Gov’t hypocrisy on terrorism exposed

After having used terrorism as an excuse to unleash a war of colonial conquest in the Middle East, the U.S. government is finding that its own terrorist activities are now getting closer scrutiny.

Nothing could be more of an embarrassment on this score than the harboring of Luis Posada Carriles. No one fits the profile of a terrorist more than this man. The failure of Washington to extradite him has touched off huge demonstrations in Cuba and Venezuela, where he is wanted for multiple crimes.

Cuban Americans in Miami who want normal relations with their homeland have also held street demonstrations calling for his extradition to Venezuela--even though taking such a stand in this Florida bastion of reaction makes them possible targets of harassment and even violence. For two hours on May 28, over 100 people from groups belonging to the Martí Alliance--Alianza Martiana--marched in front of the Immigration Department chanting "Posada terrorist," "Posada to jail" and "Freedom for the Five."

The Cuban Five, currently in prisons in the U.S., came to Miami to monitor right-wing exile groups there precisely because of their history of terrorism against Cuba.

Posada Carriles is wanted in both Cuba and Venezuela for masterminding the mid-air destruction of a Cuban airliner with 73 people on board. He spent nine years in prison in Venezuela, the country where the plot had been hatched, for this crime, but escaped in 1985.

This April 27, retired prison guard Nelson Diaz told the Venezuelan television program En Confianza that he and other guards had been offered bribes of $20,000 each by the CIA to let Posada Carriles escape. (http://www.alia2.net)

In 2000 Posada Carriles was arrested and convicted in Panama on charges of plotting to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro, who was attending an Ibero-American summit there. The convicted bomber had been caught entering the country with C-4 plastic explosives and other military paraphernalia. But Panama's president, Mireya Moscoso, herself a former Miami resident close to the right-wing Cuban community there, pardoned Posada Carriles just before her presidency expired.

The notorious terrorist then entered the U.S. illegally this March, a fact that was widely publicized in the Cuban exile community, yet U.S. authorities claimed they couldn't "confirm his whereabouts." Only after Posada Carriles openly bragged of his activities on a televised media conference in Miami, and then more than a million people in Cuba marched demanding his arrest and extradition, did the U.S. government finally detain him on immigration charges on May 17.

Recently declassified CIA documents confirm that Posada Carriles was no loner. He worked for the CIA, which is responsible for decades of violence against Cuba--from the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion to over a hundred assassination attempts against Cuban leader Fidel Castro. In fact, Posada Carriles's attorney even announced that he was seeking asylum in the U.S. on the basis that he feared "persecution" in Cuba because of his long years working for the CIA.

George H.W. Bush, father of the current president, became head of the CIA in 1976, the same year that the Cuban airliner was exploded by terrorists acting on the orders of Posada Carriles.

Posada Carriles is now in a detention center in El Paso, Texas, awaiting a hearing on June 13. The U.S. government has already turned down a request by Venezuela to extradite him, prompting an angered President Hugo Chávez to threaten the breaking of diplomatic relations with the U.S.

Venezuela has recently ended a military agreement with the U.S. that allowed U.S. "advisers" to work with members of the Venezuelan military. Similar agreements in the past have been used by Washington to promote military coups in countries like Indonesia and Chile.

There will be demonstrations across the U.S. on June 13 demanding that Posada Carriles be extradited to Venezuela.