On the night of April 8 US federal prosecutors filed an 11-count indictment in El Paso, Texas, charging that Cuban-born former US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) “asset” Luis Posada Carriles perjured himself and obstructed justice in 2005 when he told immigration authorities he was not involved in the bombing of two Havana hotels in 1997; Italian tourist Fabio di Celmo was killed in one of the attacks, at the Copacabana Hotel. Posada was quoted in a 1998 New York Times article as saying that he was in fact involved, and there is speculation that federal agents have found additional information linking him to the attacks. A New Jersey grand jury has also been investigating the bombings, although no charges have been filed in that case. Posada is scheduled to go on trial before US district judge Kathleen Cardone in El Paso on Aug. 10.
This is the first time the US has filed charges connecting Posada to terrorist acts. Venezuela has been asking since 2005 for the US to extradite Posada, a naturalized Venezuelan citizen who entered the US illegally that year, so that he can face trial on charges of masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner in which 73 people died. The US government has never acted on the extradition request. The US has ordered Posada deported, but since US immigration authorities refused to deport him either to Cuba or to Venezuela, he has been living in Miami on conditional release since 2007. The US charged him previously for immigration fraud not connected with the terrorism cases, but Judge Cardone threw the charges out on May 8, 2007 as “outrageous.” (Cuban authorities agreed with the judge, calling that case “phony” and “a charade.”) According to the Cuban newspaper Granma, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans reinstated the charges in 2008, but apparently the new charges supersede the earlier ones.
Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frías said on April 10 that the new indictment “seems like a good sign from the US, of the change that apparently is occurring,” but that noted that the trial will be for lying, not for the attacks themselves. “[T]hey’ve known that for some time, that he’s lying,” Chávez said. Cuban media called the indictment “a surprising change of strategy” and suggested that the US government’s “new posture” was connected to the Fifth Summit of the Americas, to be held in Trinidad and Tobago starting on April 17. Analysts expected the question of Venezuela’s extradition request to come up at the summit, US president Barack Obama’s first meeting with the heads of state of the hemisphere.
The indictment appears to be part of a broader US strategy to improve relations with Cuba. The Obama administration was expected to make an announcement in time for the summit that it is lifting restrictions on travel to the island by Cuban Americans and on remittances to relatives in Cuba; it may also allow more academic and cultural visits. On April 6 a delegation of US Congress members met with Cuban president Raúl Castro as part of a five-day visit to the island; they had a conversation the next day with former president Fidel Castro. On April 9 the rightwing Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), which for decades has backed stronger restrictions, changed course and called for “people-to-people” exchanges.
Posada will be formally presented with the charges against him in El Paso on April 17, the first day of the Trinidad summit and the anniversary of the Bay of Pigs incident, the CIA’s failed 1961 attempt to overthrow Cuba’s Communist government. The anniversary may be “a legal Bay of Pigs” for Posada, remarked José Pertierra, the DC-based attorney who is handling the Venezuelan extradition request. (Prensa Latina, April 9; Time, April 10; La Jornada, Mexico, April 10; Latin American Herald Tribune, April 11; Miami Herald, April 10; Inter-Press Service, April 7; Reuters, April 7)
From Weekly News Update on the Americas, April 12
See our last posts on Cuba and Venezuela.
New Book on Secret Life of Luis Posada
New Book Reveals Secret Life Of Cuban Terrorist Louis Posada
New York: March 11, 2010 (Caribbean New York Press) – A new book, From Cubana to Santrina throws fresh light on the terrorist activities of Cuban dissident, Louis Posada Carilles, whose impending trial ( May 20) in an El Paso federal court in the United States is again attracting international media attention.
Written by New York based Guyanese Journalist Dhanraj Bhagwandin, the book highlights the trail of Bambi (one of Posada’s aliases) from Cuba to Venezuela and then to El Salvador where he was involved in drugs, prostitution and a death squad. Posada coordinated numerous plots to kill Cuba’s former President Fidel Castro and also helped the Contras in Nicaragua.
He has long been fingered as the mastermind of the bombing of a Cuban airline off the coast of Barbados in 1976 in which 73 persons perished including 11 Guyanese. Posada was on the run for nearly three decades until 2005 when he finally sneaked into the United States.
Based on interviews with Ex-Federal United States Drug Enforcement Agent Celerino ‘Cele’ Castillo III, and new declassified documents, Bhagwandin, an investigative journalist, brings a new perspective to this tragic international event involving Cuba, the United States and Venezuela.
Dhanraj Bhagwandin, the author, is a former journalist from Guyana who has covered several countries including Cuba He is also author of Georgetown Spies a tale of espionage involving American and Russian secret service agents. Bhagwandin also wrote for the now defunct Brooklyn Skyline newspaper and taught at York College and the Bronx Community College of the City University of New York.
The Cubana explosion in midair was the first act of terrorism in the Caribbean and Latin American.
The account reveals the genesis of the Cubana plot and the inner motivations of its author, Bambi. It also links his involvement with the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
“Dhanraj Bhagwandin is the first writer of the Caribbean and North America to fictionalize the Cubana air disaster with such courage, craft, feelings and splendor,” according to Caribbean novelist Dr. Churaumanie Bissundyal.
For more information visit http://cubanatosantrina.com/
Email : caribnypress@yahoo.com
“Secret life”?
In response to our inquires, author Dhanraj Bhagwandin writes:
The book falls under the genre of a historical fiction. I would say about 95 percent of its content is factual.