The homing of a terrorist

Luis Posada Carriles in the El Renacer prison in Panama in 2003. - TERESITA CHAVARRIA/AFP

The Cuban-Venezuelan terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, now on American soil, is receiving sympathetic treatment from the Bush administration which is fighting a global `war on terrorism'.

THE United States administration is in a deep quandary. Luis Posada Carriles, 77, wanted in many countries, suddenly resurfaced on American soil. In mid-April, Posada's lawyer announced that his client had managed to reach Florida and would seek political asylum in the country. Instead of arresting Posada, the George W. Bush administration has, for more than a month, allowed the fugitive to get the best legal advice. The U.S. President's brother, Jeb Bush, happens to be the Governor of the State of Florida. Throughout their political careers both the Bush brothers have wooed the right-wing anti-Fidel Castro vote in the State unabashedly. The politically and financially influential right-wing Cuban lobby has been crucial to the political fortunes of the Bush dynasty.

President Fidel Castro, in his May Day address to the Cuban people, described Posada as "the cruellest, most famous terrorist in the western hemisphere". He said that even the western media had now acknowledged this fact. Posada's lawyer's plea is that his client deserves to be granted political asylum in the U.S. for the services he has rendered to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the U.S. Posada, after all, is the man who masterminded the bombing of a Cuban commercial airline that killed 73 people in September 1976. In the same month, Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Lettelier was killed by a car bomb. It is widely suspected that right-wing groups, with which Posada was connected, were involved in that attack. Telltale clues were found in Posada's apartment during a search after the assassination of Lettelier.

A former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) counter-terrorism specialist, Carter Cornick, told The New York Times that both the bombings had been planned at a June 1976 meeting in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Cornick said the meeting was attended by Posada. According to declassified U.S. government records, Posada served in the CIA from 1961 to 1967. During 1967-74, he was with the Venezuelan Intelligence Service, which at that time had close links with the CIA and anti-Castro exiles in Miami. According to the former FBI operative, there was so much evidence linking Posada to the mid-air bombing of the Cuban plane that the U.S. and Venezuelan authorities locked him as a "preventive measure - to prevent him from talking or being killed". Posada, according to Cornick, was allowed to escape from Venezuela in 1985. A recently declassified FBI report reveals that Posada was present at two meetings where the plot to blow up the Cuban airliner was hatched. He is said to have personally placed the bomb on the plane.

After he fled from Venezuela, Posada continued liaising with right-wing groups and regimes that abounded in Latin America at the time. He worked for the CIA to train the "Contras" in Honduras and smuggle arms to the anti-Sandinista forces in Nicaragua. He continued to be obsessed with his mission of destabilising Cuba. Posada has admitted to bombing Cuban tourist hotels in 1997. One of the bombs killed an Italian tourist. Posada was arrested in Panama in November 2000 along with three of his colleagues. They were carrying 15kg of the plastic explosive C-4. He had planned to assassinate Castro, who was in the city to attend an international conference.

Eight months ago, Posada was again allowed to go free. Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso, in her last month in office, pardoned him on "humanitarian grounds". According to reports appearing in the Latin American media, Posada was freed owing to U.S. pressure and in return for $4 million from the Cuban exile groups in Miami. Posada was supplied with a false passport by the U.S. Embassy in Panama and was in Honduras and El Salvador, where many of his friends are in positions of power.

As soon as it was confirmed that Posada was in Florida, Venezuela's Supreme Court demanded that the terrorist be extradited so that he could be tried as "an author of homicide". Venezuela's Vice-President Jose Vincent Rangel said in the second week of April that Venezuela would step up its demand for the extradition of Posada. "I hope Mr. Bush will take note of his own anti-terrorism policies and hand over Posada Carriles," Rangel said. Castro said that if the U.S. denied the extradition request, then it would be effectively backing international terrorism. He noted that Bush had once said that whoever harboured a terrorist was also equally guilty of terrorism. Posada holds dual Cuban-Venezuelan citizenship.

Venezuela has asked the Interpol to help track down Posada in the U.S. so that he can be brought to justice. He was declared a fugitive from justice by the government that preceded the one led by President Hugo Chavez. "Posada is one of the cruellest criminals of the region, and he boasts about it. If we are going to fight terrorism, he should be detained and sent back to Caracas, where he was imprisoned and managed to escape in 1985, with the complicity of the government in power at that time," Chavez told a gathering outside Caracas in the first week of May. The U.S. government seems to be of the view that handing Posada over to Venezuela would be tantamount to handing over the terrorist to Cuba. Though it was Cuba that suffered the most from the terrorist acts of Posada, it has formally waived its right to prosecute him, so as to not provide Washington with an excuse to give sanctuary to the terrorist.

Castro said in his May Day speech that the Bush administration was finding it difficult to wriggle out of this embarrassing situation. "While they have been playing with terrorism, fomenting it, supporting it and nurturing it, it comes as no surprise that they now have a time bomb on their hands," he said. According to reports, the Bush administration is working overtime to find a Central American country that is willing to give asylum to Posada. El Salvador, one of the closest allies of the U.S. in the region, has reportedly refused to grant him asylum. Castro said in his speech that Cuba did not mind if Posada was even tried by an "impartial international court". He said that Posada was not even an important individual, but added that his presence in the U.S. "reveals to the world the immense hypocrisy, the lies, the immoral acts and the cynicism the Empire uses to dominate the world".

Since 1959, Cuban interests at home and abroad have been targets of approximately 700 terrorist attacks. As a U.S. commentator said, if Posada was an Islamic terrorist, and not a CIA-trained right-wing exile, the U.S. would not have tolerated his presence on its soil for a minute. In Posada's case the Bush administration is waiting for the notorious terrorist to report to the U.S. Immigration Authorities in Florida.

Orlando Bosch, a right-wing Cuban exile and a close associate of Posada, said that he had spoken to the fugitive by telephone. He told a local television station that it was common knowledge that Posada was holed up in Florida. Bosch himself resisted deportation successfully in 1989, despite the Justice Department describing him at that time as a "terrorist, unfettered by laws of human decency, threatening and inflicting violence without regard to the identity of his victims".

In a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, Congressman William D. Delahunt, a Democrat, said the failure of the Bush administration to take action against Posada was a case of "hypocrisy". He said the Bush administration's "sudden timidity with regard to a particular terrorist threatens to undermine the fundamental credibility of our global effort (against terrorism)". In an interview with The New York Times in 1998, Posada, besides claiming responsibility for the series of hotel bombings in Cuba, admitted that the CIA trained him and his group. "The CIA taught us everything. They taught us explosives, how to kill, bomb, trained us in acts of sabotage."

It was to thwart the terrorist plots from Florida that the Cuban government had launched a top-secret operation known as "La Red Avispa" (The Wasp network) in 1990. The group was ordered to infiltrate Cuban exile groups with the express aim of forestalling future attacks against the island. The network was exposed when the Cuban authorities decided to share the information regarding the terrorist activities being planned from Florida, with FBI officers, who were specially invited to the Cuban capital, Havana, in 1998. The FBI, instead of taking action against the terrorist networks on U.S. soil, tracked down and arrested the Cuban spies, who today are known as the "Cuban Five" all over Latin America. The five Cubans were sentenced to lengthy terms in prisons after a controversial trial in a Florida court. They exposed terrorist activity on U.S. soil but did not get a fair trial. Now a notorious terrorist is planning to end his career and lead a retired life in Florida.