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President Bush’s famous Aug. 26, 2003, statement, “if you harbor
a terrorist … you’re just as guilty as the terrorists,” now has a
hypocritical ring to it in light of Washington’s handling of the Luis
Posada Carriles case.
Posada, a Cuban-born exile
with a long track record of terrorism, took refuge in Miami at least as early as March
31, the date the press began reporting his whereabouts. Yet the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS), well known in the recent period
for issuing unsubstantiated daily color-coded terror alerts, mustered
up only a vague statement saying that it was “working closely with our
law enforcement partners, and we’re looking into the matter,” according
to the March 31 Miami Herald.
As U.S. government credibility to
the world eroded in regard to its position on terrorism, the DHS
finally arrested Posada on May 17. The same day Reuters reported 1.2
million people marched in Havana with banners reading, “No
to war, no to terrorism.” In Venezuela, on May 28, tens of
thousands marched, demanding Posada’s
extradition to that country.
Posada faces relatively
minor charges of illegally entering the U.S. without a visa. This soft
stance came at the heels of increased international scrutiny and
underscores what Fidel Castro and the Cuban government called Washington’s application of a double
standard in the war against terrorism.
The U.S. has made no mention about Posada’s sordid, bloody past in the lead-up to his
June 13 hearing in El Paso, Texas, over illegal entry.
Three days after Posada’s detention, several known Cuban-American
terrorists received a welcome mat at the White House’s doorstep.
According to Cuba’s Granma
International, on May 20 President Bush hosted a delegation headed by
Luis Zuniga Rey, founder of the Cuban
American National Foundation (CANF) paramilitary committee.
Established in 1981 and
promoted by CIA director William Casey, CANF financed and organized
many terrorist acts against Cuba. Posada was well connected
to this group and admitted receiving material and financial aid from
them.
But it was the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) that provided Posada with the know-how for
terrorist activities, beginning in the early 1960s. “The CIA taught us
everything—everything,” Posada said in a 1998 New York Times interview.
“They taught us explosives, how to kill, bomb, trained us in acts of sabotage.”
In these Posada was expert.
Posada employed his CIA training to
plan and carry out the 1976 bombing of a Cubana
airliner that took off from Barbados, which killed all 73
passengers on board. Based on “a secret State Department intelligence
memo,” writes the May 22 Miami Herald,” published along with other
documents by the private research group National Security Archive, an
unnamed source quotes Posada as saying he had advance knowledge that an
attack on a Cuban plane was imminent: Posada allegedly said, ‘We are
going to hit a Cuban airliner.’”
Another Cuban-American
terrorist pay rolled by the CIA, Orlando Bosch, had indicated that
Posada was at a meeting in Bonao, a resort in the Dominican Republic,
where they discussed creating the organization, Coordination of the
United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU). The FBI described CORU in a
1977 document as a group “composed of five anti-Castro terrorist
organizations.”
Posada’s close ties to CORU points
to his culpability for the plans discussed at the Bonao
meeting. Additionally, former
assistant U.S. attorney E. Lawrence Barcella Jr. told the Miami Herald that Posada was
an “active participant” in the meeting.
Barcella, lead prosecuting attorney in
the federal investigation of the assassination of former Chilean
Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, submits
that the meeting’s agenda included plans to bomb a Cubana
Airlines plane and target Chilean dissidents.
Herman Ricardo, a Venezuelan
citizen who together with fellow Venezuelan, Freddy Lugo, were
convicted of planting the bombs, identified Bosch and Posada as
planners for the Cubana Airlines
bombing. In addition to
assassination attempts on Cuban officials, Bosch was behind scores of
terrorist attacks against Cuba’s trading partners,
including Spain, England, Japan, Mexico, and Poland. In 1968, the United States sentenced Bosch to 10 years
in jail—he was released in 1972—for terrorist acts, among them,
planting bombs in the United States.
Bosch is perhaps most
notorious for his involvement in the car-bombing assassination in
Washington, D.C., of Orlando Letelier and his
secretary, Ronnie Moffit, a U.S. citizen. A
report by the Washington-based Center for International Policy pointed
to Posada’s collusion in the assassination
based on a police search of Posada’s office
in Venezuela, which turned up a map of Washington, D.C., detailing Letelier’s work route. In 1990 Bosch was pardoned by
President George Bush Sr., who was CIA director at the time of the Cubana Airlines bombing and the Letelier
assassination.
Posada’s major focus for over 40
years has been to plan and carry out attacks against the Cuban
Revolution, including an assassination attempt on Fidel Castro in
Panama in 2000 and the bombing of a Cuban hotel in 1997 that killed one
Italian tourist. But Posada’s terrorist involvement was much more sweeping.
He headed up Venezuela’s secret police (DISIP),
known for torture. At the same time, he played a key role in Operation
Condor, a brutal campaign that was backed by various military
dictatorships throughout Latin America during the mid-1970s and
aimed at intimidating and murdering political opponents.
After a 1985 jailbreak in
Venezuela (he was doing time for the Cubana
Airlines bombing), he fled to El Salvador, where he colluded with the
Reagan administration, organizing illegal arms shipments to the Contra
army in Nicaragua.
Now Cuba is putting pressure on the United States to act in accord with its
pronouncements and U.S.-sponsored UN resolution 1372, both of which forbid
countries to have anything to do with financing and supporting
terrorism and harboring terrorists.
In a test of its political credibility, the U.S. government is in a
precarious position. The U.S. rebuffed Venezuela’s lawful request, based on
a 1922 treaty signed between the countries, for Posada’s
extradition to Venezuela. The U.S. stated that it would not
comply with any country that supports Cuba. In a bold move, Venezuela’s President Chavez threatened
to break diplomatic relations with the U.S. and said, “It is difficult,
very difficult to maintain ties with a government that so shamelessly
hides and protects international terrorism.”
No matter the final outcome,
the fact that Washington has thus far protected Posada
from charges of terrorism shows again its willingness to apply a double
standard when a terrorist does the U.S. government’s bidding.
Recently, Cuba has warned that the U.S. may plan to extradite
Posada to El Salvador. That country’s
Washington-friendly president, Elias Antonio Saca,
has told the press that the Salvadoran judicial system will decide
whether to extradite Posada Carriles from the
U.S., reported a May 25 Radio Havana, Cuba program.
Cuba and its ally in this
struggle, Venezuela, have shown unmatched
courage to stand up to the United States, the greatest purveyor of
terror. And their struggle has won support from all who stand for peace
and justice throughout the world.
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