FRFI 185 June / July 2005
‘If someone protects a terrorist, if someone feeds a terrorist, then that person is just as guilty as the terrorists…’ (President George Bush, August 2003)
When is a terrorist not a terrorist? When he’s a vicious counter-revolutionary Cuban on the CIA payroll who blows up a civilian aircraft in the name of imperialism. HANNAH CALLER and CAT ALISON report.
For the past six weeks, Cuban-born bomber Luis Posada Carriles has been living in the United States with impunity, boasting that he would be granted political asylum, while Attorney General Noriega denied he knew the terrorist’s whereabouts. But pressure from Venezuela and Cuba, where huge demonstrations have been organised to demand Posada Carriles’ extradition – and Posada’s own arrogance in giving a press conference in Miami – have forced the US adminstration to act, first arresting him on ‘immigration status charges’ on 17 May and, a few days later, charging him with illegal entry into the US.
In October 1976, a Cubana Airlines civilian aircraft blew up off the coast of Barbados, killing all 73 people on board, in an atrocity masterminded by Posada Carriles. Even the FBI have admitted that he was involved ‘up to his eyeballs’ (New York Times, May 2005). Posada escaped from jail in the US while under arrest for the bombing; he was subsequently arrested and jailed for the crime in Venezuela but escaped again. The FBI is also certain that Posada Carriles was involved in the car bomb that killed former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and an American aide in Washington, also in 1976. Although arrested and charged at the time, he mysteriously managed to escape, apparently disguised as a priest. Posada had been working for the CIA since 1961, when he took part in the failed US-organised Bay of Pigs invasion of revolutionary Cuba.
He also worked in counter-insurgency in Venezuela in the1970s, supported the US-funded Contras in Nicaragua and, in the 1990s, ran a string of operatives on missions to plant bombs in public places in Cuba, as he admitted in a 1998 interview to the New York Times, following the 1997 bombing of a Havana hotel where an Italian tourist was killed.
In 2000, Posada Carriles plotted with other CIA operatives to assassinate Fidel Castro at the Ibero-American Summit in Panama; he was arrested while carrying 100lbs of explosives and sentenced to eight years in prison. However, in August 2004 he and his co-conspirators were freed by right-wing Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso, in a deal negotiated in Miami for $4m, with the collusion of Colin Powell, then Secretary of State and Otto Reich, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs. Posada Carriles immediately made a triumphant visit to Miami in a private jet, while the administration turned a blind eye.
Both Cuba and Venezuela are demanding that Posada be returned to face charges. ‘As the author or accomplice of homicide,’ Venezuela’s Supreme Court stated, ‘he must be extradited and judged.’ On the one hand, the US administration does not ‘extradite to Cuba or those it believes to be acting on its behalf’. On the other, if it were to grant Posada asylum, its hypocrisy on the issue of ‘sheltering terrorists’ would be revealed for all to see. The ‘illegal entry’ charge, the US hopes, will provide them with a way out of the dilemma, allowing Posada Carriles to be deported to a third country, more friendly to the US and Posada’s interests. As Democrat Senator Delahunt pointed out in Newsweek: ‘There are mounds of…evidence, reportedly including US intelligence reports, that link Posada to numerous terrorist attacks. But he is an anti-Castro Cuban, not an Arab or a Muslim.’
On the march for justice and socialism
Report from Cuba
On Tuesday 17 May the streets of Havana filled up with people, flags and placards as 1,200,000 Cubans participated in the biggest march in our history demanding the arrest of terrorists Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch. We carried placards saying ‘Punish the terrorist’, ‘Down with terrorism’ and ‘Fascist Bush, arrest the terrorist’. The people were dressed in red, blue and white – the colours of the Cuban flag and carried photos of victims of terrorist attacks, including those killed in the Cubana Airlines flight in 1973, an attack orchestrated by Posada Carriles.
The demonstration lasted for six hours, and was addressed by international guests, including Daniel Ortega, Secretary General of the Sandinista National Liberation Front of Nicaragua, and Giustino Di Celmo, father of the Italian tourist, Fabio Di Celmo, killed in a hotel bomb in Havana,
a crime which Posada Carriles has boasted of his responsibility for. Fidel marched with us to the Malecon, despite his recent knee operation, where there was a demonstration against terrorism outside the US Interests Section. Fidel is very proud of his people because this huge demonstration was organised in less than one week.
Fidel told the crowd that Cuba has been the object of the most prolonged economic war in history and an incessant and vicious campaign of terrorism for more than 45 years. He said that terrorism was created and developed by the government of the US to destroy our Revolution and it has not stopped for an instant during four decades, from both within and outside the island. Orlando Bosch and Posada Carriles are the most bloody exponents of terrorism, said Fidel, adding that in its aggression against Cuba, imperialism has carried out dozens of atrocities in the numerous countries in this hemisphere, including the United States. The US institutions and services that trained the terrorists of Cuban origin are the same ones that carefully trained those who organised the brutal attack on the Twin Towers in New York on 11 September 2001, in which several thousand north Americans lost their lives.
Fidel pointed out that sinister personalities have been exonerated of all punishment, such as the pardon granted to Orlando Bosch by then President George Bush Snr; or their presence in north American territories has been tolerated for weeks on end, as is the case with President George Bush Jnr regarding Posada Carriles. That constitutes a flagrant violation of the US’s own laws by those who have the greatest responsibility to protect the north American people from terrorist attacks. Fidel emphasised that this was not a march against the people of the US, but rather a march against terrorism and in favour of life and peace for our people and our brothers in the US in whose ethical values we have trust.
Down with terrorism! Down with Nazi doctrines and methods! Down with genocide! Down with lies! Long live solidarity and peace between peoples! Long live the truth!
In the words of our commandante: Forward, courageous soldiers of noble ideas, scorning fear, scorning the immense power of the enemy, scorning the dangers facing a humanity that yearns for justice.
