8-23-05,8:51am
Former member of the police force of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, Luis Posada Carriles joined the CIA after 1959. Trained in the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, he became an explosives expert and participated in the U.S. military invasion of the Bay of Pigs in April of 1961.
He is responsible for dozens of bloody attacks which took the lives of more than a hundred innocent civilians. He is considered the author, together with others such as terrorist Orlando Bosch, of the hateful crime over Barbados when a Cubana de Aviación commercial airplane carrying 73 people exploded midair on October 6, 1976. There were no survivors.
Official documents of the FBI and the CIA, declassified in May and June of 2005, acknowledge Posada Carriles as the perpetrator of that infamous crime.
Arrested and convicted in Venezuela, Posada Carriles escaped from prison in 1985 thanks to the support of the Cuban extreme right in Florida. Shortly thereafter he began working for Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North in the dirty war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the 1980s.
In 1997, a wave of terrorist attacks struck the Cuban tourist industry leaving many people injured and costing the life of the young Italian, Fabio di Celmo. In an interview published in the New York Times on July 12, 1998, Posada Carriles acknowledged he was the author of those terrorist acts, saying the Italian 'was in the wrong place at the wrong time.' He did not express any remorse, saying cynically, 'I sleep like a baby.'
On November 17, 2000, Posada Carriles attempted to assassinate President Fidel Castro by placing a 15-kilogram bomb of C4 explosives while the Cuban leader was attending a conference at the University of Panama with 2,000 students in attendance. According to the Panamanian authorities, the explosion could have caused hundreds of casualties. Arrested and tried, he was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Nevertheless, on August 25, 2004, the unspeakable happened: the outgoing president of Panama, Mireya Moscoso, pardoned Posada Carriles and his three accomplices, violating Panamanian law which provides that prisoners may be pardoned only when all judicial proceedings have ended. Posada Carriles's trial was in the appeals phase. It is now public knowledge that Moscoso acted to please the Cuban extreme right in Miami, where she is now living, and under pressure from Washington.
Since March 2005, Posada Carriles is in the United States whereas the Justice Department has forbidden him the entry in the country.
Venezuela is requesting the extradition of Posada Carriles, who is a Venezuelan national, so that he may be tried with guarantees to respect his constitutional rights.
In the name of the struggle against terrorism, the United States must lead by example and extradite Posada Carriles to Venezuela so that his crimes do not go unpunished. The whole of humanity is closely watching this case since the memory of the victims of terrorism demands that justice triumph over barbarism.
Impunity must end!
Signed: Nadine Gordimer, Salim Lamrani, Noam Chomsky, Rigoberta Menchú, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, José Saramago.
