This coming Jan. 10 in El Paso, Texas, a U.S. government farce will take place with the opening trial of terrorist Luis Posada Carriles in federal district court. Instead of facing charges of premeditated murder—for the bombing deaths of 73 people who died in a Cuban airliner on Oct. 6, 1976, and other crimes—Posada will only be tried for perjury and immigration fraud.
 Terrorist Luis Posada Carriles |
The ANSWER Coalition, the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five and other organizations will be there to demand justice for Posada’s victims. Actions will include a People’s Tribunal to be held Jan. 9 and a protest rally outside the federal courthouse Jan. 10.
The perjury and immigration fraud charges are related to Posada’s illegal and secret entry into the United States in late March 2005, when he lied to U.S. immigration officials.
At that interview, he was asked whether he had a role in procuring the help of mercenaries who planted bombs in Havana hotels in the summer of 1997.
In one of those bombings, an Italian tourist, Fabio Di Celmo, was killed when shrapnel struck him in the lobby of the Copacabana Hotel in Havana on Sept. 4, 1997. In a July 13, 1998 New York Times interview with journalist Ann Louise Bardach, Posada boasted of his directing role in those bombings. He also gave the names of his financiers in the Cuban American National Foundation.
Posada notoriously told Bardach about Di Celmo’s murder, “I sleep like a baby… That Italian was sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Bardach’s recorded interview is part of the evidence to be presented in the trial. However, the judge, Kathleen Cardone, has expressed reservations about the quality of the tape, thus providing a possibility that the evidence may ultimately be rejected.
Despite Posada’s admission to Bardach over the murder of Di Celmo, the U.S. prosecutors are only using that evidence to prove that he made false statements to them. A twice-convened Newark NJ grand jury’s evidence of funds that were wired to Posada — for the hotel bombs he produced — will also be presented in El Paso. But again, only for the perjury charge.
By trying Posada for perjury and fraud, Washington is hoping that it will escape worldwide condemnation for its refusal to have Posada face real justice and prosecution for his terrorist murders.
The U.S. government is fully aware of his murderous crimes, because he carried them out in various Latin American countries on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The only reason Posada is even in court on Jan. 10 is due to national and international outrage over the impunity and freedom he continues to enjoy in Miami, where he walks the streets a free man.
More than 34 years after the plane bombing, real justice is denied.
This is why, as Posada is in the docket for charges that will only yield a minor sentence if he is convicted, activists will be outside the courtroom in El Paso to expose his real crimes of terror to the world.
It was in Caracas that Posada, as a CIA operative, plotted and orchestrated the Cubana airliner bombing.When that horrendous plane bombing took place, George H. W. Bush was head of the CIA.
Venezuela continues to press its extradition order for Posada that it filed with the U.S. State Department in June 2005, but the Bush Jr, and now the Obama administrations, have refused to honor the petition.
A CIA operative for decades
Posada Carriles has a long history—since at least 1959—of carrying out numerous terrorist attacks on behalf of the CIA against the Cuban revolution and other progressive Latin American movements.
Soon after the Cuban revolutionary movement triumphed in 1959, Posada was in the employ of the CIA to carry out sabotage on institutions and individuals associated with Cuba.
In the early 1960s, he was trained in the use of explosives and other sabotage at Ft. Benning, Ga along with hundreds of other Cuban right-wing extremists.
In the 1970s, Posada was recommended by the CIA to help head up the intelligence police, the DISIP, of Venezuela. It was there that Posada hunted down, tortured and murdered Venezuelan progressive activists.
While working in the DISIP, Posada and Orlando Bosch paid two men, Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, to board Cubana flight 455 on Oct. 6, 1976, bound from Caracas to Barbados and then Cuba. After they planted two bombs, Ricardo and Lugo exited the plane in Barbados on its stopover. Several minutes after takeoff, the bombs exploded. All passengers and crew died, after a heroic but futile struggle by pilot Wilfredo Pérez Pérez.
While Posada awaited a civilian trial in Venezuela for the crime, he escaped from prison in 1985 after the secret intervention of U.S. operatives. From there, Posada continued to conduct his bloody terror in El Salvador as a close operative of Oliver North in the arming of Nicaraguan contras, and in Panama, where he planned to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro, in November 2000.
In that plot, several hundred Panamanian students and other students would have also perished in the auditorium where Fidel was set to speak if the 30-plus pounds of C-4 explosives had been successfully planted and set off.
Whenever Posada has faced serious prosecution, the U.S. government has stepped in to manipulate the process and rescue him. After being in a Panama jail for less than four years—again on lesser charges rather than attempted murder—the pro-U.S., outgoing President Mireya Moscoso, pardoned him in August 2004, along with three of his accomplices.
Those three equally dangerous terrorists, Gaspar Jimenez Escobedo, Pedro Remón Crispín and Guillermo Novo Sampol, flew immediately to Florida. After a half-hour interview by the FBI, they were set free in Miami, where they live today, despite their combined histories of murder and terrorism.
From August 2004 to March 2005, Posada remained underground, while he was given refuge by right-wing Central American governments. But with his longtime terrorist ally Bosch enjoying complete freedom in Miami—after Bush senior overrode a 1990 deportation order against him—Posada decided he would demand the same right.
Posada Carriles announced through his Miami attorneys in late March 2005 that he was now in the United States to seek political asylum. The Bush administration initially tried to look the other way.
But his presence raised a huge outcry and mobilizations in Cuba, whose people have collectively suffered the sorrow of the Cubana bombing, as well as from people around the world.
In the United States, the ANSWER Coalition, the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, the Alianza Martiana in Miami, and other organizations launched a campaign to demand Posada’s immediate arrest and extradition to Venezuela. In one letter campaign alone, over 50,000 letters were sent electronically via ANSWER supporters to members of Congress and Bush.
The Cuban people marched by the hundreds of thousands to demand justice.
Yet, as late as May 2005, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roger Noriega, apologist for the Miami terrorists, declared that the government couldn’t know for certain that Posada was in the United States.
This, despite the fact that Posada’s accomplices publicly boasted of lunchtime meetings and walks with him in Miami.
But the heat on Washington proved too much. Thus on May 17, 2005, Posada was arrested as he announced plans to leave the U.S. He was flown by Homeland Security to El Paso, Texas.
Protests have met Posada every time he has appeared in court.
As José Pertierra, Venezuela’s attorney in the extradition matter, has explained, Washington’s prosecution of Posada raises many doubts about the government’s real intent.
Pertierra says, “The real purpose of the pending trial in El Paso is to hamper the extradition request to Caracas, keep Posada on the street, and save the U.S. government a full trial that would place it next to the terrorist, on the defendant’s bench. That is why the strategy is to delay the process.”
Protest in El Paso Jan. 9 and 10
While Posada faces minor charges in federal court, he will be tried by a “People’s Tribunal” on Jan. 9 at 4 p.m. in El Paso. There will be a protest rally the following day at the courthouse where Posada’s trial will be held.
The ANSWER Coalition—which has spearheaded a campaign for justice and Posada’s extradition since he entered the United States—along with the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, the National Network on Cuba and other organizations, are sponsoring the events. In addition to demanding Posada’s extradition to Venezuela, protesters will also demand freedom for the Cuban Five, five men who monitored and prevented anti-Cuba terrorism in Miami and are now in prison in the U.S.
The “People’s Tribunal,” hosted by the Unitarian Universalist Community of El Paso, 4425 Byron St., El Paso,” will hear the charges of terrorism against Posada and his accomplices. The U.S. government’s support for the Miami terrorists will also be on trial.
Participants in the People’s Tribunal include: Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney general; Jose Pertierra, Venezuela’s attorney for the extradition order of Posada; and others. Evidence and testimony will be presented by expert witnesses, who will expose to the public and media the real crimes of Posada—among them, his role in directing the Cubana plane bombing and the 1997 Havana hotel bombings. Community members will serve as jury, hear the evidence from witnesses and render a judgment on behalf of the people.
The protest rally will take place Jan. 10 when Posada’s trial begins at 8 a.m., at the Federal Courthouse, 511 E San Antonio Ave., El Paso. For more information, please write [email protected] or call 202-265-1948.
