LAT: A Terrorist Walks (Luis Posada Carriles)

[seafan]

Luis Posada Carriles has boasted of bombing Havana hotels, yet American justice lets him go free.

LA Times

April 20, 2007

WITH A MISGUIDED decision upholding bail for Cuban-born terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans has done more than free a frail old man facing unremarkable immigration charges. It has exposed Washington to legitimate charges of hypocrisy in the war on terror.

By allowing Posada to go free before his May 11 trial, the court has released a known flight risk who previously escaped from a Venezuelan prison, a man who has boasted of helping set off deadly bombs in Havana hotels 10 years ago and the alleged mastermind of a 1976 bombing of a Cuban airplane that killed 73 people. Posada's employees confessed to the attack, and declassified FBI and CIA documents have shown that he attended planning sessions.

In other words, Posada is the Zacarias Moussaoui of Havana and Caracas. Moussaoui is serving a life sentence without parole in a federal prison in Colorado for conspiracy in the 9/11 attacks; Posada is free to live in Miami.

Posada, a 79-year-old Bay of Pigs veteran who served time in Panama for plotting to kill Fidel Castro, has never been charged with crimes of terrorism in U.S. courts. Instead, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement nabbed him for lying to immigration authorities after he sneaked in the country in March 2005 and held a news conference announcing his triumphant return. Both Customs and the Justice Department lobbied to keep Posada behind bars, but U.S. law enforcement has never shown a strong interest in trying him for more serious crimes. In turn, Posada's lawyer has preemptively warned that if charged, his client would likely reveal extensive collaboration with the CIA.

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The U.S. government has done many odd things in 46 years of a largely failed Cuba policy, but letting a notorious terrorist walk stands among the most perverse yet.

From Jose Pertierra, the attorney representing the Venezuelan government in the Posada Case:

(Interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now)

April 23, 2007

Jose Pertierra: ...I don’t think there’s any doubt that Luis Posada Carriles is a terrorist and has been a terrorist for years and that he was the mastermind behind the downing of the plane in 1976 that killed those seventy-three innocent people.

What we’re seeing now, though, by his release from prison is the conduct of the United States throughout this case, that rather than obey the law and abide by its international treaty obligations and by US law, the United States is neither extraditing him nor prosecuting him for murder, but is instead trying to hide behind judicial decisions that the Bush administration has almost invited by its conduct. Let me just briefly tell you what I mean. We contend that the White House has manipulated the US judicial system in such a way as to get exactly the kind of decision that it wanted in the immigration case and also the case that’s presently pending in El Paso. Rather than charge him for murder, the US has charged him only with lying on an immigration form.

The US has refused to present any witnesses, any evidence, any documents, despite a wealth of documents that we have submitted and that exist in CIA files. They’ve failed to cross-examine any witnesses. It’s a manipulation of the judicial system that has de-legitimized the US judicial system. You know, we see the scandal that’s occurring now with the firings of prosecutors who wanted to implement the law and abide by their conscience. This is a case where prosecutors didn’t obey their conscience; they obeyed the White House. And in so doing, they have released this international terrorist into the streets of Miami.

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AMY GOODMAN: Jose Pertierra, can you outline the evidence that there is that he was connected to the 1976 Cuban airliner bombing that killed all seventy-three people on board?

JOSE PERTIERRA: Well, Amy, there were four people directly involved: two people who actually placed the two bombs on the plane, Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo; and two masterminds, Mr. Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch. Both Bosch and Posada are free in Miami, one pardoned by Bush, father, the other one freed by Bush, Jr. The two people who placed the bombs, Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, were convicted in Caracas to twenty years in jail, and they’ve served their time and have now been released. Both of those men confessed to the authorities in Trinidad, where they were captured, and their confessions are even -- some of them are even in handwritten form – that they received training in explosives from the CIA, that they worked for the Venezuelan Secret Intelligence Agency at the time, and that Luis Posada Carriles was their boss who directed them. We have their confessions. We have telephone calls that were placed by these men to Mr. Posada Carriles in Caracas. Although they didn’t reach him, they left a message in coded words saying that the bus had crashed and the dogs had died, referring to the plane and the passengers. These were coded words that were used.

We also have a wealth of CIA and FBI declassified documents that show that Posada Carriles even bragged about the downing of the plane before it happened. Posada himself talked to CIA sources in Caracas and said that a Cuban plane -- that we’re going to down a Cuban plane and that Orland Bosch, his accomplice, has all the details. Those documents can be found on the George Washington University’s National Security Archive website for all to see.

This is a man who was indicted in Caracas for seventy-three counts of murder in relation to the downing of the plane. While the case was pending and before judgment could be reached, he escaped from prison in 1985 and has been an international fugitive since. The case in Venezuela could not proceed when he escaped, because under Venezuelan law, if you escape, the process stops. There’s no in absentia verdicts under Venezuelan law. So the warrant was issued, and now what Venezuela is asking is that the White House abide by its treaty obligations to Venezuela and return him to finish his trial here.

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AMY GOODMAN: You represent the Venezuelan government in this case. The US said that they wouldn’t extradite Carriles to Venezuela because they were concerned he would be tortured there. Your response?

JOSE PERTIERRA: I’m glad you raise that, Amy, because there has been a great deal of confusion about this, and I think on purpose. The White House wanted to confuse all the legal issues surrounding this case. What we have is an immigration judge who decided that Posada could not be removed or deported under immigration laws to Venezuela. However, under US law, extradition trumps immigration rulings. That is to say, he can be extradited despite this decision by an immigration judge that he should not be deported.

And the lead case on that is the precedent-setting case from 1963 by the US Board of Immigration Appeals, ironically enough dealing with a Venezuelan, a Venezuelan dictator by the name of Peres Jimenez, who had come to the United States and sought asylum and he was wanted in Venezuela for corruption. The Board of Immigration Appeals held that deportation proceedings should be suspended and the extradition process should proceed, because extradition trumps immigration.

And secondly, Amy, the law is very clear that if the United States for political reasons decides not to extradite an individual, it is obligated under international treaty conventions that deal with terrorism to prosecute that individual for the crimes committed abroad, but to prosecute him in the United States. And the language of those conventions are very clear. It says, “shall, without exception whatsoever, prosecute the individual in the territory where he is found.” So there is no wiggle room there. The law says you extradite or prosecute, but you don’t free him into the streets of Miami and charge him only with merely lying on an immigration form to an immigration official.

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So, the major points in this case are:

1. The Bush Administration is between a rock and a hard place with Mr. Luis Posada Carriles. They refuse to charge him under international treaty agreements with the more serious crimes of murder and conspiracy to murder. This is likely for three reasons. One, Posada might talk about his secret CIA dealings in Latin America during Iran-contra. Two, to prosecute Posada would enrage Bush's Cuban exile "base" in Miami. Three, Bush will never do the honorable thing with Venezuela or Cuba, because he has a permanent vendetta against their leaders.


2. Under US law, extradition supersedes immigration legal rulings, so Bush has no standing to insist otherwise.


3. As this criminal Posada walks free on the streets of Miami with Orlando Bosch, who was pardoned by George H. W. Bush in 1990, jury selection continues in the case of Jose Padilla, who is accused of plotting to murder people in other countries.



The hypocrisy of the Bush Administration lies exposed for all the world to see.