Bomber of Cuban plane is acquitted

An El Paso, Texas, jury acquitted Luis Posada Carriles of 11 counts of perjury, obstruction and immigration fraud on April 8, saying it found “reasonable doubt” that he had lied to U.S. immigration officials.

One fact is very clear. The U.S. government is fully aware — and has ample evidence — that Posada is responsible for the first mid-air bombing of a commercial airliner, Cubana 455, in which all 73 people aboard were killed in 1976; and for the bombing of several Havana hotels, in which Italian tourist Fabio Di Celmo was killed and others injured.

Shortly after Posada entered the U.S. in 2005, Venezuela issued a formal request for his extradition to stand trial for the bombing of Cubana 455, which exploded off the coast of Barbados as the plane was en route to Havana. The U.S. government has not officially responded to or acted on that. Venezuela has jurisdiction because the deadly conspiracy was hatched there and executed by Posada-hired bombers.

On April 11, the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs delivered a diplomatic note to the U.S. Embassy in Caracas demanding that the U.S. government comply with a long-standing extradition treaty between both countries and Venezuela’s request for Posada’s extradition. (http://t.co/29XXMHU)

The testimony of U.S. prosecution witnesses presented during the 13-week trial leaves no doubt that Posada — as he himself boasted — engineered and participated in the murder of innocents for more than 50 years, ever since the failed U.S. invasion of Cuba at Playa Giron (Bay of Pigs).

Attorney Jose Pertierra’s day-by-day “El Paso Diary” chronicles the damning testimony. (http://en.cubadebate.cu) Just a few highlights include journalist Anna Louise Bardache affirming that Posada claimed responsibility for the hotel and plane bombings, as she had written in a 1998 New York Times series; a money trail of receipts and faxes outlining payments from Posada to the hired bombers, who are now serving 30-year prison sentences in Cuba; and a witness who heard Posada discuss the bombings and saw the bomb-making materials in Guatemala.

The Miami-based U.S. attorney who refused a request from the Department of Homeland Security to press criminal charges against Posada also prosecuted the Cuban Five. He refused to change the Five’s trial venue, and is responsible for their long prison terms.

Workers World calls verdict ‘an outrage’

Workers World Party Secretariat member Teresa Gutierrez, a major organizer of the 1992 Peace with Cuba mass meeting in New York’s Javits Center, told this reporter: “The verdict and minimal charges are an outrage and insult to the people of Cuba, the families of those slain and the loved ones of the five Cuban heroes unjustly held in U.S prisons for 13 years. But it is also an outrage to the residents in the U.S. that Posada and his partner in crime, Orlando Bosch, walk freely to boast about their murderous terror attacks with impunity.

“The U.S. government talks anti-terrorism as a cover to expand its imperialist military aggression around the globe,” Gutierrez continued. “U.S. refuge for admitted terrorists like Posada and Bosch proves that point. The U.S. hasn’t relented in its 110-year dream to subjugate the people of Cuba and all of Jose Marti’s Latin America. In the State Department alone, $20 million is budgeted for 2012 to craft a façade of internal opposition to the Cuban revolution. An additional $5 million is aimed at Venezuela.

“We say extradite Posada and free the Cuban Five — Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González and René González. The time is now.”