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Posada Carriles tests US definition of terrorist
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Cuban ‘bomber’ seeking
US asylum was
on CIA payroll: documents
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| AFP/ Getty Images |
| Luis Posada Carriles (left), is helped
out of the Court in Panama City, March 15, 2004. |
Miami / AFP
05/13/2005
Declassified documents released this week link a Cuban terror
suspect seeking US asylum to a 1976 Cuban airliner bombing,
and show he was for years on the CIA’s payroll.
The CIA paid Luis Posada Carriles 300 dollars a month in the
1960s, and the anti-Castro Cuban worked for the CIA at least
from 1965 until June 1976, according to documents made public
Tuesday by the National Security Archive at George Washington
University in Washington.
An FBI document from November 3, 1976 quotes an informant as
saying Posada Carriles was in a group that discussed the bombing
of a Cubana Airlines plane, in which 73 persons died.
And another FBI document from October 7, 1976, a day after the
attack, cited an informant as practically admitting that Posada
Carriles and another man, Orlando Bosch, planned the Cubana
bombing.
In mid-April, an attorney for Posada Carriles, a staunch foe
of communist Cuban President Fidel Castro, said that his client
was seeking asylum in the United States.
However, the United States has denied knowledge of his whereabouts,
while Cuba and Venezuela said they want him extradited.
Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have railed at US
President George W. Bush arguing his “war on terror”
is a farce if the United States gives asylum to the fugitive
Posada Carriles.
On Monday, US State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters
in Washington: “In terms of where he presently is, I think
it’s fair to say we don’t know.”
“That is a big lie,” Chavez said Wednesday in Brasilia.
“One of the biggest terrorists in the world is living
in the United States. That is Posada Carriles,” Chavez
said.
“We have requested his extradition and
they should turn him over,” he said.
Caracas has already issued an international arrest warrant for
Posada Carriles, in connection with the bombing of the Cubana
jetliner.
Venezuelan courts had jailed the chemist, but he escaped while
awaiting trial in 1985.
Posada Carriles, 77, had been convicted in Panama and imprisoned
for attempting to kill Castro at a 2001 summit in Panama. However,
Panama’s then-president Mireya Moscoso pardoned him in
2004.
Panamanian prosecutors on Wednesday opened investigations against
the ex minister of justice and former heads of the police, immigration
and prisons for having released Posada Carriles and three others
convicted in the plot.
Cuba has also sought his extradition in connection with other
crimes over the past 40 years, including the 1997 bombings of
hotels in Havana, one of which killed Italian tourist Fabio
de Celmo.
Tuesday, The New York Times urged the United States in an editorial
not to give Posada Carriles asylum in the interest of a “single
standard for terrorists.”
“He should be arrested
and extradited for trial, not only for the airliner attack,
but also for other terrorist attacks that he has acknowledged
planning, including one in 1997 that killed an Italian businessman
visiting Havana,” the daily said.
Posada Carriles’ archive is available at http://www.nsarchive.org. |
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