U.S. gov't refuses to charge Posada with mass murder

The U.S. government has in its custody Luis Posada Carriles, who organized the mid-air bombing of a civilian passenger plane killing 73 people in 1976 and directed the bombing of tourist hotels in 1997. The U.S. plan is to let him get away, again.

Family members carry banner and photos of loved ones killed during bombing of Cubana plane in 1976 by Posada Carriles. Photo: Families for Justice

The legal options are clear cut: extradite him or put him on trial. Venezuela, the country where he plotted the killings and escaped from prison in 1985, requested extradition in 2005.

The Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Civilian Aviation, ratified in 1971, requires him to be extradited or tried in the country where he is living—no exceptions. But Posada, a CIA-trained killer, inconveniently exposes the U.S. reign of terror around the globe, especially against socialist Cuba and movements for national self-determination in South and Central American countries.

So Posada is detained solely on immigration and fraud charges pending trial on May 11. On April 12 he was a signature away from being freed on bond. Only a last-minute appeal to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court postponed his release until April 17. The only way to continue to hold Posada is to charge him with terrorism and murder.

But, as Cuban President Fidel Castro wrote on April 10, for President Bush “[t]o accuse Posada Carriles was tantamount to accusing himself.

“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. ... 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 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.”

The kid gloves treatment of the bloody killer Posada is in stark contrast to the cruel conditions of René González, Fernando González, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, and Antonio Guerrero. These five Cuban heroes who courageously monitored private organizations inside the U.S. that planned attacks against Cuba are enduring harsh sentences up to double life in supermax prisons. Their loved ones are denied or delayed visas to visit them.

The Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) “urges all friends of Cuba throughout the world to create a mass movement to protest the perpetration of another attack on human dignity. We demand justice for the crimes of Posada Carriles not to go unpunished.” Jail Posada and Free the Cuban Five.

Go to www.workers.org to read ICAP’s entire message.