Support the Cuban Five against U.S. terrorism

On Sept. 12, a federal magistrate in El Paso, Texas, announced he was prepared to release the terrorist airplane bomber, Luis Posada Carriles, from detention. The timing couldn’t have been more telling. Just one day earlier, President Bush had shamelessly beaten the drums for his “war on terror,” hoping to utilize the 9/11 World Trade Center memorials in order to reverse the growing anti-war feeling in the United States.

Posada Carriles is a virulent enemy of the Cuban Revolution who has been held by immigration since he entered the U.S. over a year ago without documents. He is wanted in Cuba for his role in the killing of Italian tourist Fabio di Celmo and the wounding of many Cubans during a spree of bombings at Havana hotels in 1997.

Venezuela has also demanded his extradition to stand trial for the midair bombing of a Cubana airliner that killed 73 people on Oct. 6, 1976, including the entire Cuban Olympic fencing team. Posada Carriles escaped from a Venezuelan prison a few years later, reportedly with the help of the CIA.

In 2000, he attempted to assassinate Fidel Castro while the Cuban leader was visiting Panama. Arrested and convicted for this crime, he was pardoned and released in May 2005 by the outgoing president of Panama, Mireya Moscoso.

Posada Carriles then entered the U.S. without documents through Mexico. Unlike so many other undocumented immigrants, he was arrested reluctantly, and only when he continually flaunted his anti-Cuba presence in Miami through public press conferences.

The U.S. government is ignoring its 1922 extradition treaty with Venezuela by refusing to honor the Venezuelan Supreme Court’s extradition request for Posada, a Venezuelan citizen. The U.S. says Posada might be “tortured” if extradited to either Venezuela or Cuba. But the only cases of torture in these countries have been at the U.S.-run Naval Base in Guantanamo, a territory the U.S. illegally refuses to return to Cuba.

While Posada may be going free, five Cuban men are in U.S. super-max prisons serving four life terms and 75 years. They were charged with espionage conspiracy, but in fact the Cuban Five were peacefully monitoring paramilitary groups based in Miami that, like Posada Carriles and his friends, plot and carry out attacks on Cuba with U.S. government support.

International demonstrations and forums from Sept. 12 through Oct. 6 will demand freedom for the Cuban Five. This time period is replete with anniversaries that show the bloody, terrorist character of U.S. policy toward Cuba and other progressive countries in Latin America.

Thirty years ago, on Oct. 6, Cubana Airlines flight 455 was destroyed.

The magistrate’s decision recommending freedom for Posada fell on the eighth anniversary of the arrest and unjust imprisonment of the Cuban Five—Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, René Gonzáles, Antonio Guerrero, and Gerardo Hernández.

On Sept. 11, 1973, a coup engineered by the CIA overthrew the elected Chilean government of socialist Salvador Allende, plunging that country into a bloody military dictatorship.

Posada Carriles is said to have been involved in Operation Condor, which on Sept. 21, 1976, killed former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and his aide, Ronni Moffit, using a car bomb right in Washington, D.C.

On Sept. 11, 1980, Cuban diplomat Felix García Rodríguez was assassinated in Queens, N.Y.

As part of the international protests over Washington’s double standard on terrorism, the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five will march from the U.S. (In-)Justice Department to the White House in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 23 at 11 a.m. A public meeting is planned later that day at George Wash ington University. Be there!.

Now is the time to emulate the Detroit City Council’s March 29 resolution in our communities, unions and city councils. Demand freedom for the Cuban Five and extradition and jail for real terrorists like Posada Carriles!