This article first appeared in Cuba’s Granma on Jan. 17. “They took him, they moved him yesterday [Tuesday] to the Otero County, N.M., jail,” northeast of El Paso, said attorney
Luis Posada Carriles, the man responsible for the bombing of a Cuban airliner that left 73 persons dead in 1976, has been transferred to a jail in New Mexico after spending a year and a half in a Texas immigration detention center, his lawyer told AFP on Wednesday.
Felipe DJ Millan in El Paso.
The Otero prison has a capacity to hold 500 inmates. It houses prisoners under the custody of the US Marshals Service who are awaiting transfer to other installations or have pending deportation orders.
Posada appeared in federal court on Tuesday to hear charges that he lied to US immigration agents when he requested to become a naturalized US citizen.
Posada did not enter a plea and the judge ordered him to remain in jail without bond and set a new hearing for Friday in El Paso.
Since his arrest in Miami in May 2005, Posada has been held at an immigration detention center in El Paso. An immigration court refused to deport him to Venezuela, which requested his extradition to face trial for the plane sabotage. The US and Venezuela have a long standing extradition treaty but Washington has failed to honor it.
Posada was indicted on charges that he lied to federal immigration agents, but not for his terrorist acts.
The seven-count indictment came about three weeks before a February 1 deadline for the federal government to justify that Posada should remain in custody. The defendant’s lawyers maintain he should be released but the federal prosecutor opposes freeing Posada pending his trial on the grounds that he could escape and is a threat to the community.
