|
May Day in Havana: ‘U.S. government guilty of harboring terrorists’
Photo: Bill Hackwell
|
On April 19, U.S. authorities released terrorist Luis Posada Carriles from detention. On May 8, the U.S. government dropped immigration fraud charges against him. No U.S. authorities have shown any willingness to extradite or prosecute him for the 1976 murder of 73 passengers aboard a Cuban airliner.
All these actions are symptomatic of a larger issue.
The United States government has actually led a war of terror on Cuba, with the CIA and the Bush family playing a pivotal role. Posada has been a CIA operative since the early 1960s, trained in counter-insurgency terrorism. He has a long and uninterrupted history of bombings, torture, assassinations and sabotage directed against the Cuban revolution and other Latin American revolutionary struggles.
Posada’s minor charges of immigration fraud were dropped by El Paso federal judge Kathleen Cardone on May 8. That left Posada facing no criminal charges.
Posada’s presence in the United States, after sneaking into Miami in March 2005, is aptly described as a “hot potato” for the Bush administration. If Bush were to extradite Posada to Venezuela for the 1976 Cubana plane bombing, or prosecute him in the United States for that crime, the U.S. complicity in Posada’s crimes would be publicly exposed.
George Bush, Sr. was head of the CIA at the time of the plane bombing. Posada is widely known as the mastermind, along with his accomplice Orlando Bosch. Declassified CIA documents prove the agency knew several months before the Oct. 6, 1976, bombing that Posada and Bosch were planning the attack.
Bush family, the CIA and terrorism
Bush, Jr.’s support and release of Posada today is reminiscent of his father’s treatment of Bosch when Bush, Sr. was president. In 1988, after illegally entering the United States, Bosch was arrested. The Justice Department began deportation proceedings against Bosch because of his long terrorist history, directing over 30 bombings against civilians. He also violated his U.S. parole for a previous conviction, escaping from the United States in 1974. While abroad he and Posada engineered the plane bombing.
In a strongly worded 18-page 1989 declaration to back the deportation order, U.S. assistant attorney general Joe Whitley said Bosch “has repeatedly expressed and demonstrated a willingness to cause indiscriminate injury and death. His actions have been those of a terrorist, unfettered by laws or human decency, threatening and inflicting violence without regard to the identity of his victims.”
Yet Bush, Sr. overrode Bosch’s deportation order. According to Ann Louise Bardach, writing in the November 2006 issue of Atlantic Monthly, “President Bush rejected his own Justice Department’s recommendation and authorized Bosch’s release [in July 1990]. Not long after that, Bosch announced that he was ready to ‘rejoin the struggle’ and called the agreement he had signed forswearing violence ‘a farce.’ Two years later, the Bush administration granted Bosch U.S. residency.”
Today Bosch appears on Miami television and places full-page ads in newspapers advocating attacks against Cuba.
The current Bush administration’s kid-glove treatment of Posada has engendered worldwide condemnation. Many have pointed to the hypocrisy of harboring a self-admitted terrorist while justifying the illegal U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan as part of a “war on terrorism.”
That is why it took two years of maneuvering—with the U.S. government’s hollow prosecution for immigration fraud instead of terrorist crimes—for Posada to be freed to Miami.
U.S. stages sham ‘prosecution’
|
Luis Posada, right, in custody of U.S. immigration officers.
Photo: Armando Segovia/AFP/Getty Images
|
Posada was in immigration detention in El Paso, Texas, from May 17, 2005, until April 19, 2007. In his Aug. 29, 2005, deportation hearing, Homeland Security prosecutor Gina Garrett—undoubtedly under White House instructions—never mentioned his suspected role in the Cubana plane bombing when she presented the evidence of his criminal background before the court.
It took a protest of activists outside the hearing, with a photo display of Posada’s 73 plane-bombing victims, to expose his crime through the media.
Joaquin Chaffardet testified as the sole witness for Posada, arguing Posada could not be deported to either Venezuela or Cuba. He claimed that Posada would be tortured in either country.
Chaffardet, a Venezuelan, was Posada’s former boss in the Venezuelan DISIP intelligence police in the 1970s, where they both brutalized and murdered many Venezuelan leftists. Posada himself documented these crimes in his book, “Los Caminos del Guerrillero” (The Paths of the Guerrilla).
In mid-April of this year, Chaffardet’s home was raided by Venezuelan police. There, C-4 explosives, a detonating cable and documents pointing to the Venezuelan Defense Ministry as a potential target were found.
His unsubstantiated claim in 2005 that Posada would be tortured was not challenged by prosecutor Garrett in the hearing.
Thus, the charade was set in motion.
By Chaffardet’s unchallenged testimony, the judge ruled that Posada could not be deported to Venezuela or Cuba. To date, no other country will accept him. Therefore he remains in the United States, and now, in Miami.
Extradition order still stands
Despite the court’s refusal to deport Posada, the extradition petition filed by the Venezuelan government on June 15, 2005, has precedence and remains active. Once again, the Bush administration, through U.S. attorney general Alberto Gonzales, refuses to act on the extradition. Bush’s absolute silence about Posada speaks volumes.
The U.S. government refuses to extradite Posada to face trial in Venezuela or prosecute him in the United States, as required by the 1971 Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Civilian Aviation. The United States and Venezuela are among the signatories.
Article 7 of the convention requires that the U.S. government “shall, if it does not extradite him, be obliged, without exception whatsoever and whether or not the offense was committed in its territory, to submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution.”
This means the U.S. government cannot escape its obligation to see Posada prosecuted for the plane bombing. It must try him for the 73 acts of first-degree murder within the United States if it will not extradite him.
Posada’s ties to CIA
Of course, if prosecuted for terrorism, the CIA’s role in directing Posada’s murderous “career” would be laid open for the world to see.
The U.S. government would be on trial, not just Posada. He is indeed a “hot potato” for Washington.
To assure that the CIA as Posada’s boss would remain hidden, federal prosecutors John W. Van Lonkhuyzen and Paul Ahern from the National Security division of the Department of Justice filed a motion on Friday, April 27, requesting that information on CIA involvement be banned from Posada’s immigration fraud trial.
In a “Cubadebate” interview, Washington, D.C., attorney José Pertierra responded: “This is the heart of the matter and the main reason that the White House is protecting him and doesn’t want to comply with the extradition request presented by Venezuela.
“It is obvious that they don’t want the issue of terrorism appearing in any shape or form during the judicial proceedings, because the road that links Posada to the CIA leads directly to the complicity of several U.S. presidents with the terrorist activities of this individual.” Pertierra represents Venezuela in the extradition matter.
The CIA’s 40-year sponsorship of Posada’s terrorism is a strong hand that Posada has possessed from day one. His attorneys argue that all his actions were taken as a CIA employee. They suggest that much would be revealed if he were tried.
|
Cubans hold portraits of Posada’s victims.
Photo: Bill Hackwell
|
Posada’s attorneys filed a motion reply to the U.S. motion to ban CIA information. The Posada document says in part, “Defendant Posada Carriles stands by his statement that he has assisted the Central Intelligence Agency for over 25 years.
“The government is incorrect in stating that the CIA and U.S. military history of the defendant is not relevant to this case and their request to limit this evidence should be denied. The defendant will establish … his historical and long-term association with the Central Intelligence Agency. … Both the defendant’s military service and his CIA service constitute critical evidence for the defense at trial.”
The CIA has tried to claim that Posada no longer worked with the agency since just before the 1976 plane bombing. Mountains of evidence indicate otherwise.
Posada continued his close collaboration with the U.S. government as an intermediary in the Iran-Contra arms and drug-dealing operations in the CIA-run Ilopango air force base in El Salvador in the 1980s.
A declassified document, available on the National Security Archives website of the George Washington University, shows that in 1993 the CIA contacted Posada to warn him of an impending assassination attempt. The ties have never been cut.
The Cuban Five
The total impunity granted to Posada and Bosch stands in stark contrast to the U.S. persecution of the Cuban Five, the Cuban men who infiltrated the Miami terrorist network to stop terrorism.
They were sent by Cuba in the early 1990s to infiltrate the notorious terrorist organizations based in Miami—groups like Alpha 66, Brothers to the Rescue, Cuban American National Foundation and others. They successfully prevented attacks on civilian targets in Cuba and elsewhere.
These men—Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González—are known as the “Cuban Five.” The Five are serving four life terms and 77 years collectively for the “crime” of working to stop U.S.-backed bombings and assassinations. They never possessed nor used weapons in their anti-terrorist mission. Their work consisted of monitoring and reporting.
For their successful counter-terrorism activities, the FBI arrested them on Sept. 12, 1998. After 17 months in illegal solitary confinement, they were tried in Miami—the one city where justice would never be found for five men acting on behalf of Cuba.
Judge Joan Lenard denied the Five’s multiple motions for change of venue. After a show trial amidst the Miami anti-Cuba hysteria, the Five were convicted of all 26 counts, including espionage conspiracy, murder conspiracy and acting as unregistered foreign agents.
In the years since the Five’s convictions on June 8, 2001, more terrorist plots have been uncovered in Miami. Despite one terrorist scandal after another, the U.S. government lets the anti-Cuba fascists go free while it uses every means to keep the Five imprisoned and to punish their families by restricting visits.
As an added measure of cruelty, Washington refuses the wives of two of the Five entry to the United States to see their husbands. Adriana Pérez has not been able to see her husband, Gerardo Hernández, in more than nine years. Olga Salanueva, wife of René González, has not seen her husband in more than seven years.
During the Five’s trial in 2000 and 2001, their attorneys argued the “defense of necessity,” which says that by committing violations of non-registration as foreign agents they were preventing a greater harm.
The trial court rejected that legal doctrine for a defense.
Yet the need for Cuban Five’s anti-terrorist mission in Miami is clearer than ever. The U.S. government has unleashed Posada, the most notorious terrorist in the western hemisphere, loose in Miami, to join some of his closest accomplices.
Posada’s fellow terrorist Santiago Alvarez, who received only a four-year sentence for a cache of weapons found in his possession, has just had his already-meager sentence reduced.
On May 4, after Alvarez surrendered several dozen automatic weapons, grenades, a rocket launcher, explosives and detonators, Miami’s U.S. Attorney Alejandro Acosta filed a motion asking that Alvarez’s sentence be reduced.
Acosta is the same U.S. attorney who has vigorously handled the government’s case against the Five.
The three terrorists, who planned to assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro and hundreds of Panamanian students set to hear Castro speak in November 2000, also live in Miami along with Posada.
Pedro Remón, Gaspar Jiménez and Guillermo Novo Sampol each have long and bloody histories of terrorist acts. They arrived in Miami just hours after they were pardoned by the right-wing, pro-Bush Panamanian president Mireya Moscoso in August 2004. She issued the pardon before the Panamanian judicial process had been completed.
The demand for the Cuban Five’s freedom is inextricably linked to the struggle against Posada’s impunity.
Mobilizations to jail Posada, free the Five
Cuba’s May Day parades this year brought 6 million Cubans into the streets—out of a population of 11 million—to chant and demand, “Bush, you fascist, convict the terrorist!” and “Free the Five Heroes!”
The Five have become an international cause among hundreds of social-justice organizations and Free the Five committees that have sprung up on every continent. In Cuba, freedom for the Cuban Five resonates in every neighborhood, school, workplace and institutions.
It is clear that it will take the mobilization and determined struggle of the people, from Cuba to the United States and on every continent, to win justice for the victims of terrorist Posada and the liberation of the Cuban Five.
National organizations like the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) and the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five are part of that campaign.
More information on the campaign to extradite Posada and free the Five is available at www.freethefive.org.
