Luis Posada Carriles

[Ron Ecker]

From Allard's article:

Posada was located by various experts among Cuban Americans present in Dallas when John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

Well, I know about Wim Dankbaar, whom Allard has quoted before by name. Who are the other experts who have located Posada in Dallas? And what is their evidence? (Wim's evidence, I believe, is the story of Chauncey Holt.)

Ron

Edited July 30, 2005 by Ron Ecker

[John Simkin]

This article by Arthur Shaw suggests that Posada may testify about the 1963 assassination of JFK.

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=45584

US Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and US Attorney R. Alexander Acosta in Miami may want to reconsider their impetuous decision to retry the Cuban Five for "spying" after an appeals court has thrown out their convictions.

The US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit reversed the convictions of the Cuban Five on Wednesday, August 9, 2005, finding that the "pervasive community prejudice against Fidel Castro and the Cuban government and its agents and the publicity surrounding the trial and other community events combined to create a situation where they were unable to obtain a fair and impartial trial."

The Cuban Five -- Geraldo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labanino, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez -- were arrested in September 1998 and convicted in 2001 on charges of, among other things, serving within the United States as an agent of a foreign government without registering with the US attorney general. They are serving sentences ranging from 15 years to life.

The 11th Circuit reversal of the five convictions leaves Attorney General Gonzales and US Attorney Acosta with four choices: (1) a rehearing in the 11 Circuit or appeal from it to the US Supreme Court; (2) retry the Cubans; (3) release the Cubans or (4) disregard the rule of law and hold them without a retrial.

On Thursday, August 11, Miami Herald reporter Jay Weaver wrote that "Miami's top federal prosecutor says he will retry the five accused Cuban spies whose 2001 convictions were just overturned by a federal appeals court -- most probably next year in another city. But US Attorney R. Alexander Acosta is weighing another potential legal move: challenging Tuesday's stunning decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta."

So, Weaver's piece suggests that Gonzales and Acosta are going to do (2), retry the five Cubans after the prosecutors first try a long shot of (1), rehear the case on appeal.

Frankly (4), to disregard the rule of law and to hold the Five without retrial is the mostly likely and the most characteristic choice for the Bush regime. It isn't that improbable that the Bush dictatorship will ship the Five to the US concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba where the Five are sure to be tortured or murdered or raped or otherwise subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment.

By means of (4), the Bush regime can arrogantly tell the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to go straight to hell.

However, if (2), retry them, turns out to be the case, the presence of Luis Posada Carriles within the United States and in the custody of US Department of Homeland Security will complicate a retrial of the Cuban Five.

The Cuban Five were, in large part, in the United States to investigate the origin of terrorist acts that were committed in Cuba during and before 1998. Many of the terrorists acts, such a series of hotel bombings in 1997 and 1998, were operations that Luis Posada had masterminded.

Hence, it a certainty that the attorneys for the Cuban Five at a retrial will subpoena Posada as a witness to testify about his "operations" against Cuba. Further, it unlikely that an impartial judge will refuse to let Posada testify on grounds of irrelevancy because these terrorist acts for which Posada has subsequently and publicly claimed responsibility were repeatedly mentioned in the first trial of the Cuban Five. Indeed, these acts against Cuba, without usually mentioning Posada ... their mastermind ... are discussed in the August 9th opinion of the 11th Circuit.

* Gonzales and Acosta should check with somebody who bosses them about whether its a good idea to put Posada under oath in a US court to testify about his "operations" against Cuba.

For one thing, Posada may not be willing to lie under oath so that the Bush regime can save face. After all, Posada already has his hands full with the immigration and the extradition cases now pending against him. The last thing he wants and needs now is a perjury case pending against him. And Posada, after he thinks about it a little bit, may not be willing to assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Opening his mouth is Posada leverage and means of influence, but if he keeps his mouth shut, then he throws away his leverage and lets the Bush regime throw him to the dogs, since the regime knows that Posada, like a stupid soldier, will "fall on the sword" for them. Without doubt, if Posada loses either the immigration or extradition case or both, he is more likely to open up his mouth in the Cuban Five retrial. And open it up big.

There are all kind of things that Posada can testify about, such as, for example, the financial sources for his 1997 and 1998 bombing "operations" against the Havana hotels which include some the big-named members of the drug dealing and GOP-supporting Miami Mafia. These bombing "operations" of Posada resulted on September 4, 1997 at 12.22 p.m. in the murder of Italian businessman Fabio di Celmo, 32-year-old Genoa, Italy, native, in the Copacabana Hotel lobby in Havana. Posada's financial backers ... who are accomplices to murder ... may feel a little bit exposed if Posada takes the stand to testify.

Posada may also testify about his organization and training of death squads at the behest of the US government in a number of countries, including Venezuela, in Latin America.

* Posada may testify about the CIA shipments of cocaine from Central America for sale in the United States to finance the Contra war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

Most exciting of all, Posada may testify about the assassination in Dallas of a US president on November 22, 1963.

If Posada opens up his mouth in a Cuban five retrial, it won't be the first time. Posada opened his mouth to the New York Times in a published July 1998 interview.

Posada may welcome the opportunity to testify at the retrial of the Cuban Five because that will get him back to his beloved state of Florida ... though not the city of Miami ... where his powerful friends in the Miami Mafia can still "fix" things for him because the judicial and electoral system in Florida is the most corrupt in the United States. Miami is out as a venue for the retrial for the Cuban Five because many of the potential jurors who reside in Miami have been found by the 11th Circuit to be insanely prejudiced against Cuba.

Posada will smile when he considers that the probability of his testimony in a retrial of the Cuban Five will likely delay his removal from the United States if he loses in the pending immigration and extradition cases against him. Attorney General Gonzales and US Attorney Acosta will frown when they consider that Posada continued presence in the United State threatens to blow their retrial of the Cuban Five clear out of the water.

The probability of being called as a witness in the Cuban Five retrial, which will extend his illegal stay in the US regardless of the outcomes of his immigration and extradition cases, will likely affect the development of the tone and substance of Posada's defense in immigration and extradition cases. Posada may try to increase his desirability as a witness in the Cuban Five retrial by making utterances ... if he gets the opportunity ... in the immigration and extradition proceedings that bear on key issues in the Cuban Five litigation. Posada attorneys, unpleasantly discovering that US Immigration Judge William Abbott in El Paso may be no-nonsense, smart, tough, and righteous ... as judges should be but rarely are .... are turning to a dilatory or a foot-dragging defense for their client. They want to slow everything down to a crawl.

Attorney General Gonzales is in charge of the extradition case against Posada.

The US attorney general is, for sure, conflicted.

If he wins the extradition case and sends Posada to Venezuela, he pisses off the Miami Mafia. If, on the hand, he loses the extradition case and Posada stays here, then he jeopardizes the retrial of the Cuban Five ... which is a case as big as Posada's.

Gonzales and Acosta would be prudent if they ... quickly ... released the five Cubans and deported them to Cuba … to free, socialist Cuba, not to the barbaric and lawless US concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay.

Arthur Shaw

belial4444@aol.com

[Robert Howard]

I suspect he will be dead before he ever testifies in a courtroom about what he knows about CIA funded terrorist attacks.

For some reason I have a feeling he will have the flu very soon The can of worms he can open is way to dangerous to just send him on his way to Venezuela or Cuba to stand trial.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Although it is a little old, I thought forum members would perhaps like to see this.

A bomber's tale: Taking aim at Castro

By Ann Louis Bardach and Larry Rohter, New York Times, July 1998

MIAMI -- A Cuban exile who has waged a campaign of bombings and assassination attempts aimed at toppling Fidel Castro says that his efforts were supported financially for more than a decade by the Cuban-American leaders of one of America's most influential lobbying groups.

The exile, Luis Posada Carriles, said he organized a wave of bombings in Cuba last year at hotels, restaurants and discotheques, killing an Italian tourist and alarming the Cuban Government. Posada was schooled in demolition and guerrilla warfare by the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1960's.

In a series of tape-recorded interviews at a walled Caribbean compound, Posada said the hotel bombings and other operations had been supported by leaders of the Cuban-American National Foundation. Its founder and head, Jorge Mas Canosa, who died last year, was embraced at the White House by Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton.

A powerful force in both Florida and national elections, and a prodigious campaign donor, Mas played a decisive role in persuading Clinton to change his mind and follow a course of sanctions and isolation against Castro's Cuba.

Although the tax-exempt foundation has declared that it seeks to bring down Cuba's Communist Government solely through peaceful means, Posada said leaders of the foundation discreetly financed his operations. Mas personally supervised the flow of money and logistical support, he said.

"Jorge controlled everything," Posada said. "Whenever I needed money, he said to give me $5,000, give me $10,000, give me $15,000, and they sent it to me."

Over the years, Posada estimated, Mas sent him more than $200,000. "He never said, 'This is from the foundation,' " Posada recalled. Rather, he said with a chuckle, the money arrived with the message, "This is for the church."

Foundation leaders did not respond to repeated telephone calls and letters requesting an interview to discuss their relationship with Posada. But in a brief statement faxed to The New York Times, the group denied a role in his operations, saying "any allegation, implication, or suggestion that members of the Cuban American National Foundation have financed any alleged 'acts of violence' against the Castro regime are totally and patently false."

THE RECLUSE Talking on His Terms, After Years of Silence

Posada, 70, has long refused to talk to journalists; his autobiography, published in 1994, provided only a sketchy account of his dealings with the foundation's leaders.

But in two days of interviews, he talked openly for the first time about those relationships and how they figured in a fight to which he has devoted his life, a fight that has left him far from his declared goal of toppling the hemisphere's last Communist state.

His motives for agreeing to the interviews are not easy to pin down. Posada, who has survived several attempts on his life, told a friend recently that he was afraid he would not live long enough to tell his story.

For the first time, Posada also described his role in some of the great cold war events in which Cuban exiles were key players. He was trained for the Bay of Pigs at a camp in Guatemala, but did not participate in the landing on Cuban beaches after the Kennedy Administration withheld air support from the first wave of rebels, whose attack quickly foundered.

It was Cuban exiles like Posada who were recruited by the C.I.A. for the subsequent attempts on Castro's life.

Jailed for one of the most infamous anti-Cuban attacks, the 1976 bombing of a civilian Cubana airliner, he eventually escaped from a Venezuelan prison to join the centerpiece of the Reagan White House's anti-Communist crusade in the Western Hemisphere: Lieut. Col. Oliver L. North's clandestine effort to supply arms to Nicaraguan contras.

Posada denied any role in the Cubana bombing, which killed 73 people, many of them teen-age members of Cuba's national fencing team.

He agreed through an intermediary to meet with The New York Times, provided his current residence and alias, and the location of the interviews, were not divulged.

Some of what he said about his past can be verified through recently declassified Government documents, as well as interviews with former foundation members and American officials.

But he made several claims that rest solely on his word, including an assertion that he has agents inside the Cuban military and that American law enforcement authorities maintained an attitude of benign neglect toward him for most of his career, allowing him to remain free and active.

Posada said all payments from the exile leaders to him were made in cash, and he said he did not know whether the money came from personal, business or foundation accounts. He said that the money was used for his living expenses and for operations and that Mas told him he did not want to know the details of his activities.

In the interviews he was generally expansive on broad questions of philosophy but evasive on specifics. He spoke in Spanish and English, with difficulty, his speech distorted by the severe damage done to the nerves of his tongue in a 1990 attempt on his life. y Posada said he was angered by recent newspaper accounts of his activities and eager near the end of his life to put his version of events on record, perhaps reinvigorating a movement he sees as lacking energy and direction since Mas's death.

The exiles' foundation, created in 1981, has sought to portray itself as the responsible voice of the Cuban exile community, dedicated to weakening the Castro regime through politics rather than force. Thanks to that approach and millions in campaign donations, the foundation became one of Washington's most effective lobbying organizations and a principal architect of American policy toward Cuba.

Any evidence that the foundation or its leaders were dispensing money to Republicans and Democrats while underwriting bombings could weaken the group's claim to legitimacy. That kind of activity could also violate the Logan Act, which makes illegal any "conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim or injure persons or damage property in a foreign country."

Posada's remarks hinted that the foundation's public advocacy of purely nonviolent opposition to Castro was a carefully crafted fiction. Asked if he functioned as the military wing to the foundation's political wing, much as the Irish Republican Army does for Sinn Fein, he replied, "It looks like that," and laughed.

The Money: Assertions and Denials on Sources of Support

In the interviews and in his autobiography, "The Roads of the Warrior," Posada said he had received financial support from Mas and Feliciano Foyo, treasurer of the group, as well as Alberto Hernndez, who succeeded Mas as chairman.

Dr. Hernandez and Foyo did not respond to repeated requests for comment, and it was unclear whether they were aware of how Posada might have used any money they provided. In his autobiography, Posada said foundation leaders helped pay his medical and living expenses and paid for his transportation from Venezuela to Central America after his 1985 jailbreak.

At times, Posada said, cash was delivered from Miami by fellow exiles, including Gaspar Jim nez, who was jailed in Mexico in the 1976 killing of a Cuban diplomat there. Jim nez is now an employee of the medical clinic that Dr. Hern ndez operates in Miami, according to employees at the office.

Jimenez did not respond to requests for comment.

When the bombs began exploding last year at Cuban hotels, the Government there asserted that the attacks had been organized and paid for by exiles operating out of Miami, a claim it bolstered with the videotape of an operative confessing to carrying out some of the bombings.

More recently, reports in The Miami Herald and the state-controlled Cuban press tied the operation to Posada. However, he told The New York Times that American authorities had made no effort to question him about the case. He attributed that lack of action in part to his longstanding relationship with American law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

"As you can see," he said, "the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. don't bother me, and I am neutral with them. Whenever I can help them, I do."

Posada gave conflicting accounts of his contacts with American authorities. Initially he spoke of enduring ties with United States intelligence agencies and of close friendship with at least two current F.B.I. officials, including, he said, an important official in the Washington office.

"I know a very high-up person there," he said.

Later he asked that those comments be omitted from any article and said it had been years since he had had these close dealings.

An American Government official said the C.I.A. has not had a relationship with Posada "in decades," and the F.B.I. also denied his assertions. "The F.B.I. does not now have nor have we ever had a longstanding relationship with Posada," said John F. Lewis, Jr. who as assistant director in charge of the national security division supervises all counterintelligence and counterterrorism work for the agency.

Declassified documents unearthed in Washington by the National Security Archives support Posada's suggestion that the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. had detailed knowledge of his operations against Cuba from the early 1960's to the mid-1970's.

G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel to the 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations, said he had reviewed many of the F.B.I.'s classified files about anti-Castro Cubans from 1978 and had noted many instances in which the bureau turned a blind eye to possible violations of the law. As he put it, "When I read some of those things, and I'm an old Federal prosecutor, I thought, 'Why isn't someone being indicted for this?' "

On one point Posada was direct and unrepentant: he still intends to try to kill Castro, and he believes violence is the best method for ending Communism in Cuba.

"It is the only way to create an uprising there," Posada said. "Castro will never change, never. There are several ways to make a revolution, and I have been working on some."

Within militant Cuban exile circles, Posada is a legendary figure, celebrated for his tenacity and dedication to the anti-Castro cause. He has at various times also worked for Venezuelan, Salvadoran and Guatemalan intelligence or security agencies because, he explained, he wanted "to fight against the Communists, the people who helped Cuba."

But the Cuban Government regards him as a terrorist and a "monstrous criminal" responsible for numerous acts of violence against official installations and personnel, on the island and off, and has called on the United States to curb his activities.

Posada proudly admitted authorship of the hotel bomb attacks last year. He described them as acts of war intended to cripple a totalitarian regime by depriving it of foreign tourism and investment.

"We didn't want to hurt anybody," he said. "We just wanted to make a big scandal so that the tourists don't come anymore. We don't want any more foreign investment."

The bombs were also intended, Posada said, to sow doubts abroad about the stability of the regime, to make Cuba think he had operatives in the military and to encourage internal opposition. "People are not afraid anymore," he said. "They talk openly in the street. But they need something to start the fire, and that's my goal."

The Bombings: A Mastermind Reveals Some Key Secrets

For several months the attacks did indeed discourage tourism. With a rueful chuckle, Posada described the Italian tourist's death as a freak accident, but he declared that he had a clear conscience, saying, "I sleep like a baby."

"It is sad that someone is dead, but we can't stop," he added. "That Italian was sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time."

In Havana last September, authorities arrested a 25-year-old Salvadoran, Ra l Ernesto Cruz Le n, and accused him of carrying out a half-dozen of the hotel attacks. Posada said Cruz Le n, whom he described as a mercenary, had been working for him, but said "maybe a dozen" others reporting to him remained at large.

The hotel bombings were organized from El Salvador and Guatemala, Posada said. Explosives were obtained through his contacts there, and subordinates in turn recruited couriers like Cruz Le n to take the explosives into Cuba and detonate them in carefully selected targets.

"Everything is compartmentalized," Posada said. "I know everybody, but they don't know me."

"This was an inside operation in Cuba," he added, explaining that he was now trying to think of another way to disrupt the Cuban economy and demonstrate to the Cuban people that Castro's security apparatus is not all-powerful and all-knowing. "Very soon there will be exciting news," he predicted.

Posada said he had several ongoing operations, including one that resulted in Cuba's capture of three of his colleagues in early June. "Castro is keeping this a secret," he said. "I don't understand why."

In response to several questions about operational details that he clearly did not want to answer, he jokingly said, "I take the Fifth Amendment."

While agreeing to allow the interviews to be taped, he declined to be photographed, saying he did not want to provide Cuban agents with any information that would help them hunt him down. "The reason that I last so long is that nobody knows how I am," he explained. "Not having pictures of my pretty face has kept me alive a long time."

In Guatemala in 1990, he was attacked and gravely wounded in what he describes as an assassination attempt mounted by his enemies at Cuban intelligence. He was hit with a dozen bullets, one of which shattered his jaw and nearly severed his tongue, requiring several rounds of reconstructive surgery.

He said that during his long recuperation in El Salvador, some of his expenses were paid by Dr. Hern ndez, the current chairman of the Cuban-American foundation, whom he described as "a great Cuban patriot and a dear friend." Just last year, he said, a Houston surgeon whom he also described as a friend flew to El Salvador and performed further surgery on him.

Posada detailed instances of support from foundation leaders throughout his career. Mas, he said, helped organize his escape from a Venezuelan prison in 1985, and then helped settle him in El Salvador, where he joined the White House-directed operation that led to the Iran-contra scandal.

"All the money that I received when I escaped from the jail," he said, "it was not that much, but it was through Jorge."

Posada said Mas was also very much aware that he was behind the hotel bombing campaign last year. But the two men had a longstanding agreement, he said, never to discuss the details of any operation that Posada was involved in.

"He never met operators, never," Posada said. "You ask for money from him, and he said, 'I don't want to know anything.' " Any discussion was "not specific, because he was intelligent enough to know who knows how to do the things and who doesn't know."

Mas, he added, "was afraid of the telephone."

"You don't talk like that on the telephone."

Asked when he had last visited the United States, he answered with a laugh and a question of his own: "Officially or unofficially?" A State Department official said Posada was reported to have visited Miami in the summer of 1996.

Posada acknowledged that he has at least four passports, all in different names. He regards himself as a Venezuelan citizen, but he has a Salvadoran passport bearing the name Ram n Medina Rodr guez, the nom de guerre he assumed during the Iran-contra affair, and a Guatemalan passport issued in the name of Juan Jos Rivas Lopez.

He also reluctantly admitted to having an American passport. But he would not discuss how he had obtained it or disclose the name in it, saying only that he occasionally uses it to visit the United States "unofficially," and had once used it to gain refuge in the American Embassy when he was caught in the middle of a revolution in the West African country of Sierra Leone.

"I have a lot of passports," he said with a laugh. "No problem."

He added, "If I want to go to Miami, I have different ways to go. But I don't go. You can't control Customs people. They can do anything."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Tim Carroll]

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/111...st_Charged.html

Monday, November 21, 2005 · Last updated 8:49 a.m. PT

Anti-Castro activist arrested in Miami

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MIAMI -- An anti-Castro activist who earlier this year helped shelter an exiled militant linked to deadly bombings was arrested on federal weapons and false passport charges.

Santiago Alvarez was charged Saturday with possession of automatic weapons, including some with the serial numbers erased, and possession of a false passport, said Matthew Dates, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Miami. He declined to give any further detail Monday.

Alvarez's lawyer, Kendall Coffey, said his client has not broken any U.S. laws. "He's certainly an enemy of Castro but not the people of this country," Coffey, a former U.S. attorney, said Monday.

A court appearance was scheduled for Monday afternoon.

Cuba has been pressuring the U.S. government to take action against Alvarez and others who Castro claims helped smuggle militant Luis Posada Carriles into this country in March.

However, there was no immediate indication if the charges were related to Posada, who is wanted by both the Cuban and Venezuelan governments for his alleged role in the deadly 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner and bomb attacks in Havana in 1997-98.

Alvarez said he helped shelter Posada in Miami until federal agents arrested Posada in May on charges of entering the United States illegally. But he denied smuggling Posada into the country. Now 64, Alvarez came to the U.S. in 1959, the year Castro took power in Cuba.

In September, an immigration judge ruled that Posada could not be deported to Cuba or Venezuela because he likely would be tortured there.

Cuban exiles see Posada as a freedom fighter while Venezuela and Cuba label him a terrorist.

[Ron Ecker]

Castro has been ranting internationally for months about the Posada case (specifically about Posada being protected by the Bush regime, lest he be tortured somewhere, which as everyone knows the U.S. government does not allow). The Miami Herald reports on the arrest of Alvarez:

A federal law-enforcement source said it was a ''pure coincidence'' that Alvarez's arrest occurred the day after a Cuba-based group ran a full-page ad in The New York Times denouncing Posada. The official said the timing of Alvarez's arrest had nothing to do with Castro or any pressure he was trying to exert on the U.S. government.

One Cuban exile leader doesn’t think it’s a coincidence:

''Every time Castro complains about something, this government does whatever they have to so that he doesn't get mad,'' Saavedra said.

Actually the fact that the U.S. government says it was a coincidence is pretty solid evidence that it was not a coincidence. Sometimes “follow the lies” is as effective a strategy in investigating U.S. government affairs as is “follow the money.” In this case money is not directly involved, it seems to be a matter of the Bush regime trying to decide which is politically worse, some angry Cuban exiles or an angry Castro. The real crux of the matter, bringing Posada himself to somebody’s justice, has nothing to do with it.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/13221494.htm

[Tim Carroll]

Castro has been ranting internationally for months about the Posada case (specifically about Posada being protected by the Bush regime, lest he be tortured somewhere, which as everyone knows the U.S. government does not allow).

A federal law-enforcement source said it was a ''pure coincidence'' that Alvarez's arrest occurred the day after a Cuba-based group ran a full-page ad in The New York Times denouncing Posada. The official said the timing of Alvarez's arrest had nothing to do with Castro or any pressure he was trying to exert on the U.S. government.

Remarkable that at the same time the U.S. debates the legitimacy of torture, a new low in the country's history, protecting Luis Posada Carriles from his victims is such a priority. The dichotomy of being such bleeding hearts for this bloodthirsty terrorist while advocating the U.S.' own use of torture against terrorists, is the height of international relations hypocracy. Arresting Alvarez is hardly going to satisfy those who desire justice for Carriles - including me.

T.C.

[William Kelly]

Castro has been ranting internationally for months about the Posada case (specifically about Posada being protected by the Bush regime, lest he be tortured somewhere, which as everyone knows the U.S. government does not allow).

A federal law-enforcement source said it was a ''pure coincidence'' that Alvarez's arrest occurred the day after a Cuba-based group ran a full-page ad in The New York Times denouncing Posada. The official said the timing of Alvarez's arrest had nothing to do with Castro or any pressure he was trying to exert on the U.S. government.

Friday's NYT (Nov. 18) has a full page ad (p.25) SHOULD THE UNITED STATES HARBOR AN INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST? Open Letter tot he families of the victims of 9/11 from the Committee of Families of the Victims of the Cuban Airliner Bombing in Barbados @: www.FamiliesForJustice.cu

Then that would be CFVCABB?

It's an appeal to the 9/11 famlies, ie. Jersey Girls, et al., who lobbied successfully for the 9/11 Commission, then denounced them for not answering their most significant questions, not holding anyone accountable and for covering up the Able Danger tip off. The CFVCABB want the 9/11 families to take up their cause.

BK

[Robert Howard]

Castro has been ranting internationally for months about the Posada case (specifically about Posada being protected by the Bush regime, lest he be tortured somewhere, which as everyone knows the U.S. government does not allow).

A federal law-enforcement source said it was a ''pure coincidence'' that Alvarez's arrest occurred the day after a Cuba-based group ran a full-page ad in The New York Times denouncing Posada. The official said the timing of Alvarez's arrest had nothing to do with Castro or any pressure he was trying to exert on the U.S. government.

Remarkable that at the same time the U.S. debates the legitimacy of torture, a new low in the country's history, protecting Luis Posada Carriles from his victims is such a priority. The dichotomy of being such bleeding hearts for this bloodthirsty terrorist while advocating the U.S.' own use of torture against terrorists, is the height of international relations hypocracy. Arresting Alvarez is hardly going to satisfy those who desire justice for Carriles - including me.

T.C.

Tell me about it, the Carriles item was the last straw as far as the Bush administration goes, in fact it wasn't until last fall that I fell "out of the mainstream, of people who were giving Dubya the benefit of the doubt. It's like he said awhile back "Fool me once shame on you, it fool me, wont get fooled again." I believe he has a personal eleventh commandment, Thou shalt not admit thy can make a mistake.

[Ron Ecker]

I'm wondering why the Bush regime doesn't just let Posada have a "heart attack" in custody and have the whole mess over with. Remember how easily the Clinton regime got rid of Jim McDougal? Seems like someone is asleep on the job.

[Tim Carroll]

I'm wondering why the Bush regime doesn't just let Posada have a "heart attack" in custody and have the whole mess over with.

Posada is apparently very expert in the art of blackmail. Look at his forebearer in this, E. Howard Hunt. Not to mention, ahem..., Bush 41's pardon of Orlando Bosch.

T.C.

[Ryan Crowe]

IMHO He has them by the balls, im sure he has insurance so to protect his neck, thats why he is still breathing and hasnt been givin the famous acme heart attack medicine......

[Tim Carroll]

Dec. 5, 2005, 9:00PM

Castro targets Jeb Bush with 'fat little brother' poke

By MARC CAPUTO

Miami Herald

TALLAHASSEE, FLA. - In a harangue about how a suspected anti-Cuba terrorist entered the United States, Fidel Castro singled out Gov. Jeb Bush — and went straight for the gut.

Castro called the governor "the fat little brother in Florida" and wondered if Bush had helped Luis Posada Carriles into the country, according to a transcript released Monday of the Nov. 17 address to University of Havana students, who erupted in laughter.

The Cuban leader didn't stop there.

"Forgive me for using the term 'fat little brother' " Castro said. "It is not a criticism, rather a suggestion that he do some exercises and go on a diet, don't you think? I'm doing this for the gentleman's health."

The governor's office wouldn't "dignify this with a response," a spokesman said.

In an e-mail, Bush declined Monday to discuss Castro's comments, saying questions about it were the product of a "slow news day."

During a question-and-answer session Monday, a reporter asked if there were anything in this week's special lawmaking session that gives him "heartburn."

Joked Bush: "I thought you were talking about my diet. I didn't have breakfast today."

When he first took office in 1999, Bush was more svelte when he would climb 22 flights of stairs to the top of the Capitol.

Since then, his pace his slackened.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3504844.html

[John Simkin]

Castro discussed the Luis Posada Carriles case in a speech on Sunday.

Cuba Offers Free Eye-Surgery for 150,000 US Patients

Ahora.cu / 23-01-2006

Cuban President Fidel Castro offered free eye-surgery for 150,000 poor US citizens including air transportation and their accommodations on the island.

President Castro made the announcement during a TV appearance on Sunday, which is part of a series of live appearances in which the Cuban leader provided details on the energy revolution underway in Cuba, an initiative he says will save one billion dollars annually.

He said the eye patients could travel to Florida from where they would be brought to Cuba by plane.

President Castro said he took on the offer of free eye-surgery for 100,000 US people made by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez during a recent visit to New York. Fidel said he decided to add another 50,000 and ask the US organization Pastors for Peace to choose poor people from any religion, political trend or that simply need the treatment.

The Cuban leader said that by practicing 500 daily eye surgeries all those 150,000 US citizens can receive the benefit of recovering their sight in just a 300-day period.

Cuba has all the equipment and specialized personnel considered among the best specialists in the world, said Fidel. He asked if the US government would prohibit those people from traveling to the island and sentence them to blindness.

Fidel Castro said such eye-operations by no means bring any financial benefit to the Cuban government and he recalled that Florida is closer to Cuba than countries like Guyana or Grenada, also benefiting from the Operation Miracle eye-surgery program.

He recalled that tens of thousands of people from 22 South and Central American nations have been benefited by Cuban health services.

"Will the United States fine those sick US citizens for coming to Cuba for eye surgery?," Fidel asked in direct reference to the arbitrary fines imposed by the Bush administration on US citizens that have traveled to Cuba.

In that respect he recalled that during November the US Treasury sent letters to some 200 members of the Venceremos Brigade and to Pastors for Peace requesting information on their latest trips to Cuba, as an initial step that could lead to the imposition of heavy fines.

Thousands of other US citizens have been threatened with huge fines if they violate Washington's travel ban, said Fidel Castro.

The Cuban leader then went on to denounce ongoing US maneuvers to release terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, author of the 1976 bombing of a Cubana airliner that claimed 73 innocent lives.

Posada, 77, is only charged with illegal entry to US territory and he could be released following a hearing slated for January 24 in El Paso, Texas, where the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office will revise his status in the US.

Posada Carriles, a naturalized Venezuelan citizen, is wanted in Caracas to stand trial in the plane bombing, but the US government has ignored its longstanding extradition treaty with the South American country.

In his speech, Fidel described as a strange coincidence the recent exhibition of a German documentary that tries to accuse Cuba for the assassination of former US President John F. Kennedy. He called the film a total fabrication of the CIA.

He also referred to other aggressions mounted by the Bush administration gainst the island, including a committee for the so-called democratic transition in Cuba, which has been assigned a huge budget for subversive activities against the island.

Fidel Castro said that Cuba is the most stable country in the world while the Bush administration has the largest number of criminals in an empire similar to the one Adolph Hitler dreamed of.

The Cuban President noted the 500 billion dollar war budget approved in the United States, a considerable part of the total 2.6 trillion dollar annual budget. He pointed out that the growing fiscal deficit is balanced with the money deposited in US banks by Third World Nations.

Fidel Castro also said that the US budget includes nearly 38 million dollars dedicated to anti-Cuba radio and TV transmissions, and includes a 10 million dollar increase in order to purchase a plane to beam such illegal transmissions to the island.

[Ron Ecker]

April 11, 2006

Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and the Downing of Cubana Flight 455

A Glimpse into the Mind of a Terrorist

By JOSÉ PERTIERRA

Last week in Miami, Luis Posada Carriles´s accomplice in the downing of the Cuban passenger plane that was blown out of the sky with 73 innocent people on board on October 6, 1976 was interviewed by Juan Manuel Cao of Channel 41 in Miami. His name is Orlando Bosch.

I quote verbatim excerpts from the television interview

Juan Manuel Cao: Did you down that plane in 1976?

Orlando Bosch: If I tell you that I was involved, I will be inculpating myself . . . . and if I tell you that did not participate in that action, you would say that I am lying. I am therefore not going to answer one thing or the other.

Juan Manuel Cao: In that action 76 persons were killed (the correct figure is 73, including a pregnant passenger)?

Orlando Bosch: No chico, in a war such as us cubans who love liberty wage against the tyrant, you have to down planes, you have to sink ships, you have to be prepared to attack anything that is within your reach.

Juan Manuel Cao: But don´t you feel a little bit for those who were killed there, for their families?

Orlando Bosch: . . . Who was on board that plane? Four members of the Communist Party, five north Koreans, five Guyanese, (JP: there were really 11 Guyanese passengers) . . . concho chico, four member of the Communist Party chico!!! Who was there? Our enemies . . .

Juan Manuel Cao: ¿And the fencers? The young people on board?

Orlando Bosch: I was in Caracas. I saw the young girls on television. There were six of them. After the end of the competition, the leader of the six dedicated their triumph to the tyrant etc etc. She gave a speech filled with praise for the tyrant. We had already agreed in Santo Domingo, that every one who comes from Cuba to glorify the tyrant had to run the same risks as those men and women that fight alongside the tyranny.

Juan Manuel Cao: If you ran into the family members who were killed in that plane, wouldn't you think it difficult . . . ?

Orlando Bosch: No, because in the end those who were there had to know that they were cooperating with the tyranny in Cuba.

Bosch´s answers to those five questions give us a glimpse into the mind of the kind of terrorist that the United States government harbors and protects in Miami: terrorists that for the last forty-seven years have waged a bloody and ruthless war against the Cuban people.

What happened to Cubana de Aviación 455 almost thirty years ago is no secret. We need simply examine the CIA's own declassified cables. At the time, this was the worst act of aviation terrorism in history, and the first time that a civilian airliner was blown up by terrorists.

More than three months before CU-455 was blown out of the sky over Barbados on that sunny Wednesday afternoon of October 6, 1976, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) informed Washington that a Cuban exile extremist group planned to place a bomb on a Cubana de Aviación flight.

The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research reported to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that a CIA source had overheard Luis Posada Carriles say less than a month prior to the bombing that "we are going hit a Cuban airliner."

Neither Washington nor the CIA alerted Cuban authorities to the terrorist threat against their planes.

The bombing was carried out by Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Hernán Ricardo and Freddy Lugo. Final preparations for the terrorist act began with the arrival of Orlando Bosch in Caracas on September 8, 1976. Bosch is a Cuban-born terrorist who was the acknowledged leader of an organization called Coordinación de Organizaciones Revolucionarias Unidas (CORU).

According to the FBI, CORU was an umbrella group of Cuban exile organizations that was formed to "plan, finance and carry out terrorist operations and attacks against Cuba." (FBI cable dated June 29, 1976).

When Bosch arrived in Caracas on the 8th of September of that year, Posada Carriles was there to greet and make available to him his right hand man: trusted confidante Hernán Ricardo, who has admitted under oath to be a CIA operative. In 1976, Ricardo was also an employee of Luis Posada Carriles at a private intelligence firm that the latter founded and ran in Caracas: Investigaciones Comerciales e Industriales (ICI). Ricardo says that Posada Carriles introduced him to Orlando Bosch at the ICI offices in Caracas.

To help him with the special operation that Bosch and Posada planned for him, Ricardo in turn recruited Freddy Lugo. A Venezuelan citizen, Lugo has also admitted under oath to be a CIA operative.

We know that the foursome of Posada, Bosch, Ricardo and Lugo met together at least four times to plan the downing of the plan.

At the meetings, the terrorists agreed upon the coded words they would use to describe the success of the operation. The plane would be known as the "bus", and the passengers would be called the "dogs." "The rest is up to you," Posada told Lugo and Ricardo.

The C-4 explosives were carried on board the aircraft by Ricardo and Lugo in a tube of toothpaste and in a camera.

Freddy Lugo and Hernán Ricardo boarded the CU-455 flight in Trinidad at 12:15 PM bound for Barbados. Ricardo traveled under a forged passport using a false name. They sat in the middle of the plane. During the flight, they placed the C-4 explosives in two separate places in the plane: the rear bathroom and underneath the seat belonging to Freddy Lugo. Lugo and Ricardo got off the plane during its brief stopover at Seawell Airport in Barbados. They later admitted under oath that they had each received special training in explosives from the CIA.

Aboard CU-455 were 73 persons. 57 of the passengers were Cubans. 11 of them were Guyanese medical students in Cuba. The remaining five passengers were Koreans. Those on board averaged only 30 years of age.

Traveling with the group were 24 members of the Cuban fencing team, many of them teen-agers, fresh from gold medal victories at the Youth Fencing Championship in Caracas. They proudly wore their gold medals on board the aircraft. One of the young fencers, Nancy Uranga, was only twenty-three years old and pregnant. She wasn't supposed to be on board. That spot on the fencing team belonged to a pretty little twelve-year old fencer, unusually tall for her age, named María González. María had planned to participate in the Caribbean Games, and was on the tarmac at Havana's José Martí Airport ready to board the plane that would take the team to the Games, when one of her coaches gave her the bad news that international amateur rules prevented twelve year olds from competing. María reportedly was devastated, and she went to her home in Havana's neighborhood called La Víbora, and cried for three days, refusing to watch the games on Cuban television because it hurt her so much not to be there. Nancy Uranga was summoned to the Airport and took María´s place on the ill fated trip to the Caribbean Games.

The fencing team was a roaring success at the Games. They won gold, silver and bronze medals. They were to return home on October 6, 1976. The athletes proudly wore their medals dangling over their clothes, as they boarded the aircraft. Cubana de Aviación 455 stopped first in Trinidad at 11:03 AM, and then touched down again in Barbados at 12:25 PM.

Nine minutes after take-off from Barbados, the bombs exploded and the plane caught fire. The passengers on board then lived the most horrifying ten minutes of their lives, as the plane turned into a scorching coffin.

The cockpit voice-recorder captured the last terrifying moments of the flight at 1:24 PM: "Seawell! Seawell! CU-455 Seawell. . . ! We have an explosion on board. . . . . We have a fire on board."

The pilot, Wilfredo Pérez (affectionately known as "Felo"), asked Seawell Airport for permission to return and land, but the plane and its passengers were already doomed.

As the plane approached the shore, it was rapidly losing altitude and control. "Hit the water, Felo, Hit the Water," said the co-pilot.

Rather than crashing into the white sands of the beach called Paradise and killing the beachgoers, Felo courageously banked the plane toward the water where it crashed in a ball of fire one mile north of Deep Water Bay.

Pieces of bodies were slowly recovered from the sea. Most of them too grotesquely disfigured to be identified by their family members. There were no survivors.

After deplaning, Lugo and Ricardo hurriedly left Seawell Airport in Barbados and checked into a local hotel under assumed names.

From the hotel, Hernán Ricardo called his bosses in Venezuela: Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles. Unable to find Posada at his desk, he left a message with Posada´s secretary. He then called Caracas again and asked a mutual friend, Marinés Vega, to deliver the following message to Posada:

"We are in a desperate situation, the bus was fully loaded with dogs . . . they should send someone I can recognize . . . I will be waiting in a soda fountain near the embassy just in case something happens and I need to ask for asylum there."

Ricardo was able to communicate with Bosch who allegedly said to him: "my friend we have a problem here in Caracas. An aircraft is never blown up in midair . . .", implying that the plan had been for the bomb to explode while the plane was on the ground before take-off.

Sensing how hot things were getting for them in Barbados, Lugo and Ricardo boarded a return flight to Trinidad on British West Indies Airlines that very evening. On the flight, Ricardo said to his buddy: "Damn it, Lugo, I'm desperate and feel like crying. I had never killed anyone before."

In Port of Spain, the terrorists checked into the Holiday Inn with false identities and made more desperate calls to Caracas, trying to reach Posada Carriles.

Their nervous demeanor at the airport and at the hotel, as well as their conversations in the taxis they took in Barbados and later in Trinidad, led the police to zero in on them as the primary suspects in the bombing. They were arrested and interrogated by detectives from the Trinidad police department.

Both confessed to Commissioner Dannis Ramdwar who took their written depositions. Lugo and Ricardo each admitted to being CIA operatives. Ricardo described in detail how he could detonate C-4 explosives and pointed to a pencil on Ramdwar´s desk that was similar to the timer he used to detonate the explosive on board the plane. Ricardo also told the police in Trinidad that he worked for Luis Posada Carriles. He told Ramdwar that the head of CORU was Orlando Bosch and drew for the police an organizational chart of CORU and said that the terrorist organization was also known as Condor.

Upon hearing of the confessions of Lugo and Ricardo, the police in Caracas moved in and arrested Posada and Bosch. They also obtained a warrant and searched the offices of Posada Carriles where they confiscated weapons and sophisticated electronic monitoring equipment. The police also found a schedule of Cubana flights in Posada´s Caracas office.

In one of the very first reports on the October 6, 1976, downing of Cubana Flight 455, the FBI Venezuelan bureau cables that a confidential source has identified Luis Posada and Orlando Bosch as responsible for the bombing. "The source all but admitted that Posada and Bosch had engineered the bombing of the airline," according to the report.

During the television interview three days ago in Miami, Bosch talked about an agreement reached between terrorists in Santo Domingo in June of 1976.

The FBI itself tells us about that secret agreement. According to an FBI report, Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles and other terrorists formed an umbrella terrorist organization called CORU at a meeting in the Dominican Republic. The FBI report details how at that meeting in the Dominican Republic, CORU planned a series of bombing attacks against Cuban entities, as well as the murder of Communists in the Western Hemisphere. On page 6, the report relates in great detail how Orlando Bosch was met in Caracas on September 8, 1976, by Luis Posada and other anti-Castro exiles and a deal was struck as to what kind of activities he could organize on Venezuelan soil.

After the arrests of Lugo, Ricardo, Bosch and Posada, Trinidad, Barbados, Guyana and Cuba ceded jurisdiction over the downing of the passenger plane to Venezuela, and all four were prosecuted in Caracas for murder.

Prosecuting terrorists has a price. The Judge who issued the initial arrest warrants for the four terrorists, Delia Estava Moreno, received several death threats and attempts at blackmail as reprisals for her conduct. As a result, she was forced to recuse herself. The presiding judge of the military court, Retired General Elio Garcia Barrios, also received death threats and in 1983, his son and chauffeur were murdered during a Mafia-style hit intended to even the score and intimidate those who dared legally prosecute the murderers.

Eventually, Lugo and Ricardo were convicted, but before the Court could reach a verdict regarding his case, Luis Posada Carriles escaped from the prison at San Juan de los Moros in the State of Guárico where he had been confined after two unsuccessful escape attempts.

Posada escaped with the help of at least $50,000 from a right wing extremist group in Miami.

Fifteen days after his escape from jail, Posada was smuggled out of Venezuela bound for Aruba on a shrimp boat. He spent a week in Aruba and was then flown by private plane to Costa Rica and then San Salvador. He immediately started working alongside Felix Rodriguez, a high ranking CIA member, at the Ilopango Airbase. Posada´s job in San Salvador was to supply the Nicaraguan Contras with arms and supplies obtained through the sale of narcotics. This Operation became a scandal known as Iran-Contra. Felix Rodriguez was the CIA's point man in Central America for the Iran-Contra scandal, hired for the job by an old friend from the CIA Donald Gregg who was Vice-President Bush's National Security Advisor. According to Anna Louise Bardach who interviewed Posada while she was a reporter for the New York Times, "Posada noted with a certain pride that George Bush had headed the CIA from November 1975 to January 1977"-a period that covered some of the most violent crimes committed by Cuban exiles and Operation Condor: including the Letelier assassination and the downing of the passenger plane.

Posada spent the next several years in Central America working for the security services of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. But in the early 90s he turned his attention once again to Cuba which was struggle to jump start a tourist industry in order to offset a dramatic economic downturn after the demise of the Soviet Bloc. From his lair in Central America he recruited Salvadoran and Guatemalan mercenaries to smuggle explosives to Cuba, and in 1997 bombs began to blow in the finest hotels and restaurants of Havana-killing an Italian tourist named Fabio DiCelmo and wounding several others.

Cuba learned that the campaign of terror against its tourist industry was being financed by Miami exile organizations and orchestrated by Luis Posada Carriles in Central America. Faced with the FBI´s refusal to reign in the terrorists in Miami, Cuba sent some very brave men to penetrate these terrorist organizations and gather information with the purpose of asking President Clinton to intervene and order the Feds to arrest the terrorists.

After gathering enough evidence to determine the source of the terror campaign, on May 1, 1998 Fidel Castro sent a personal emissary to Washington with a handwritten message to President Clinton: the emissary was none other than Nobel Prize for Literature Gabriel García Márquez. President Clinton was out of town for several days in California, and after waiting him out at the Hotel Washington for several days, García Márquez finally met with White House Chief of Staff Mac McLarty and gave him the letter. García Márquez recounts McLarty´s reaction to the letter and quotes McLarty as saying to him: "We have enemies in common: terrorists".

In the wake of the Garcia Marquez visit, the U.S. sent an FBI team to Cuba a month later to discuss collaboration with Cuba on a "War On Terror". Cuba handed over to the FBI tapes of 14 telephone conversations of Luis Posada Carriles with details on the series of bombs that had exploded in Cuba in the 90s. Cuba also gave the FBI Luis Posada Carriles´ addresses in El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama. Also tapes of conversations with Central American detainees in Cuba who admitted Posada is their boss. All together, Cuba turned over 60 sets of documents with information about 40 terrorists based in Miami, including their addresses, and evidence of their ties to terror.

Cuba then waited . . . and waited . . . and waited. Cuba waited for the FBI to start arresting terrorists. But instead the FBI arrested on September 12, 1998, the men now known as the Cuban Five: the men who had come to Miami to penetrate the Miami exile terrorist organizations.

According to El Nuevo Herald, the first persons that were notified of the arrests of the Cuban Five were Cong. Lincoln Diaz Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami.

The Five were charged with 62 counts of violating federal laws. Their arrests illustrates Washington's double standard when it comes to its so-called war on terror: a war that the U.S. government chooses to fight a la carte, distinguishing between terrorists it likes and those it doesn't.

The Five were placed in solitary confinement for the next 17 months, until the start of their trial. They were convicted of several charges and received the maximum sentences possible. Gerardo Hernandez received a double life sentence and Antonio Guerrero and Ramon Labañino on life sentence each. Fernando Gonzalez and René Gonzalez, got 19 and 15 years respectively.

They were sent to maximum security prisons across this country, and two of them have been denied visits from their wives for the past seven years in violation of U.S. laws and international law.

On August 9, 2005, a 3 judge panel of the Court of Appeals published a 93 page decision that reversed the convictions and sentences, ruling that the Five did not receive a fair trial in Miami and acknowledging evidence produced by the defense at trial that revealed terrorist actions by Miami exile groups against Cuba. The Court of Appeals even cited in a footnote the role of Luis Posada Carriles and correctly referred to him as a terrorist. The three-judge panel found that "a perfect storm" of prejudice prevented the Cuban Five from having a fair trial in Miami.

The Bush Administration, through its Solicitor General, made a formal appeal to all 12 judges of the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta, and out of apparent deference to the unusual request from the Department of Justice the Court of Appeals nullified the three-judge panel decision and agreed to hear the case en banc.

Attorney Leonard Weinglass who represents Antonio Guerrero said recently: "The Five were not prosecuted because they violated American law, but because their work exposed those who were. By infiltrating the terror network that is allowed to exist in Florida they demonstrated the hypocrisy of America's claimed opposition to terrorism."

As the Five were being prosecuted in Miami, the campaign of terror against Cuba continued. In November 2000, Posada Carriles was arrested in Panama along with three accomplices before they could carry out the plan to blow up an auditorium filled with students at the University of Panamá where Cuban President Fidel Castro was to speak. The four were convicted by a Panamanian Court, but on August 26, 2004, in one of her last acts as President, Mireya Moscoso pardons them in violation of Panamanian law. The three accomplices, all Cuban-Americans, go to Miami to be welcomed home. Posada Carriles who is neither a U.S. citizen nor a lawful permanent resident, goes underground in Honduras and begins to scheme a plan to go to the home of terrorism: Miami.

In March of 2005 he shows up in Miami and applies for asylum. For weeks he lives openly in that city, even going shopping at the mall. Before he is detained by anyone, Venezuela requests his preventive detention for the purpose of extraditing him to Venezuela to stand trial for 73 counts of first degree murder relating to the downing of the passenger plane in 1976.

Rather than exercising an extradition detainer on him, the Department of Homeland Security instead did nothing. It wasn't until Posada called a bizarre press conference in Miami on May 16, 2005 where he openly boasted that the DHS wasn't even looking for him, that government officials felt they had no choice but to detain him. He was detained immediately after the press conference and gingerly escorted in a golf cart with no handcuffs to a waiting helicopter.

Posada was charged with illegal entry into the United States and thus began the legal charade designed to divert attention from the extradition request that remains unattended by the Department of Justice.

As relief from deportation, Posada first claimed he was still a permanent resident of the U.S. In the alternative, he asked for asylum and protection from removal under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). Although it is true that he had been a permanent resident in the 60s, Posada long ago abandoned that status. After all, he has spent the last almost forty years living and killing abroad. Because of his long curriculum of terror, as a matter of law he does not qualify for asylum. That left him only with the possibility CAT relief.

It was then that we witnessed one of the sorriest episodes of legal maneuvering ever by Department of Homeland Security attorneys. Those handling the immigration matter of Posada Carriles at the Immigration Court in El Paso, Texas set the table for Posada to win CAT relief.

Posada called only one witness in his immigration case. A so-called expert on Venezuela who testified that in his expert opinion, Posada would be tortured if returned to Caracas. The witness testified that Venezuela tortures prisoners and that Posada would be surely tortured if sent back. That witness was none other than Joaquín Chaffardet, friend, business partner and lawyer of Luis Posada Carriles in Venezuela. Chaffardet had also been Posada´s boss at the DISIP in the early 1970s, a man that Posada has been close to for the past forty years. The DHS never even cross-examined this guy! Its attorney never even raised the possibility that Chaffardet was not an objective, disinterested witness-but instead was biased in favor of his friend, partner and client. Other than Chaffardet´s questionable testimony, no other evidence in support of the theory that Posada would be tortured in Venezuela was presented.

DHS´s tactic worked. Immigration Judge William Abbott credited Chaffardet´s testimony as credible and found a "clear probability" that Posada would be tortured if returned to Venezuela. Judge Abbott ordered his removal from the United States, but not to Venezuela or Cuba because he would be tortured there. DHS declined to appeal the decision, and began a quest to find a third country that would take him. A few months earlier the DHS had appealed an Immigration Judge´s decision to grant CAT relief to two Venezuelan officers. In that appeal, the same DHS attorney who litigated the Posada case argued that there is no evidence that Venezuela tortures prisoners. Now in the Posada case, DHS took a decidedly different position. Why? You figure it out.

More than six months have passed since the immigration decision. Since it has thus far refused to slap an extradition detainer on him (as Venezuela has requested numerous times), the U.S. government has to either release Posada or declare him a threat to the community. In a letter to Posada dated March 22, 2006, DHS decided to continue to detain him on immigration charges. The letter told Posada that he has a "long history of criminal activity and violence in which innocent civilians were killed." His release from detention concludes ICE in its letter to Posada, "would pose a danger to both the community and the national security of the United States."

In support of its interim decision to continue to detain him, ICE cites Venezuela's pending extradition case against Posada and the fact that Posada fled from a Venezuelan prison while his trial for the downing of a passenger plane in 1976 was pending. "Your past also includes your escape from a Venezuelan prison which was accomplished after several attempts utilizing threats of force, explosives and subterfuge," says ICE in its Decision.

ICE goes on to cite Posada's own statements to link him to the "planning and coordination of a series of hotel and restaurant bombings that occurred in Cuba . . . in 1997." These bombings resulted in the murder of an Italian tourist and the wounding of several others. ICE also cites Posada's conviction in Panama for "crimes against national security," in reference to his attempt to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro in 2000 with C- 4 explosives as President Castro was to speak to an auditorium with full of students.

So finally the US government recognizes that Posada is a bad guy! Without actually saying the dreaded word, the letter from ICE virtually calls him a terrorist. The law forced the United States to make this admission. Although it's clear that Washington doesn't want to extradite him to Venezuela, it is not prudent to release him. The only way that he can continue to be detained without an extradition detainer is with a government finding that he is a danger to the community.

But the extradition case is not going to go away. It's there, very much alive. Unless Posada has a heart attack and dies in prison, the law is eventually going to force the US government to proceed with the extradition case. A lot of people think that Judge Abbott´s finding that Posada may not be deported to Venezuela is a ruling on Venezuela's extradition request. That is not the case. Extradition rulings trump immigration decisions.

Moreover, even if Secretary of State Rice decides in her discretion not to extradite Posada, the treaties and conventions signed by the US government in the past obligate this country to prosecute him for downing of the plane in the United States-where noooooooooooo prisoners are ever tortured: right?

Listen to the language of the Montreal Convention on Civil Aviation.

Article 7

The Contracting State in the territory of which the alleged offender is found shall, if it does not extradite him, be obliged, without exception whatsoever and whether or not the offence was committed in its territory, to submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution. Those authorities shall take their decision in the same manner as in the case of any ordinary offence of a serious nature under the law of that State.

The Montreal Convention´s Article 7 gives the US no discretion. It must either extradite or prosecute Posada Carriles for 73 counts of first degree murder in relation to the downing of the airliner. Deporting him to a third country is not an option and neither is releasing him to the community.

The story of CU-455 cries out to be told to the American people. If the American people hear the true story of how those 73 people were murdered in cold blood by terrorists whom the United States prefers to shelter rather than prosecute, they'll not stand for it.

Few people in this country know that Orlando Bosch was released from immigration custody by President George Bush Sr. in 1990, and that he now sits on the dais whenever President Bush Jr. delivers speeches in Miami. Bosch´s lawyer, who happens to be Fulgencio Batista´s grandson, was appointed four years ago by Jeb Bush to Florida's Supreme Court.

The fate of the Cuban Five is in the hands of 12 judges, but the judges must be put under the microscope of public opinion. Despite your best efforts, Americans still don´t know who the Five are or why they went to Miami. It's important that you continue to make sure that their story is told: that the U.S. prosecutes and condemns anti-terrorists, yet shelters and protects terrorists.

It's up to the American people to put a stop to impunity, and it's up to you to make sure the American people learn the truth about these cases and this government.

It's up to you to bring the truth to the American people about Cuba and about Venezuela.

The US government conducts a hypocritical war on terror, while it shelters and rewards the terrorists it prefers. Washington lectures other governments about human rights, while it blockades Cuba, using hunger as a foreign policy tool, in order to try and starve 11 million people into submission.

We cannot sit idly by while the U.S. government blockades and invades countries that have never attacked it, tortures prisoners and takes their pictures as if the victims were curiosity pieces rather than human beings, as it spies on Americans without a warrant, and tramples the civil rights of its citizens with a law whose authors dared title "Patriotic."

In 2002, Washington helped organize a failed coup against a democratically elected government in Venezuela in order to prop up a typical puppet government in Caracas. Thanks to the Venezuelan people, the coup failed and President Chávez was restored to office.

The blockade against Cuba didn't work and neither did the coup in Venezuela. Cuba and Venezuela are now stronger than ever.

The Bush Administration's policies at home and abroad have woken a sleeping and silent giant throughout this continent. And, yes: America is one continent and not two as some U.S. textbooks would have us believe.

We are in the midst of a new social movement that is shaking this continent to its core. On the 30th anniversary of Operation Condor's bloodiest year, we are witness that the people Latin America have taken back their countries from the grip of terror. Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Brazil, Chile and Bolivia have governments that respond to the needs of their own people, rather than to the interests of US corporations. Other countries in will soon join them. This is an election year in America. The people of Latin America are taking back their governments.

It's high time that the people of the United States did the same.

José Pertierra is an attorney, practicing in Washington, D.C. He represents the Venezuelan government in the case of Luis Posada Carriles.

http://www.counterpunch.org/pertierra04112006.html

Edited April 11, 2006 by Ron Ecker

[Lee Forman]

http://www.independence.net/orlandobosch/

January 31, 2002

Granma

Orlando Bosch’s terrorist curriculum vitae

• To refresh Otto Reich’s memory

Few terrorists in history have achieved as high a level of criminal activity as Orlando Bosch.

September 11, 1980: Murder of Félix García Rodríguez, Cuban diplomat to the United Nations

In 1968, his fame was so great that, while under arrest for a bazooka attack on a Polish freighter, the city of Miami proclaimed Orlando Bosch Day, in support of that "exemplary" anti-Castro fighter. The pace of the attacks he carried out consisted of a campaign of terror aimed at scaring the Miami community, and raising money for "the cause" – including, of course, the terrorist leader’s bank account.

Unfortunately, his fellow Miami Cuban Otto Reich, now the White House’s top man in Latin America – who helped Bosch escape from Venezuelan justice and find refuge in the United States – seems to have lost his memory. He declared at a Senate hearing, with apparent candidness, that he was unaware of his friend Orlando Bosch’s terrorist past.

That declaration notwithstanding, dozens and dozens of terrorist attacks are attributed to Orlando Bosch and the gangs he led. Perhaps this "black list" will refresh the memory of George W. Bush’s close collaborator.

January 8, 1968: A bomb explodes in a suitcase in Havana

January 25, 1968: Bombs placed in various commercial establishments in the United States

February 1, 1968: Mexican Consulate in Miami bombed

February 2, 1968: Bomb placed in British consul’s house in Miami

March 12, 1968: Bomb placed in restaurant belonging to Cuban immigrants in the United States

March 13, 1968: Bomb placed in Chilean Consulate in the United States

April 2, 1968: Bomb placed in pharmaceutical company in United States

April 22, 1968: Bomb placed in Mexican Consulate, United States

April 22, 1968: Bomb placed in Spanish Tourism Office in the United States

May 5, 1968: British ship Greenwood bombed in the United States

May 25, 1968: Bomb placed aboard the Japanese ship Aroka Maru in the United States

June 21, 1968: Bomb placed in Spanish Tourism Office in the United States

June 23, 1968: Bomb placed in Mexican Tourism Office in the United States

June 27, 1968: Bomb explodes in the garage of Mexican consul to the United States

July 4, 1968: Bomb placed in Cuban Consulate in Canada

July 4, 1968: Bomb placed in Canadian Tourism Office in United States

July 7, 1968: Bomb placed in Japanese Tourism Office in the United States

July 11, 1968: Bomb explodes near Cuban Mission to the UN, causing damage to the Yugoslavian mission

July 11, 1968: Bomb placed aboard the Japanese ship Michagesan Maru in Mexico

July 14, 1968: Bomb placed in Mexican Tourism Office in the United States

July 15, 1968: Bomb discovered in a French government office in the United States

July 16, 1968: Bomb discovered in the Mexican Consulate, United States

July 17, 1968: Bomb placed in Cuban diplomat’s home in the United States

July 19, 1968: Bomb placed in French Tourism Office in the United States

July 19, 1968: Bomb placed in Shell Petroleum Company building in England

July 19, 1968: Bomb placed in Japanese travel agency in the United States

July 26, 1968: Bomb placed in Mexican Tourism Office in the United States

July 31, 1968: Bomb placed in British Consulate in United States

August 3, 1968: Bomb placed in British bank in the United States

August 5, 1968: Bomb placed in offices of the Communist Party in the United States

August 7, 1968: Bomb placed aboard the Bahamas ship Caribbean Venture in the United States

August 9, 1968: Mexican representatives in the United States bombed

August 9, 1968: Bomb placed in Mexican consul’s home in Miami

September 11, 1968: Bomb placed aboard British ship in Mexico

September 16, 1968: Bomb explodes aboard the Spanish ship Satrustegui in Puerto Rico

September 16, 1968: Bazooka attack on Polish ship in Miami

September 17, 1968: Bomb placed aboard Mexican airplane in United States

September 19, 1968: Bomb placed in home of Mexican consul to the United States

October 18, 1968: Bomb placed in Canadian travel agency

October 20, 1968: Gas bomb placed in a theater where a Cuban actress was performing

October 24, 1968: Attempts to assassinate Cuban ambassador to the UN

July 26, 1969: Bomb placed in Mexican Tourism Office in the United States

August 6, 1969: Bomb placed in British-owned Shell Oil offices in the United States

August 6, 1969: Bomb placed in Air France offices in the United States

In 1972, Bosch traveled to Chile with his friend Guillermo Novo Sampol and puts himself at the disposal of General Augusto Pinochet’s fascist junta. He subsequently participated in a series of attacks on prominent Chileans in exile.

In 1974, Bosch created the terrorist organization called Cuban Action, with the support of the Chilean junta and Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza’s secret police.

January 21, 1974: Bomb placed in Cuban diplomatic office in Canada

January 21, 1974: Bomb placed in Cuban diplomatic office in Argentina

January 21, 1974: Bomb placed in Cuban diplomatic office in Peru

January 21, 1974: Bomb placed in Cuban embassy in Mexico

February 13, 1974: Bomb placed in Cuban embassy in Madrid

April 4, 1974: Prensa Latina representatives bombed in Mexico

October 1, 1974: Bomb placed in Panamanian embassy in Caracas

October 30, 1974: Bomb placed in Venezuelan-Cuban Friendship Institute in Venezuela

November 11, 1974: Bomb placed in hotel where Cuban officials were staying in the United States

March 19, 1974: Assassination of General Carlos Prats, former officer of the Chilean Armed Forces, and his wife, in Argentina

May 10, 1975: Attempt in Rome to kill Bernardo Leighton, vice president of the Chilean Democratic Party in exile, and his wife

July 1975: Shots fired on the resident of a Cuban official in the United States

August 3, 1975: Assassination attempt on Cuban Ambassador Emilio Aragonés, in Argentina

November 17, 1975: Bomb placed in Venezuelan tourism company, in Venezuela

November 30, 1975: Bomb placed in USSR commercial office in Mexico

March 1976: Bosch is arrested by Costa Rican police for suspicion of trying to assassinate exiled Chilean leader Andrés Pascal Allende

September 21, 1976: Assassination of Orlando Letelier, former Chilean ambassador to the United States, and his secretary Ronnie Moffitt

In 1976, Bosch founded the Command of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU), most of whose members had worked for the CIA. He ordered another series of attacks.

June 6, 1976: Bomb placed in Cuban diplomatic mission at the UN

July 1, 1976: Bomb placed in Cuban-Costa Rican cultural center in Costa Rica

July 8, 1976: Bomb placed in Cuban mission in Spain

September 7, 1976: Bomb placed in Cubana de Aviación warehouse in Kingston, Jamaica

July 10, 1976: Bomb placed in Cubana de Aviación office in Barbados

July 11, 1976: Bomb placed in Air Panama offices in Colombia

July 23, 1976: Attempt to kidnap Cuban consul in Mérida, Mexico, resulting in the death of Cuban fishing technician D’Artagnan Díaz Díaz

September 8, 1976: Kidnapping of two Cuban diplomats in Argentina

September 9, 1976: Bomb placed in Guyanese embassy in Trinidad and Tobago

September 18, 1976: Bomb placed in Cubana de Aviación office in Panama

October 6, 1976: Mid-flight explosion of a Cubana de Aviación passenger plane, causing the deaths of all 73 persons on board

As a result of the plane bombing, Bosch was arrested in Venezuela and accused of masterminding the horrible crime. Nevertheless, from his cell he continued to dream up and order other attacks, against Venezuelan targets, in order to pressure the Venezuelan justice system to let him go.

March 30, 1977: Bomb placed in Venezuelan Consulate in Puerto Rico

August 30, 1977: Bomb placed aboard a Venezuelan airplane in Miami

December 23, 1977: Bomb placed in Viasa airline office, United States

December 30, 1977: Bomb placed in Venezuelan Consulate in Puerto Rico

In 1978, also from his cell, he ordered attacks on Mexican interests, in response to the measures taken by that government following the death of Cuban fishing technician D’Artagnan Díaz Díaz.

February 7, 1978: Bomb placed in Mexican Consulate in the United States

February 7, 1978: Bomb placed aboard the Mexican ship Azteca, resulting in two deaths and seven injuries

Later, still from his cell, he directed and maintained the actions of Omega-7, consisting of a long chain of terrorist attacks.

September 9, 1978: Bomb placed in Cuban mission at the UN

October 5, 1978: Bomb placed across from Madison Square Garden, where Cuban boxers were supposed to fight

October 6, 1978: Bomb placed in offices of Girasol tourism company, belonging to the Socialist Party of Puerto Rico

October 6, 1978: Bomb placed in offices of Antillana tourism company of Puerto Rico

October 6, 1978: Bomb placed in offices of the Record Public Service company, owned by a Cuban immigrant in Puerto Rico

October 23, 1978: Bomb placed in La Prensa newspaper in the United States

November 18, 1978: Bomb threats made against TWA, due to its flights to Cuba

December 28, 1978: Bomb placed in office of Varadero Travel in Puerto Rico

December 29, 1978: Bomb placed in Cuban mission at the UN

December 29, 1978: Bomb placed in Lincoln Center, New York

March 26, 1979: Bomb placed in TWA offices at New York’s JFK Airport

March 26, 1979: Bomb placed in office of Weehawken company of New Jersey, headed by Cuban Eulalio J. Negrín, a member of the Committee of 75, which was negotiating with Cuba

April 4, 1979: Murder of Carlos Muñoz Varela, member of the Antonio Maceo Brigade and director of Varadero Travel in Puerto Rico

November 25, 1979: Eulalio J. Negrín murdered

September 11, 1980: Murder of Félix García Rodríguez, Cuban diplomat to the United Nations

In 1987, thanks to Otto Reich, Bosch was freed and entered the United States, where he was granted asylum and even a presidential pardon.

By the start of the 1980s, the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) was in existence, and its leader, Jorge Mas Canosa, directed counterrevolutionary and terrorist attacks.

Once he took refuge in the United States, Bosch continued advising the most fanatical elements of the Miami mafia. Even within the terrorist gang directed by Luis Posada Carriles that planned to assassinate Fidel Castro in Panama, there are several of the old terrorist’s friends. Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo, Pedro Remón and Guillermo Novo Sampol were guilty of numerous terrorist actions against Cuba and other countries, among them the machine-gunning of Félix García Rodríguez in New York; the killing of Cuban fishing technician D’Artagnan Díaz Díaz by terrorist Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo; and the kidnapping of two diplomats in Argentina.

What a bad memory Mr. Reich has, after so many years of collaboration with the CIA and the CANF!