Cuban official demands action on Posada

[seemslikeadream]

Alarcon says U.S. should reject his bid for asylum

Roberto Leon / NBC News
Cuban Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon speaks out about the accused terrorist Luis Posada Carilles seeking asylum in the U.S.
By Mary Murray
Producer
NBC News
Updated: 2:02 p.m. ET April 29, 2005HAVANA - Luis Posada Carilles is a household name in Cuba. Havana authorities identify him as “Latin America’s Osama bin Laden,” blaming him for dozens of terrorist acts aimed at toppling the government of Fidel Castro.

His supporters in Miami, undeniably fewer in today’s post-9/11 world than when he first began his fight, prefer the term “militant.”

Now his attorney is seeking asylum for Posada in the United States. NBC News producer Mary Murray spoke with Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada, President of Cuba's National Assembly, for his views on this case.

Are you surprised that Luis Posada Carilles has surfaced in Miami?
Absolutely not. In an interview with the New York Times he was asked specifically whether or not he enters the U.S. And he laughed, saying that he has many times and in many different ways. His family has been living in Miami for quite some time.

Not everyone in Miami was happy to hear that Posada surfaced in their city. In fact, some Cuban Americans oppose his political asylum request. This seems to represent a change in Cuban-American public opinion where at one time anyone who stood against your government was welcomed as a hero. What accounts for that change?

more
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7679032/

[seemslikeadream]

1. Posada has something on Bush, says expert on Kennedy case

JEAN-GUY ALLARD

WIM Dankbar, a Dutch specialist on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, suspects that Luis Posada Carriles has highly discriminating evidence against Bush Sr. that could be divulged if the terrorist should die a suspicious death.

...

But Holt, according to the expert, was also a CIA operative. His instructions for Dallas came from his undercover CIA supervisor Philip Twombly of the Fullerton Bank in California. Those instructions were specifically to make and deliver secret service credentials to a rabid anti-Castro militant called Homer Echevarría, who was a close associate of Cuban exile leader Paulino Sierra . Holt further relates that he made ID cards in the names of Lee Harvey Oswald, Lee Henry Oswald, Leon Oswald, Leon Osborne and Alek Hidell.

Furthermore he drove to Dallas from Licavoli’s Arizona ranch in the company of Leo Moceri and Charles Nicoletti, both hitmen for mafia moguls Giancana and Licavoli. Holt’s testimony on the Kennedy plot is therefore clear evidence of collaboration between the CIA, organized crime and the Cuban exile community, with the consent of high-level officials in the US government. Dankbaar points out that mafia boss Sam Giancana’s biography - edited by his brother - discloses the role played by two buddies of former Havana chief Santos Trafficante, one of which could perfectly be Posada, according to the description given.
...

“Remember how CIA drug smuggler and Iran-Contra operative Barry Seal was gunned down? If you believe his lawyer, Seal was in direct contact with George Bush. And the personal telephone number of George H. W. Bush was found in the trunk of Seal's car. They blamed his murder on the Medellin cartel, but he was scheduled to testify and there were a lot of rumors that he had a video tape featuring Jeb and George W. Bush."

...

“Of course. The man that Bush selected has been part of CIA efforts to overthrow the Castro regime and assassinate its leader," Dankbaar confirms. “Goss is the ideal man to keep possible scandals under the carpet for Bush and in particular, for his father. The two of them are both accomplices in the same history. ” •

more

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2005/abril/vier29/19kennedy.html

[Minstrel Boy]

2. Have you seen this man?

I wrote about Posada on my blog today, here. Links live on the site.

Whose hemisphere is it anyway?



Do you know this man?

That's Luis Posada Carriles, described by Gary Webb in Dark Alliance as a "veteran CIA agent with a history of involvement with drug traffickers, mobsters, and terrorists." He was investigated by the Justice Department in 1967 for "moonlighting" - so says a memo in his CIA file - for Santos Trafficante. (Posada had been supplying the Miami mob with explosives, silencers and hand grenades.)

The next year the agency transferred him to South America, where he went to work for Venezuelan intelligence. In 1973 Posada was placed under surveillance by the DEA when it received reports that he was the "main contact" in a major cocaine smuggling enterprise that involved elements of the Venezuelan government. A year later the DEA learned Posada was dealings weapons for drugs with a man believed "involved in political assassinations."

Officially, the CIA terminated its association with Posada in February, 1976.

Do you know what he did next?

It was midday on that Wednesday, October 6, 1976. The aircraft commenced the maneuver of revving its four engines, and cutting off the auxiliary ignition motors. A few minutes later it cruised along the runway and took off in a smooth but rapid ascent.

...

At 12:23 p.m. the cry of "Look out!" could be heard over the radio and seconds later the co-pilot informed: "There’s been an explosion and we’re coming down right now, we have a fire on board." The passenger plane was 28 miles from Seawell aerodrome and the radar screen showed it making a wide turn to the right to return to the terminal area.

After flying back 10 miles the crew asked for an immediate landing and just before 12:27 the co-pilot was heard shouting: "Close the door! Close the door!" Smoke was emanating from a section of the wing adjacent to the third engine. Nevertheless, the crew decided to release the landing equipment and utilize the flaps to increase the sustaining force of the glide and avoid a crash.

In these circumstances they were able to maintain control of the plane until a second detonation in the area of the toilets in the back part of the fuselage affected the control system by destroying or changing the configuration of the helm.

This provoked a violent lift of the plane’s nose that prompted the co-pilot to shout: "That’s worse! Stick to the water, Fello, stick to the water!" in the belief that the flight captain had shifted the controls toward himself in order to gain height.

A total silence reigned in the Seawell flight control tower: the profile of the CUT-1201 was lost for ever from the air controller’s radar screen as the plane nose-dived into the sea with 73 people on board.

Posada was arrested by Venezuelan authorities for the bombing of the airliner. (In Cocaine Politics, Peter Dale Scott writes that "Posada also had materials in his possession linking him to the assassination of former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier in Washington, DC, a month before the Cubana Airlines bombing.") He spent ten years in custody, only to escape shortly before his long-delayed trial.

And do you know where he surfaced?

El Salvador, where he served as second-in-command to old friend and terrorist Felix Rodriguez at the critical Iran/Contra cocaine resupply hub of Ilopango Air Force Base. "With men like Luis Posada...running things at Ilopango," Webb writes, "it's little wonder DEA agent Castillo was hearing rumors about drug trafficking." At a Guatemala City embassy reception in 1986 Vice President Bush asked the agent what he was up to, and "Castillo replied that he was investigating cocaine trafficking in El Salvador. He advised the vice president that 'there's some funny things going on with the Contras at Ilopango.' Bush, Castillo says, smiled at him knowingly and walked away." (From Cockburn and St Clair's Whiteout.)

In 2000 Posada was arrested in Panama for his role in yet another attempted assassination of Fidel Castro, this time during the 10th Ibero-American Summit. The plan called for the detonation of eight kilograms of C-4 plastic explosive in a public auditorium. Posada was pardoned by former Panamanian president Mireya Moscoso and fled to Florida.

If this world were irretrievably unjust that would be the end of the story, maybe punctuated by a few more explosions and kilos of cocaine. But we still have the odd glimmer of hope for happy endings. Or better yet, happy beginnings. And what happened next could be either.

Venezuela high court moving to extradite Miami Cuban militant

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuela's Supreme Court has begun processing an extradition request for a Cuban militant believed to be seeking asylum in Miami, the court announced Thursday.

The Supreme Court began processing the request on Wednesday for the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles, who is wanted in Venezuela for treason and for a 1976 Cuban airliner bombing that killed 73 people, according to a statement released by the tribunal's press office.

Posada, a Cuban native with Venezuelan citizenship, was tried and acquitted twice in Venezuela in the 1976 Cubana Airlines bombing. He is wanted for escaping from prison in Venezuela in 1985 while awaiting a prosecutor's appeal in that case.

The Attorney General's Office in Venezuela announced Tuesday that steps were being taken to request Posada Carriles' extradition.

I'm not kidding myself. I expect the likelihood of the US sending Posada to Venezuela to be on par with Michael Meiring's chances of being returned to the Philippines. But there's justice being done in the mere attempt. Because even if it fails, it's a further unveiling of the sham that serves as the bully's moral high ground. ("We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.")

Speaking of which - do you know this woman?



Secretary of State Rice has been criss-crossing Latin America this week in a bid to immunize against the spread of the Venezuelan infection. In an interview with Colombia's Casa Editorial El Tiempo she said "we have no problem with the Venezuelan people." But. And as usual, it's a big one:

...this is about the behavior of the regime, both in terms of its domestic -- where domestically, where it has had very bad relations with the press -- where the ability for people to oppose the regime, where there needs to be a sense that the democratic institutions are being protected, and the questions about the behavior and the activities of the Venezuelan regime in the region.

But this is not just an issue between the United States and Venezuela. This is an issue of what kind of hemisphere is this going to be. Is it going to be a hemisphere that is democratic and that is prosperous and where neighbors get along, where neighbors don't interfere in each other's affairs, where people fight drug trade and fight terrorism together actively? That's the kind of hemisphere that we're trying to build and I believe that we have the cooperation and the support of almost all of the states of this region who want to see the same kind of hemisphere.

Which hemisphere, again, is Luis Posada Carriles'?

[UpInArms]

3. Poppy pardoned Orlando Bosch

http://www.fair.org/extra/0105/pardons.html

excerpt:

Vignali had served six years of a 15-year term for cocaine trafficking; although he was repeatedly linked in the press to "800 pounds of cocaine," at his sentencing he was actually found to be responsible for 11 to 30 pounds of coke (The Nation, 4/9/01)--worth roughly $75,000 to $200,000. Compare that to Aslam Adam, a Pakistani national who had done eight years of a 55-year sentence for importing $1.5 million worth of heroin into the United States when Bush commuted his sentence in 1993 (Salon.com, 2/27/01). While Vignali's commutation received heavy coverage--66 mentions in the New York Times, L.A. Times and Washington Post, and another 13 reports on the nightly network news--Adam's clemency got exactly one story in any of these outlets at the time (Washington Post, 1/22/93), and that report failed to mention how much heroin he had brought in.

Of course, the Vignali case drew national press attention because of the intercession of Clinton's brother-in-law, Hugh Rodham; media reports questioned the propriety of a family member getting involved in the pardon process. But a family connection didn't garner much extra attention for one of the most frightening clemency recipients ever: anti-Castro militant Orlando Bosch, who was released under house arrest by Bush in 1990 after being held for two years for illegally entering the country. Bosch was involved, as U.S. officials believe, in the bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner that killed 73 people (Newsweek, 9/4/89); the Justice Department has linked him to at least 30 acts of sabotage (New York Times, 11/11/89).

When Bush got Bosch out of jail, the New York Times (which called the Cuban exile "one of the hemisphere's most notorious terrorists") pointed out that Bush's son Jeb, then an up-and-coming Republican leader in Florida, had lobbied for his release (7/20/90). The evident motive: currying favor with hard-core anti-Castro Cubans in the Miami area. But while the Times and a few other publications expressed outrage, the politically motivated release of a violent criminal hardly became a national scandal: It was mentioned 26 times in the New York Times, L.A. Times and Washington Post, and got only one reference on the nightly network news (CBS, 7/17/90).

Bush family shows its double standard

http://havanajournal.com/politics_comments/A2409_0_5_0_M/

excerpt:

As the associate attorney general argued in 1989: "The security of this nation is affected by its ability to urge credibly other nations to refuse aid and shelter to terrorists. We could not shelter Dr. Bosch and maintain that credibility."

But shelter him we did. Urged by U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Jeb Bush -- then managing her election campaign -- President George H.W. Bush approved a pardon for Bosch, who now lives unrepentant in Miami. Jeb Bush, meanwhile, has become governor of the state.

As for Luis Posada Carriles, he escaped from Venezuelan prison in 1985 and turned up in Central America working in White House aide Oliver North's secret Contra operation, along with Felix Rodriguez, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal with close ties to then-Vice President Bush.

Posada Carriles eventually ended up back in Miami, still involved in violent activities. In a 1998 interview with The New York Times, he acknowledged that he had directed the bombing of a number of hotels in Havana which had left at least one dead and a dozen or so wounded. Despite this confession of culpability, the U.S. filed no charges against him. In fact, it did not even investigate. He subsequently recanted what he had said to The Times, but it stood by the story (and of course had evidence of what he had said). Shortly thereafter, Posada Carriles was off to Panama, where he again ended up in prison.

George W. Bush may be against terrorists elsewhere, but he and others in the Bush family have a long history of protecting Cuban exile terrorists such as Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch. And some of W's close political allies were there at the airport the other day to welcome Jiménez, Remón and Novo back to Miami.

...more...

[struggle4progress]

4. kick