Outrage in El Paso: Posada Acquitted !!

In El Paso today, following a 13-week trial in which the evidence against him was overwhelming, notorious terrorist Luis Posada Carriles was acquitted by a jury after a shockingly short three hours of deliberation.

The U.S. government has been at war against the Cuban people since they carried out a revolution in 1959. As a CIA employee and part of that war, Posada Carriles committed many acts of terrorism against the Cuban people and others.

Today Posada walks free in a mockery of justice, while the Cuban Five
anti-terrorists are still imprisoned for almost 13 years.

If the U.S. had really wanted a conviction of Luis Posada Carriles on his real crimes of terrorism, it would have been easily achieved. But the U.S. government chose to try Posada for the ridiculously minor charges of perjury and immigration fraud.

This is why the National Committee, along with the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition and local activists in El Paso held a "Peoples Tribunal" and protest before the start of the federal trial, to expose Posada's crimes of terrorism to the world.

Today's acquittal, together with the continued incarceration of the Cuban Five heroes who risked their lives to prevent acts of terrorism by Posada's allies, is a clear indication that the U.S. war against the Cuban people and Cuban revolution continues.
The National Committee to Free the Cuban Five is outraged by this travesty of "justice," as are all supporters of Cuba and the Cuban Five.

The verdict of "not guilty" in Luis Posada Carriles's trial in El Paso does not absolve him of his terrorist crimes. And the struggle to bring Posada and his accomplices to justice does not end with today's verdict.

Demand Posada's Extradition!
Act today to demand justice for the 73 plane bombing victims,
for Fabio di Celmo, and for all the victims of U.S.-backed
anti-Cuba terrorism!




We urge everyone to contact the U.S. State Department and demand the immediate extradition of Posada to Venezuela, where he is wanted for the murder of 73 people in the mid-air bombing of Cubana Flight 455.

U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520
202-647-4000



http://www.freethefive.org

Terrorist Accomplice of Posada Carriles Arrested in Venezuela

By Deisy Buitrago

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela on Saturday accused a Salvadorean arrested while trying to enter the country this week of plotting attacks to disrupt legislative elections due to be held on September 26.

Venezuelan authorities said Francisco Chavez Abarca was detained on Thursday at Caracas's international airport. They alleged he belonged to a gang led by accused plane bomber Luis Posada Carriles.

"This terrorist ... has shown that his presence was to launch a phase of attacks to provoke violence and destabilization to disrupt the forthcoming elections," Interior Minister Tareck El Aissami told state television.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Saturday it was clear Abarca had not come to the Latin American country as a tourist: "They are trying to generate new violence in Venezuela," he said.

The elections are seen as a test of the Venezuelan leader's popularity ahead of a presidential ballot in 2012.

Abarca is accused of being a member of a group led by Carriles, a former CIA operative and Cuban exile wanted in Cuba and Venezuela on charges including masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.

A Cuban-born naturalized Venezuelan, the 82-year-old Carilles escaped from prison in Venezuela in 1985. He requested political asylum in the United States in 2005 but is awaiting trial on immigration charges and perfury.

Chavez calls him the region's biggest terrorist and has demanded Washington extradite him.

http://ca.reuters.com/

Trial of Posada Carriles in El Paso Postponed Indefinitely

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?

http://www.freethefive.org/

protest at Posada trial in El Paso, Texas

On Monday, March 1, the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles goes on trial in El Paso, Texas. Posada will be tried in U.S. District court for perjury--for lying to U.S. immigration authorities about his role in the 1997 Havana hotel bombings which killed Italian tourist Fabio di Celmo.

But the U.S. government refuses to prosecute or extradite Posada for his actual terrorist crimes, although there is ample direct evidence of his principal role in:

1) Hotel bombings in Havana 1997: Posada Carriles produced bombs, paid Salvadoran and Guatemalan mercenaries to fly to Cuba and plant bombs in Havana hotels. Fabio Di Celmo was killed by one of those bombs on Sept. 4, 1997; many others were injured. Posada later boasted to the New York Times reporters Ann Louise Bardach and Larry Rohter of his role. Instead of perjury, he should be tried for masterminding the bombings.




2) Bombing a Cuban civilian airliner: Posada Carriles and his accomplice Orlando Bosch paid two Venezuelan mercenaries to board a Cuban airliner Oct. 6, 1976, which was headed to Cuba from Venezuela, via Guyana and Barbados. The mercenaries, Freddy Lugo and Hernan Ricardo, planted two bombs on the planes and exited in Barbados. Cubana Flight 455 exploded mid-flight, and 73 defenseless passengers and crew were killed. Venezuela filed an extradition request for Posada with the U.S. in June, 2005, shortly after he illegally entered the U.S., but both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have ignored and refused to honor the extradition order.

The National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition and other organizations are organizing an important demonstration on Monday, March 1, 8:00 am, in front of the U.S. Federal Courthouse (511 E. San Antonio Ave.) in El Paso, Texas, to demand Posada's extradition to Venezuela, to face trial for 73 counts of premeditated murder.

We will also demand the immediate freedom of the Cuban Five, the five Cuban men who have been unjustly imprisoned by the United States government since Sept. 12, 1998. Their mission was working to stop the U.S.-backed terrorists like Posada, who walk the streets of Miami with complete impunity from Washington while the Cuban Five anti-terrorists are in U.S. prison, despite their life-saving mission.


http://www.freethefive.org