by José Pertierra
Feb. 19, 2010
Reprinted from CubaDebate
Translation by Gloria La Riva
Everything seems to indicate that the strategy of the U.S. government is put off, defer and delay the case of Luis Posada Carriles until he dies of old age in Miami.
The latest deferment took place this Friday in El Paso. Judge Kathleen Cardone announced that the trial that was scheduled for March 1 is now postponed to an indefinite date.
Posada Carriles is an international fugitive, with 73 counts of murder pending against him in Caracas. Venezuela formally requested his extradition on June 15, 2005, but Washington has chosen to try him for perjury instead of extraditing him for murder. In 2007, they indicted him for making false statements in relation to his illegal entry to the United States.
The prosecution has evidence that Posada entered by a boat named the Santrina with several conspirator friends of his. However, Posada alleged that at the age of 79 years he had entered the country on foot through the border with Mexico. A story that nobody believes.
Posada’s lies were convenient for Bush, because they allowed him to block the terrorist’s extradition, while the perjury charges made their way through federal court.
After Barack Obama assumed the presidency, the prosecution added other charges to the case, accusing him of obstructing an investigation into international terrorism, for his lying about his role in the terrorist campaign against Cuba in 1997. This is something that Posada had already boasted about during an interview with the New York Times, when he admitted being the mastermind of the bombs that exploded in Havana, and which killed the Italian Fabio di Celmo.
Each time that Posada feels pressured, he threatens to talk about his relation with the CIA. The documents that his attorney have presented before the court are full of these threats and insinuations, including saying that everything that Posada has done in Latin America has been “on behalf of Washington.”
His new legal strategy includes alleging that the CIA taught him to lie: to utilize false names and to carry false passports. He wants to present himself as a soldier of the U.S. intelligence agency to claim that everything he did was under the supervision of Washington.
The prosecution fiercely opposes this strategy, because the last thing Washington wants is for the hidden skeletons of Langley to be uncovered. In this Posada is right: the mendacity of the CIA is deeper than that of its operatives. What was the role of the CIA in the dirty war in Latin America? Who was ultimately responsible for the bombingof the Cuban Airlines plane in 1976, in which 73 civilians died: the CIA or Posada? What role did the Agency play in the terrorist campaign against the Cuban tourist installations in 1997?
To prevent Posada from playing the valuable card of telling everything that he knows, the government has succeeded in getting the court to seal more than 90% of the documents that have been presented in court. Only the prosecution, the defense attorneys and judge can view them. Neither the press nor the public has access to them. Some journalists accuse Judge Cardone of not maintaining “an open and transparent case.”
But the petition for the secret litigation was by the prosecution. It is extremely rare for a judge to force the hand of the government to reveal delicate information that supposedly harms the country’s national security.
What we know for certain is that the true objective of the prosecution is being realized. The process has up to now been secret, and the case remains in a legal limbo without a set date for the trial. Judge Cardone’s court order has announced a preparatory hearing for May 20. In that hearing, she wants to know the “state” of the case, to determine if a date will finally be set for the trial.
Meanwhile, Venezuela’s extradition petition is still pending and Posada Carriles continues enjoying complete impunity for the murder of those 73 defenseless people on board a passenger plane. When Posada’s attorneys meet with the prosecutors next May 20 in El Paso to review the “state” of the case, will it occur to anyone to tell the judge that this international terrorist is now five years in the United States without having to answer for his crimes? Or that Giustino di Celmo has waited for 12 years to see that his son Fabio’s murderer be tried? And that the families of the victims of Cubana de Aviacion’s flight 455 have waited almost 34 years to see that justice is carried out, for the murder of their loved ones? What are they waiting for? For the assassin to die of old age in Miami?
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