Council on Hemispheric Affairs - Monitoring Political, Economic and Diplomatic Issues Affecting the Western Hemisphere
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Monitoring Political, Economic and Diplomatic Issues Affecting the
Western Hemisphere
COHA Memorandum to the Press
Posada Carriles: Washington and Miami's Preferred Terrorist
Wednesday, December 27th, 2006
Press Releases, Cuba, Front Page
Posada Carriles: Washington and Miami's Preferred Terrorist
"One who shelters a terrorist, is a terrorist" - President George
W. Bush
* The Bush Administration is harboring perhaps the Western
Hemisphere's most insidious terrorist, whose application for U.S.
citizenship is presently on the docket and if granted, would represent
an effrontery to this nation's bona fides, as well as the legitimacy
of its worldwide anti-terrorist crusade and what remains of its good
name abroad
* The White House feverishly searches for a country willing to
receive Posada in order to spare it from having to cross swords with
the Miami leadership by either extraditing him to Cuba or Venezuela, or
trying him here
* The Posada case as well as the Cuban Five represents perhaps a
defining moment in which the Bush administration's ideological
passions have snuffed out a proper application of justice - an
unacceptable sense of ethical values and public rectitude
* Meanwhile, the fate of the Cuban Five, whose crimes were negligible
compared to Posada's homicides, does not seem to either confuse or
disturb Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Thus, the White House will
likely have a problem regarding who it denominates as a "terrorist"
and who it fetes as a patriot
The upcoming immigration hearing for Luis Posada Carriles, the 78
year-old felon who is a self-confessed co-conspirator responsible for
the detonation of a bomb which killed 73 passengers and crew members
aboard a Cuban passenger airliner as it flew over Barbadian waters on
October 6, 1976, represents a huge political burden for the White House
and its deteriorating relations with Latin America. The disposition of
the case will now also test the authenticity of the U.S.'s War on
Terror, since Posada is responsible for some of the worst pre-9/11
crimes perpetrated in the Western Hemisphere. However, he has never
been conclusively tried for being one of the region's most notorious
psychopaths, as the Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Citizenship
and Immigration Services (USCIS) lawyers as well as his detractors
continue to cavil over whether he should be accorded the gallows or be
granted U.S. citizenship.
Posada originally had admitted to a New York Times reporter of
masterminding the 1976 bombing of Cuban Flight 455, in which 73
passengers lost their lives, including a nine-year-old girl, Cuba's
award-winning national fencing team, a young mother-to-be, as well as
Guyanese and North Korean travelers. However, in deference to the ultra
rightist faction of Miami's Cuban exile community, Washington has
repeatedly offered its protection to this world class criminal from
prosecution by U.S. authorities or in any other germane jurisdiction.
In doing so, the Bush administration almost has gone out of its way to
debase the process of shaping a corpus of applicable international
standards against terrorism by protecting those whom others might
describe as "terrorists," who are considered to be in good standing
by some U.S. authorities. But, as the Washington-based lawyer, Jose
Pertierra - who has been retained by Venezuelan authorities to
represent their country's interests in this case - explains "the
fight against terrorism cannot be fought à la carte."
A Case Wrought with Painful Irony
Washington has heard continuous international appeals, mainly as a
result of Havana and Caracas initiatives, that Posada (who is both a
Cuban national and Venezuelan citizen) be brought to justice. Venezuela
and the U.S. have an extradition treaty in place dating back to 1922,
which obligates the U.S. to immediately extradite any Venezuelan
national in this country who has been indicted on murder charges in
their home jurisdiction. Under the applicable terms of this bilateral
treaty, Venezuela formally applied for Posada's extradition in May of
2005. Not surprisingly, the Bush administration immediately rebuked
this effort by maintaining that the leftist, pro-Castro nature of the
Venezuelan government would preclude a fair trial to Posada in a
Venezuelan courthouse, and that the defendant would be subject to
torture: a self-serving assumption that U.S. prosecutors have never
bothered to evidence.
On the domestic front, Washington's unwillingness to prosecute Posada
or facilitate terrorism charges against him brought in other venues,
demonstrates that its War on Terror unmistakably involves double
standards based on selective indignation. On September 11, 2006 (the
anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks), the lack of forward
motion by the U.S. Attorney's office in Miami regarding the
resolution of Posada's status, led to a judge ruling that the
mastermind terrorist be released due to a lack of evidence that would
establish that he was a world-class terrorist and thus shouldn't be
released into the general public until his status would be resolved.
Since the federal prosecutor failed to mount a well-coordinated case,
but mainly relied upon screening films and citing general grounds for
detention, Magistrate Norbert Garney was forced to be exceedingly
lenient in his ruling, by lodging only a relatively minor charge of
illegal entry into the U.S. against Posada. Garney forcefully scolded
the prosecution for its failure to produce critical, factual evidence
regarding his professed terrorist status in proving that the only
prudent path to take was to continue Posada's detention. To the
families of Posada's scores of victims, the Bush administration's
DOJ's legal team handling of the case was a caricature of what should
have been an orderly and professional disposition.
Magistrate Garney then gave the prosecutors an extension of time to
strengthen their case against Posada, whose U.S. citizenship
application was simultaneously being heard by the USCIS. The judge's
reasoning for the extension stemmed from an unequivocal belief that
Posada was "an admitted terrorist with a history of involvement in
terrorist activities," and that releasing him could have
"significant national and foreign relations consequences." However,
on October 5, the day before the 30th anniversary of the destruction of
Cuban Flight 455, the DOJ's deadline to present adequate evidence to
move the trial ahead, came to an end. At this point, the presiding U.S.
District Judge Philip Martinez extended a new deadline, February 1,
2007, for the federal prosecution to present its case. In Martinez's
view, Posada has been detained "well beyond" what the U.S. Supreme
Court permits. Thus, as of today, at most 30 days remain for the
Bush-Gonzales justice to be dispensed.
Amongst the legal community, the DOJ's lassitude has raised suspicion
over whether the U.S. attorneys' lack of aggressiveness could be
attributed to the private biases of Attorney General Gonzales' in
this high profile case, or were they simply trying to gain time by
arranging an indefinite trial extension for a self-admitted mass
murderer.
What is the U.S. Government Hiding?
There is no reason to scoff at the notion that the U.S. Attorney's
office may be calculatedly sabotaging the Posada case in order to spare
the administration an embarrassing outcome brought about by its not
applying the full weight of the law against him. Certainly, the
executive branch has an interest in shielding the case from widespread
publicity. Over the years, Republican administrations on several cases
acted to protect Posada, a political icon in Miami. Understandably, the
government might not want the U.S. public to know about Posada's
long-standing cooperative relationship with U.S. authorities on various
conservative causes, including his role as a CIA agent.
For starters, during the vice-presidency of George Bush Sr., Posada was
granted sanctuary in El Salvador where he worked for the U.S. Embassy
assisting Contra efforts operating out of neighboring Honduras shortly
after escaping for a second time from a Caracas jail on August 18, 1985
where he awaited trial for the destruction of the Cuban airliner.
Perhaps only coincidentally, when Posada arrived to San Salvador, Col.
Emilio T. Gonzalez, the current Director of the USCIS, was the
Assistant Military Attaché in the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador.
Conceivably the U.S. Congress would find it appropriate to conduct a
hearing investigating any possible conflicts of interests considering
that the Director of the USCIS, now Dr. Gonzalez, has substantial
leverage over Posada's hopes of being granted asylum in the U.S.
Furthermore, the fact that Dr. Gonzalez is an exiled Cuban national,
whose family left Cuba in 1961 shortly after the failed attack on Playa
Giron, might also be of interest to Congressional investigators. Dr.
Gonzalez's known intense personal anti-Castro elements and personal
friendship with the now detained Posada should be addressed after the
Democrats take over Congress.
Moreover, documents in the possession of National Security Archives
reveal that Bush Sr., as the CIA director at the time of the downing of
Flight 455, was likely to have picked up rumors of Posada's plan at a
time when the explosives were being wired to detonate on board Flight
455. Much of the evidence against Posada has come from declassified FBI
and CIA documents, including evidence of Posada's meeting with
another notorious terrorist, such as his accomplice and co-conspirator
in Caracas, Orlando Bosch. One report states that "We [Posada and
Bosch] are going to hit a Cuban airplane. Orlando has the details."
The DOJ even lists Bosch as a "terrorist, unfettered by laws, or
human decency, threatening and inflicting violence without regard to
the identity of his victims." Revealingly, Bosch today dwells as a
free man in Miami after former President Bush Sr. granted him a full
pardon from all U.S. charges on July 18, 1990, a decision made at the
behest of the arch Castro-basher, former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela,
Otto Reich.
But Posada, whose fate has not yet been determined, is guilty of more
than just the destruction of the Cuban flight. The demolition training
he received while enrolled in the notorious School of the Americas and
thereafter as a CIA proxy, enabled him to mastermind several Cuban
hotel bombings while operating under cover in Havana. These attacks
were decried around the world as blatant acts of violence against
tourists and other civilians, yet the U.S. authorities downplayed their
significance at the time.
Posada was also implicated in the highly controversial Operation 40,
which, throughout the 1960s, involved conducting sabotage operations
and assassination plots in hopes of inciting a civil war in Cuba
between pro and con Castro forces. Posada is also suspected of helping
Bosch orchestrate the 1976 car bombing of former Chilean Foreign
Minister Orlando Letelier and his U.S. assistant, Ronni Moffitt, on
Embassy Row in Washington, D.C., in which both lost their lives. Most
recently in Panama, Posada was preparing himself to go on trial for
attempting to assassinate Castro, while the Cuban president was
attending a gathering with more than 2,000 students at the University
of Panama in 2000. Extraordinarily enough, former Panamanian President
Mireya Moscoso, now residing in Miami, found no problem in pardoning
him on August 25, 2004, on the eve of her leaving office, after Posada
had been detained with 200 pounds of explosives in his possession.
Perhaps Moscoso was so preoccupied with the good life awaiting her in
Miami, that the matter did not adequately catch her attention. What we
do know is that she was able to block from her conscience the impact of
the death of 73 innocent victims - who died in the fatal airplane
bombing three decades ago - out of which she was able to find the
grounds to free him.
Justified Incredulity from Abroad
The Bush administration may be attempting to placate Miami and ease
itself out of the Posada affair by attempting to find him a safe haven
outside the U.S. However, to their dismay, upon contacting authorities
in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Canada, Panama, El Salvador and
Honduras, Bush officials were repeatedly told that they would only
facilitate Posada's extradition to Venezuela or Cuba, if such papers
were ever filed against him.
Posada's Miami-based lawyer, Eduardo R. Soto, has consistently fought
such third-country deportation efforts on the grounds that he would be
treated in a prejudicial manner wherever he would end up, something of
a tacit admission of his guilt in itself. Other nations understandably
want nothing to do with the man, who is viewed by many as a
"monster," and "Latin America's bin Laden." Meanwhile, the
two countries which overwhelmingly have the greatest justification in
seeing Posada brought to justice - Cuba and Venezuela - where
Posada remains a fugitive from justice, in what has turned out to be an
ongoing trial in absentia. However, the Bush administration has
systematically ruled out the two as it considers them "rogue"
nations where Posada would face "the threat of torture...and
therefore could not be returned under the United Nations Convention
Against Torture." This is a conclusion that most legal experts would
turn their back on.
Cuba has long been awaiting the administration of justice for the mass
murder of its nationals on board the Cuban airliner. Havana has found
widespread sympathy for the enormous loss and pain suffered by its
population over this horrific misdeed. In 1998, Fidel Castro unveiled a
monument in Barbados commemorating the passengers aboard the ill-fated
flight. Venezuela also continues to vehemently assert its right to try
Posada, whose successful escape from a Caracas jail is universally
believed to be the result of well-heeled Miami confederates pulling
strings and bribing prison guards. The Miami capos are also believed to
be responsible for bringing Posada into contact with CIA operatives who
signed him up as a useful "can-do" asset, and then again, were said
by some to be involved in bringing President Moscoso into the scenario
that ended up with her inexplicable pardon of him.
The Cuban Five
The fundamentally biased nature of the current Posada proceedings are
highlighted by comparing them to the zealous dynamism displayed by U.S.
prosecutors from the same office who were involved in the trial of five
Cuban nationals: Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón
Labañino, Fernando González and René González. Now all serving
lengthy prison terms, these Havana militants were arrested by the FBI
in Miami on September 12, 1998 and were accused of espionage and
murder. Andrés Gómez, the Director of the pro-Castro Areítodigital
magazine, insists: "The federal government lied and is still lying.
The Five, as everyone knows, were not in Miami to spy against the
government of the United States, but to infiltrate the terrorist
organizations of the Cuban-American extreme right-wing, which with the
full knowledge and protection of the federal government, plans and
directs from that city terrorist actions..."
Indeed, the only real "threat" that these men seemed to pose from
their monitoring of several extremist Cuban exile groups in Miami like
CORU, Alpha 66, Omega 7 and Brothers to the Rescue, all of which were
documented for their involvement in attacking Cuban personnel and
property, bombing island tourist facilities, and illegally dropping
pamphlets over Havana and other of the island's major urban centers.
Double Standards at Work
The Cuban Five were arrested shortly after alerting Havana officials of
flights that were being planned by the Miami-based anti-Castro
extremist organization, Brothers to the Rescue. When two planes flown
by exile pilots professedly penetrated Cuban airspace, they were shot
down by Cuban pilots after warnings by Cuban air patrol officials to
reverse their course. The blatant bias of trial judge Joan Lenard
against the Cuban Five throughout their Miami proceedings, led to their
conviction on all 26 counts, in which the jury deliberated for only
four days.
The deportment throughout the proceedings of Judge Lenard, who acted
more as a government prosecutor than a crusader for justice, only
underscores Washington's obsessive tactics when it comes to the
interpretation of international terrorism in its favor. The fact that
both the judge and jury foreman were outspokenly anti-Castro should
have led to a dismissal of the indictments or certainly a change of
venue. It is true that some Florida wags have been know to mutter, yet
with her handling of this case, Judge Lenard proved that she is as fair
to justice as Katherine Harris is to a fair vote. Notably, a UN Working
Group reviewing the case was able to determine that the trial did not
take place in a climate of objectivity and impartiality, which is
required in order to conclude on the observance of the standards of a
fair trial. The UN report also charges that the Cuban Five were
wrongfully held for seventeen months in solitary confinement after
their arrest, and that their lawyers were deprived of the opportunity
to examine all of the available evidence before the government invoked
the Classified Information Protection Act.
As a result, Hernández was sentenced to two consecutive life terms
plus fifteen years, Labañino to one life term plus 18 years, Guerrero
to one life term plus 10 years, and Fernando González and René
González to nineteen and fifteen years respectively. The defense's
argument that Miami-Dade County was "a basic nucleus of anti-Castro
Cuban exiles, where the conditions for a fair trial do not exist,"
was summarily rejected in the pre-trial phase of the adjudication. On
August 9, 2005, after Leonard Weinglass, the U.S. attorney for the
Cuban Five, had appealed this ruling, a three judge panel of the Court
of Appeals issued a 93-page reversal of the initial conviction as well
as nullified the sentences. In response to the reversal, the Bush
administration and Attorney General Gonzales vehemently pushed for the
Solicitor General to appeal the verdict of the three-judge panel's
decision before all twelve judges of the 11th circuit in Atlanta. Its
finding, to the surprise of many, in a 10-2 vote, reversed the previous
pro-Cuban Five ruling, affirming the initial trial's convictions and
providing at least a temporary victory for the Bush administration and
its Miami political backers.
Nevertheless, the defense counsel for the Cuban Five was quick to act
and called for the conviction to be remanded back to the three judge
panel (now only a two-judge panel because one had since retired) for
the adjudication of the nine remaining issues under appeal. As
Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild, Heidi Boghosian
explains, "The case of the Five is now in the hands of the very two
judges who earlier reviewed this country's history of crimes against
Cuba, and concluded that [...] it was impossible for these five Cubans
to receive a fair trial in Miami." Considering the defense's
previous success with this panel of judges, Boghosian expects that they
"will again rectify this travesty of justice."
The case of the Cuban Five is going to haunt the Bush presidency
because even those opposed to the Castro regime have raised concern
over the harsh treatment and violation of rights exercised upon the
Five. The DOJ's handling of these men has raised a ubiquitous fervor
of nationalism profoundly affecting the younger Cuban generation who
feel the U.S. has acted on immoral grounds. Considering Castro's
terminal illness, this will be a unifying factor for the Cuban system
considering that the Miami-orchestrated case against the Cuban Five
will be viewed as a trivial offense on all Cubans. Truly, the concepts
of liberty and justice - which attracted thousands of Cubans to the
U.S. shores - are not being preached by U.S. and its authorities.
U.S. War on Terror Lacks Consistency and Integrity
While a final decision on the fate of the Cuban Five is expected to be
reached in the first half of 2007, the U.S. government's
single-minded hectoring of the Cuban Five - which is propelled by
ideology as much as by law - vividly contrasts with the privileged
treatment of Posada, whom after being accused of orchestrating the
death of 73 innocent individuals, is now leading a protected life while
his immigration status is being argued over in an El Paso, Texas,
courthouse. Don't be too startled if Posada is released at any time,
by a lightning move on the part of the government since the DOJ has
been guided by more of an ideological mission rather than by a faithful
administering of the law.
If the U.S. government insists on its sovereign right to preemptively
invade other nations to prevent terrorist attacks on its homeland, it
might want to consider the illogicality of not attributing the same
rights to its neighbor, particularly when that neighbor has repeatedly
warned U.S. authorities that the Brothers to the Rescue were routinely
violating international law by their repeated over-flights of Cuba.
On September 11, 2001, President Bush announced to the world that "We
will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these
acts and those who harbor them." Nevertheless, the U.S. continues to
harbor Posada. If he is not brought to justice on this round, the U.S.,
by its own definition, can be identified as safe-haven for
"evil-doers," invalidating its own justifications for conducting
its War on Terror. Posada's El Paso-based lawyer, Felipe D.J. Millan
disagrees, and asks "How can you call someone a terrorist who
allegedly committed acts on your behalf?" Interestingly, Millan's
own query proves the need to judge Posada in another country such as
Venezuela or some neutral third country, where he would have to respond
to international charges, that, in effect, if found guilty on them,
would make him complicit in criminal acts of terrorism and crimes
against humanity. If the U.S. does not facilitate this process, as
Michael Avery, the former President of the National Lawyers Guild
concluded, "Allowing Posada into the United States and entertaining
an asylum request from a confessed terrorist is an open acknowledgement
of accomplice liability..." Perhaps a viable neutral candidate for a
suitable venue to conduct Posada's trial would be Spain, as the Los
Angeles Times editorial board has argued: "Madrid is a credible
interlocutor between Washington and Latin America, and Spanish courts
have a recent tradition [...] of aggressively taking on cases of
universal jurisdiction."
If the spotlight doesn't stop focusing on Posada, in all likelihood,
the administration could calculatedly announce to the general public
- on a slow news day or on the eve of a three-day holiday - that
Posada should be allowed to proceed with his citizenship application
hoping that the case would disappear from the screen. This holiday
season, with all the distractions that it entails, could be a period of
suspense for scores of grieving family members seeking justice from
Miami-spawned violence. The Bush administration has repeatedly
displayed its political savvy in the timing of its archly political
releases of controversial documents, other information, or individuals.
This can be seen in the announcement of Donald Rumsfeld's resignation
as Secretary of Defense, which was made public on the morning after the
Democrats' triumph in the congressional elections, conveniently
distracting the population by masking the Republicans' near political
implosion.
Meanwhile, the lives of the five incarcerated Cubans will continue to
be squandered because of the intense ideological and political
prejudices that define President Bush and Attorney General Gonzales'
way of formulating U.S. policy when it comes to the Cuban issue, or how
it uses its criminal justice system for revenge rather than
vindication. By setting an arch terrorist free while simultaneously
continuing the draconic sentences against the five Cubans on the most
meager of charges - who many would argue should never have been
behind bars in the first place - Bush continues to build on the Bush
family-Posada relationship, while at the same time scrapping all hopes
of rendering U.S. relations towards Venezuela and Cuba more rational
and responsive to the best of the U.S. tradition of the pursuit of
justice and preserving, in good health, its humanitarian legacy.
This analysis was prepared by Research Associate Brittany Bond and
co-edited by Research Associates Magali Devic, Danielle Ryan, and Eytan
Starkman
December 27th, 2006
Word Count: 3900
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