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AS
WE GO TO PRESS, MAY 11 — A federal judge in El
Paso, Texas,
has dismissed all charges against Luis Posada Carriles,
an anti-Cuban terrorist and former CIA operative. The judge claimed
that the immigration fraud case against Carriles
was an attempt by the U.S.
government to “disguise a criminal interrogation.”
A
protest statement from the Cuban Interests Section in Washington
said that the White House had done everything it could to protect
"the Bin Laden of the hemisphere" from revealing U.S.
government links with terror activities.
Following
is one of the first public statements by Fidel Castro after resuming a
few of his governmental duties after his long illness. It appeared in
the English-language edition of Granma on April 11, five days after a U.S.
federal judge had ordered that Posada Carriles
be released on bail.
George
W. Bush is undoubtedly the most genuine representative of a system of
terror forced on the world by the technological, economic and political
superiority of the most powerful country known to this planet. For this
reason, we share the tragedy of the American people and their ethical
values.
The
instructions for the verdict issued by Judge Kathleen Cardone, of the El Paso Federal Court last Friday,
granting Luis Posada Carriles freedom on
bail, could only have come from the White House.
It
was President Bush himself who ignored at all times the criminal and
terrorist nature of the defendant who was protected with a simple
accusation of immigration violation leveled at him. The reply is
brutal. The government of the United
States and its most representative
institutions had already decided to release the monster.
The
backgrounds are well-known and reach far back. The people who trained
him and ordered him to destroy [in 1976] a Cuban passenger plane in
midair, with 73 athletes, students and other Cuban and foreign
travelers on board, together with its dedicated crew; those who bought
his freedom while the terrorist was held in prison in Venezuela, so
that he could supply and practically conduct a dirty war against the
people of Nicaragua, resulting in the loss of thousands of lives and
the devastation of a country for decades to come; those who empowered
him to smuggle with drugs and weapons making a mockery of the laws of
Congress; those who collaborated with him to create the terrible Operation
Condor and to internationalize terror; the same who brought torture,
death and often the physical disappearance of hundreds of thousands of
Latin Americans, could not possibly act any different.
Even
though Bush’s decision was to be expected, it is certainly no less
humiliating for our people. Thanks to the revelations of Por Esto!, a Mexican
publication from the state of Quintana Roo,
later complemented by our own sources, Cuba knew with absolute
precision how Posada Carriles entered from
Central America, via Cancún, to the Isla Mujeres, departing from there on board the Santrina, after the ship was inspected by the
Mexican federal authorities, heading with other terrorists straight to
Miami.
Denounced
and publicly challenged with exact information on the matter, since
April 15, 2005, it took the government of that country more than a
month to arrest the terrorist, and a year and two months to admit that
Luis Posada Carriles had entered through the
Florida coast illegally on board the Santrina,
a presumed school-ship licensed in the United States.
Not
a single word is said of his countless victims, of the bombs he set off
in tourist facilities in recent years, of his dozens of plans financed
by the government of the United
States to physically eliminate
me.
It
was not enough for Bush to offend the name of Cuba
by installing a horrible torture center similar to Abu Ghraib on the territory illegally occupied in
Guantánamo, horrifying the world with this procedure. The cruel actions
of his predecessors seemed not enough for him. It was not enough to
force a poor and underdeveloped country like Cuba
to spend $100 billion. To accuse Posada Carriles
was tantamount to accusing himself.
Throughout
almost half a century, everything was fair game against our small
island lying 90 miles away from its coast, wanting to be independent. Florida
saw the installation of the largest station for intelligence and
subversion that ever existed on this planet.
It
was not enough to send a mercenary invasion on the Bay
of Pigs, costing us 176 dead and more than 300 wounded at a
time when the few medical specialists they left us had no experience
treating war wounds.
Earlier
still, the French ship La Coubre, carrying
Belgian weapons and grenades for Cuba,
had exploded on the docks of Havana
Harbor. The two
well-synchronized explosions caused the deaths of more than 100 workers
and wounded others as many of them tool part in the rescue attempts.
It
was not enough to have the Missile Crisis of 1962, which brought the
world to the brink of an all-consuming thermonuclear war, at a time
when there were bombs 50 times more powerful than the ones dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki.
It
was not enough to introduce in our country viruses, bacteria, and fungi
to attack plantations and flocks; and incredible as it may seem, to
attack human beings. Some of these pathogens came out of American
laboratories and were brought to Cuba
by well-known terrorists in the service of the United
States government.
Add
to all this the enormous injustice of keeping five heroic patriots
imprisoned for supplying information about terrorist activities; they
were condemned in a fraudulent manner to sentences that include two
life sentences, and they stoically withstand cruel mistreatment, each
of them in a different prison.
Time
and again the Cuban people have fearlessly faced the threat of death.
They have demonstrated that with intelligence, using appropriate
tactics and strategies, and especially preserving unity around their political
and social vanguard, there can be no force on this earth capable of
defeating them.
I
think that the coming May Day celebration would be the ideal day for
our people—using the minimum of fuel and transportation—to show their
feelings to the workers and the poor of the
world.
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