDT May 17, 2005

MIAMI -- UPDATE: Luis Posada Carilles had a news conference scheduled today at 4:30 p.m. Sources said he went to a supporter's home to get some clothing, and while there, he was picked up by federal authorities. He is believed to be in the custody of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Watch Local 10 News starting at 5 p.m for more on this developing story and refresh this page for updates.

While thousands of protesters fill the streets of Havana, Cuba, a handful of reporters in Miami, including Local 10's Rad Berky, got a secret, face-to-face meeting with the man who is the focus of the protests.

Cuba dictator Fidel Castro is leading demonstrations to condemn the United States for harboring Luis Posada Carriles.

Cuba and Venezuela are demanding the extradition of Posada, who is wanted in Venezuela on charges that he took part in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.

Tuesday, Berky got a rare look at 77-year-old Posada, who has been a mystery man since his clandestine arrival in Miami around the end of March.

Only a few reporters were allowed to attend the secret meeting. Berky was told to report to a strip mall in Hialeah early Tuesday morning. From there, the reporters were taken in individual cars to a dusty, hot, old warehouse. Sound equipment and cameras were taken from news crews and loaded into a pickup truck and driven separately to the location of the meeting. All the reporters had to agree to keep the location of the warehouse secret before they were allowed to see Posada.

After a brief wait, Posada was escorted into the Hialeah warehouse by a group of supporters. The anti-Castro militant spoke mostly in Spanish. He refused to answer questions about the hotel bombings he is accused of, but he did address the bombing of the plane.

"The act is an act of a terrorist, the act of downing a plane," Posada said. "I condemn that act. I had nothing to do with it."

This may be the last glimpse of Posada in the United States. He said he is reconsidering his request for asylum. He said because dissidents in Cuba are planning a protest next week, he may withdraw his application for asylum. Posada said he doesn't want to take attention away from that important demonstration. He also said he does not want to cause problems for the United States.

Posada claims he was once a CIA operative. The former Venezuelan security official has been bent on toppling Castro for 40 years.

Posada escaped from a Venezuelan prison in 1985 while facing a retrial in the Cubana Airlines bombing. Recently, Castro has been waging a nightly television campaign demanding Posada's arrest.

Posada entered the United States in spite of being on an immigration watch list. Local 10 has learned that he entered the country from Mexico through Brownsville, Texas. He said he took a bus to South Florida.

Posada said he fooled a couple of immigration officials along the way who could have arrested him.

To find out more about how Posada got into the United States, watch Local 10 News tonight at 6 p.m., and check back with Local10.com.

Previous Stories: (internet linked)

May 17, 2005: Cuban Militant Denies Role In Airliner Attack

May 10, 2005: Dead Man's Stories May Decide Militant's Asylum Request

May 6, 2005: Venezuela Backs Extradition Of Cuban Militant From Miami

April 21, 2005: Organizations Demand Cuban Militant's Arrest

April 13, 2005: Cuban Militant Requests Political Asylum

April 11, 2005: Anti-Castro Militant In Miami Says He Worked For CIA, Wants Asylum

<END QUOTE>

Don Roberdeau

U.S.S. John F. Kennedy, CV-67, "Big John" Plank Walker

Sooner, or later, the Truth emerges Clearly

http://members.aol.com/DRoberdeau/JFK/DP.jpg

http://members.aol.com/DRoberdeau/JFK/ROSE...NOUNCEMENT.html

http://members.aol.com/DRoberdeau/JFK/GHOS...update2001.html

T ogether

E veryone

A chieves

M ore

"There's other things involved that are that are detrimental to other things."

- REGIS BLAHUT, ex-C.I.A. Office of Security officer and liaison to the H.S.C.A., after he was fired from the C.I.A. in 1978, after he was caught having removed the autopsy photos of President KENNEDY from an HSCA safe even though he was never given authorization to access the autopsy photos.

Edited May 17, 2005 by Don Roberdeau

[Ryan Crowe]

Hi Don,

LOL Looks like we heard it at the same time, I posted the story under the Luis Posada Carilles thread...Now the question is, what are they going to do with him????

[James Richards]

Hi Don,

LOL Looks like we heard it at the same time, I posted the story under the Luis Posada Carilles thread...Now the question is, what are they going to do with him????

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi Ryan,

Given Posada's connections back to Fort Benning and the Agency, I guess they don't want any death bed confessions and judging from this recent image below, Posada might not to be too far off departing this mortal coil.

James

[Ryan Crowe]

Hi James,

Yeah he does look about as old as Yoda in that photo, looks like he might just end up in a cell with a bad case of the CIA Flu

[Mark Knight]

Bitter Fidel Castro Foe Detained by U.S.

May 18, 2005 3:46 AM EDT

MIAMI - Caught between its hard-line policy against Fidel Castro and its war on terrorism, the Bush administration has arrested an anti-Castro exile accused of masterminding a deadly 1976 airliner bombing.

Luis Posada Carriles, 77, was seized Tuesday by federal agents. He had been in hiding in Miami for two months and had petitioned for asylum in the United States.

Posada, a former CIA operative and Venezuelan security official, is wanted by Venezuela for possible retrial in the plane bombing that killed 73 people. Castro wants Posada to be sent to Venezuela.

In a series of speeches, Castro repeatedly accused the United States of a double standard in the war on terror and led a protest Tuesday by tens of thousands in Havana.

"The majority of Americans would never be in favor of harboring a terrorist," said Wayne Smith, a former U.S. envoy to Cuba who now heads the Cuba program at the Washington-based Center for International Policy.

If the United States were to grant asylum, Smith added, "We will be seen as hypocrites and as being against terrorism only when is suits our purposes."

Generally, the U.S. government does not extradite people to Cuba or to countries acting on Cuba's behalf, the Homeland Security Department said in a statement. The department has 48 hours to determine Posada's immigration status.

Cuba's parliament speaker, Ricardo Alarcon, said the Cuban government will wait to see if President Bush "lives up to his rhetoric or if they help an old friend."

Before the arrest, Posada's lawyer, Eduardo Soto, told reporters that his client no longer wanted to pursue his asylum request. All that changed when Posada was detained, leading Soto to question the timing.

"It was the U.S. government's preconceived notion to detain him before we withdrew our application for asylum," Soto said. "You don't need to formally remove a person who wants to leave."

Soto said the asylum request would be refiled.

Posada escaped from Venezuelan prison in 1985 while prosecutors appealed his second acquittal in the bombing of a Cubana Airlines jetliner near Barbados. His whereabouts had been unknown until Soto said he was in Miami in March seeking asylum.

In Caracas, Venezuela's interior minister, Jesse Chacon, said Posada "must pay for the crimes he committed" and renewed his country's demand that Posada be extradited. The United States and Venezuela have an extradition treaty.

Pepe Hernandez, president of the Cuban American National Foundation, said Posada still deserves a chance for asylum. Posada is seen as a hero by many in the Cuban-American community in South Florida.

"He's been fighting one of the worst tyrannies this continent has experienced," Hernandez said.

Posada was initially taken to an immigration detention center, then flown by helicopter to an undisclosed location, said Posada's friend and benefactor, Santiago Alvarez.

Before his arrest, Posada said he never intended to cause problems for the United States.

"If my petition for political asylum created any problem to the government of the United States, I am ready to reconsider my petition," he said. "My only objective is to fight for the freedom of my country."

Posada and three others were pardoned last August by Panama's president for their role in an alleged assassination plot in 2000 against Castro during a conference in Panama. Posada also was connected to a series of 1997 bombings of tourists sites in Cuba, one of which killed an Italian tourist.

Recently declassified FBI and CIA documents verify that Posada worked for the CIA for years and was connected to the airliner bombing by informants.

In an interview in Tuesday's Miami Herald, Posada denied any involvement in the airliner bombing but refused to confirm or deny involvement in other attacks, telling the newspaper: "Let's leave it to history."

"I feel that I've committed many errors, more than most people," he said. "But I've always believed in rebellion, in the armed struggle. I believe more and more every day that we will triumph against Castro. Victory will be ours."

---

Associated Press writers Adrian Sainz in Miami, Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington and Anita Snow in Havana contributed to this story.

Copyright 2005 Associated Press.

[Duncan Campbell]

A commercial airliner is blown up in midair with the loss of many lives. Nearly 30 years later, a man accused of organising the bombing is traced to Miami. With the "war on terror" in full swing, it would seem likely that the American authorities would leap into action to arrest the suspect and dispatch him for trial to the country where the plot was hatched.

Luis Posada is a 77-year-old Cuban exile who has been involved in many attempts to overthrow Fidel Castro since the abortive Bay of Pigs operation in 1961. He has long been seen as a prime suspect in the 1976 midair bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people. He was arrested in Caracas many years ago and charged with the offence but escaped from custody in suspicious circumstances. He has since made his way to Florida, a place that has, over the years, become something of a rest-home for the heavy-mob enforcers of Latin American military dictatorships.

The Venezuelan supreme court approved an extradition request for Mr Posada last month. Yesterday, after he cheerfully gave a newspaper interview in Miami, saying he did not feel it was necessary to lie low any more, he was finally detained by immigration officials. The department of homeland security now has 48 hours to make an official determination of his immigration status. Posada, meanwhile, has already let it be known through his lawyers that he is now seeking asylum in the US.

The Posada affair is top of the agenda in Cuba, where Fidel Castro has this week been repeatedly calling on President Bush to act decisively against terrorism by arresting Mr Posada and deporting him for trial. The case is an important one because at its heart is the belief, held in many parts of the world, that the US has one standard of morality for its allies and another for its enemies.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1486446,00.html

[Mark Knight]

You must also be aware that Cuba is on the official US list of terrorist nations; therefore, the questions becomes "do we release an alleged terrorist to a terrorist nation?"

The US is caught in a trap of its own making. If they capitulate to Castro's demands to extradite Posada, they are, according to their own list, giving in to a demand of a terrorist nation. But if they free Posada, they will be releasing an alleged terrorist.

Most likely scenario, IMHO, is that the US authorities will release Posada to some other government, with the "suggestion" that he be returned to either Venezuela or Cuba...that takes Bush administration off the hook, and places Posada's fate in the hands of others, without the US government actually setting him free themselves. In that way, the Bush administration avoids an "either/or" choice, and this weasel solution will probably be legally acceptable but please no one.

So expect it to happen.

[Ryan Crowe]

Demonstrations in support of extradition of Posada Carriles continue

"CRIMINALS in the pay of the United States always have privileges, because they are protected so that they don’t go to prison, but we have to have strength, ethics and principles to ensure that justice is done," Hebe de Bonafini, president of the Plazo de Mayo Madres in Argentina, told Prensa Latina, in reference to the Bush administration refusal to extradite terrorist Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela.

Bonafini, who will be in Havana with other mothers and Argentine intellectuals and leaders later this week for the international meeting Against terrorism, for truth and justice, considers that the compelling reason for the protection granted to Posada is Operation Condor, as the coordinated intelligence plan among the dictatorships of the Southern Cone in the 1970s was known.

"They (the United States) were the ones that directed Operation Condor and many people in the world do not know that," affirmed the representative of the women who have demonstrated every Thursday for 30 years in the Plaza de Mayo, calling for justice for the disappeared.

The president of the non-governmental organization described the convening of the meeting in Havana on June 2-3 as very significant.

"For me it’s extremely important to talk about all this, because if we don’t international public opinion could even think that the United States is only savage because it attacks Cuba or because it has destroyed the people of Iraq with its bombs. In order to unmask the current crusade against US terrorism, it is essential to go into what is also known as the international death squad.

"I don’t think that it is only Carriles, there are many others who have played terrible roles and have returned to the United States for protection," she warned.

MIAMI MARCH FOR EXTRADITION OF TERRORIST

MIAMI, May 29.—For the second time in under one month, 100-plus people, the majority of them Cuban émigrés from organizations grouped together into the Alianza Martiana, demonstrated outside the Immigration Department at midday last Saturday with the central demand of denying asylum to and supporting the extradition to Venezuela of Luis Posada Carriles.

The mood of the protesters was combative. For two hours they chanted slogans like "Posada, terrorist! Posada: to jail! For the victims: justice! For the Five: freedom!"

[Derek McMillan]

"Anyone who harbours a terrorist is a terrorist."

Does George W Bush read his own speeches? If so is he going to get himself consigned to Guantanamo for harbouring Posada?

[Myra Bronstein]

As if any other outcome were even possible...

"Judge dismisses charges against Posada Carilles

May 9, 2007, 0:03 GMT

Washington A US judge on Tuesday dismissed all charges against Luis Posada Carilles, who is accused in Venezuela and Cuba of acts of terrorism.

US District Judge Kathleen Cardone dismissed all seven counts of immigration fraud, only three days before Posada Carilles' trial was due to begin in a Texas court, a spokeswoman for his defence lawyers confirmed to Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Posada Carriles, 78, is accused by Havana and Caracas of the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner. His release on bail last month pending the trial had already been strongly criticized by both countries.

His trial in the US was on charges that he entered the country illegally and lied to immigration officials. US courts have also refused extradition requests for the one-time CIA operative, saying that Posada Carriles could face torture in Venezuela or Cuba."

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/usa/new...Posada_Carilles

[Ron Ecker]

Listen to the judge in this report from KVIA in El Paso:

Federal Judge dismisses indictment against Cuban militant Posada Carriles

May 8, 2007 07:07 PM

EL PASO, Tx. - Federal Judge Kathleen Cardone today dismissed a seven count indictment against Luis Posada Carriles, the former Cuban militant who is battling extradition for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner in Venezuela.

The judge said the government's tactics in the case are - this is a quote - "so grossly shocking, and so outrageous as to violate the universal sense of justice." She granted Posada's motion to suppress tapes and transcripts entered into evidence against him in a case alleging he made false statements to enter the United States.

In a 38-page ruling filed today, Cardone held that a government transcript of a conversation Posada Carriles had with INS officials was inaccurate and unreliable.

The judge also found that the government interpreter at that meeting incorrectly interpreted the conversation on numerous occasions, and that Posada's unwillingness to answer questions at the interview was actually confusion over the meaning of the questions.

The interpreter failed to interpret much of the English being read to Posada, according to the ruling, and inaccurately conveyed many of his responses.

In several cases, the English interpretation of statements Posada made meant the exact opposite of what he had said in Spanish.

The former Cuban Militant is battling extradition for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban Jetliner in Venezuela that killed more than 70 people.

http://www.kvia.com/Global/story.asp?S=6488126&nav=AbC0

It sounds to me like the government in this case deliberately acted in such a way as to guarantee that the charges would be dismissed, while looking like it was being tough on Posada. Pretty clever if so. It worked like a charm, as incompetence theory usually does. "Posada got off because of government incompetence!"

[John Geraghty]

News piece on Posada Carilles, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx_P8B4X5Xc