Anti-Castro militant files bid to be released from jail

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Fri, Apr. 07, 2006
Anti-Castro militant files bid to be released from jail
ALICIA A. CALDWELL
Associated Press

EL PASO, Texas - A Cuban militant awaiting deportation wants his case moved to federal court to force the government to deport him or let him go.

A lawyer for Luis Posada Carriles asked a federal judge in El Paso on Friday to let Posada live with his family in Florida while immigration officials find a country willing to accept him.

Posada, a former U.S. Army soldier who had a role in the failed U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the Iran-Contra scandal, has been held in an El Paso immigration jail since May 2005. He was arrested in Miami on charges that he illegally entered the country from Mexico.

Posada also is wanted in Venezuela on charges that he planned the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner while in Caracas.
(snip/...)

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/state/14289802.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Since when can you REALLY correctly call a bomber/mass murderer a "militant?"

Here's the interview article from the N. Y. Times with Luis Posada Carriles:

A bomber's tale: Taking aim at Castro
By Ann Louis Bardach and Larry Rohter, New York Times, July 1998

MIAMI -- A Cuban exile who has waged a campaign of bombings and assassination attempts aimed at toppling Fidel Castro says that his efforts were supported financially for more than a decade by the Cuban-American leaders of one of America's most influential lobbying groups.

The exile, Luis Posada Carriles, said he organized a wave of bombings in Cuba last year at hotels, restaurants and discotheques, killing an Italian tourist and alarming the Cuban Government. Posada was schooled in demolition and guerrilla warfare by the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1960's.

In a series of tape-recorded interviews at a walled Caribbean compound, Posada said the hotel bombings and other operations had been supported by leaders of the Cuban-American National Foundation. Its founder and head, Jorge Mas Canosa, who died last year, was embraced at the White House by Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton.
(snip/...)

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43b/144.html

[robinlynne]

1. also wanted in venzuela is not really saying what happened.

He bombed and downed a plane and killed everyone on board. He is no less than an international terrorist wanted in Venezuela, and Cuba. They have been demanding his extradition and the US will not extradite him to stand trial for what he did.

[Mika]

2. Plus, he was arrested in Panama for a bombing plot that would've killed..

.. many hundereds at U of Panama where President Castro was to speak. Outgoing Panama prez & Bushie pal Moscoso pardoned him on her last day as prez.


Panama Pardons Spur Cuban Outrage
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/08/27/world/main639051.shtml


Panama arrests expose CIA's terrorism
http://www.pww.org/past-weeks-2000/CIA's%20terrorism%20exposed.htm

[killbotfactory]

8. Bush is soft on terrorism

This fucker gets treated with kid gloves, but Bush wants to be able to hold our own citizens indefinately without charge or trial. What a world.

[Judi Lynn]

12. That was one filthy act she pulled off immediately before she left office.

I've read she called her friends in Miami to inform them the guys were "sprung" as soon as she did it. She used to live in Miami, and has a sister there. You're so right, she's a good chum to the _Bushes, even showing up attending a concert of American black music with them in Washington, D.C., which was acknowledged as highly irregular for ordinary heads of state.

From the New York Times:
Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Cuban Exile Could Test U.S. Definition of Terrorist

From the New York Times:

Cuban Exile Could Test
U.S. Definition of Terrorist
By Tim Weiner

~snip~
The moment Mr. Castro arrived in Panama for an international conference, he accused Mr. Posada of plotting against his life. Mr. Posada was seized, along with his three colleagues and 33 pounds of the plastic explosive C-4. Despite Mr. Posada's protest that the case was a sting set up by the Cuban spy service, he received an eight-year sentence in April 2004 for endangering public safety.

Eight months ago, in her last week in office, President Mireya Moscoso of Panama pardoned the men. She cited humanitarian grounds. Ms. Moscoso, who has long had a home in Key Biscayne, has strong social ties to Cuban conservatives in South Florida, said Mr. Durán, the Bay of Pigs veteran.

Her successor, Martín Torrijos, criticized the pardon at his inauguration, saying, "For me, there are not two classes of terrorism, one that is condemned and another that is pardoned."
(snip)

http://answer.pephost.org/site/News2?abbr=ANS_&page=NewsArticle&id=6127

[movonne]

3. Venezuela is willing to take him.. he is a terrorist...

[Up2Late]

4. Here's the report from Reuters, I'm so disgusted with the hypocrisy of...

...the Bush Cabal. Check out this statement I underlined. HIS FAMILY! What about the families of all the people he killed?

Anti-Castro Cuban exile seeks US custody release

Fri Apr 7, 2006 08:22 PM ET

By Aracely Lazcano

EL PASO, Texas (Reuters) - Lawyers for anti-Castro Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles, the suspected mastermind of the 1976 bombing of a Cuban Airlines jet, have filed a motion in court requesting he be released from detention and allowed to live with his family in Miami. They argued in court papers disclosed on Friday that at age 78 and in ill health Posada was not dangerous and was being held without cause in El Paso by U.S. authorities looking to deport him.

Posada "has already given everything he could in his fight for a free Cuba. (He) now simply wishes to be with his family," the motion said. A spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agency was "reviewing" the request, filed in U.S. District Court on Thursday.

A court clerk said no hearing had been set. Posada's attorney, Eduardo Soto of Coral Gables, Florida, could not be reached for comment.

Posada has been in U.S. custody since last May for illegally crossing the border into Texas from Mexico and has been a political hot potato for the Bush administration because of his history of violent acts to sabotage the government of Cuban President Fidel Castro....

(more at link)

<http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=11791480&src=rss/topNews>

[DoYouEverWonder]

9. Now they're saying he crossed the border from Mexico to TX?

Seems they're leaving out the part about Santiago Alvarez smuggling him into FL aboard his yacht. Can't imagine why? Especially, since Alvarez is also in jail for planning a terrorist attack on Cuba and was caught with enough weapons and explosives to cause a major bloodbath. Nice guys these two.

[DoYouEverWonder]

10. Looks like Posada is going back to FL soon!

On March 23, it came out that Posada would be moved from El Paso to South Florida in order to be on hand for another trial, this time the trial of millionaire developer Santiago Alvarez. Posada will serve as a defense witness assigned to the job of discrediting an informant, Gilberto Abascal, who steered the FBI to Alvarez’s illegal stash of weapons in Fort Lauderdale on Nov. 18.

A watching world will be treated to the spectacle of testimony from a terrorist and criminal offered up as counterweight to machine guns, grenade launchers, ammunition, C-4 plastic explosives and silencers found in buildings owned by Alvarez.

The object may be to spotlight Alvarez and Posada as the vanguard of anti-Cuban excess and symbol of shared struggle among exiles. Alvarez has served as financial backer for Posada, provided money to assassinate Fidel Castro in Panama, delivered Posada from Mexico to Miami in his yacht, and not least, taken part in an attempt to blow up Havana’s Tropicana nightclub.

The stage is apparently being set for mobilizing anti-Cuban prejudice in a campaign to influence judge and jury. In the Florida media, Posada is typically referred to as a “militant” or, for the benefit of the Cuban American community, as a “freedom fighter.” Observers point out that in Florida, right-wing Cubans set the terms of struggle such that lies and criminal behavior are flaunted, while the debunking of hypocrisy and falsehood falls on deaf ears.


http://www.pww.org/article/view/8874/

Where the hell did Alverez get C-4 I wonder?

[Judi Lynn]

11. C-4 has been used a lot by Miami "exiles" for various reasons.

A lot of them have worked with the CIA, etc., like Posada Carriles, who was a demolition expert, just as he was also the head of Venezuelan secret police in the 1980's...

One of the bombers he hired to plant the Cubana DC-9 airliner bomb, Ricardo "Monkey" Morales Navarette described C-4 as an item he used a lot. He had, himself, been a Batista secret police figure.

Just found this interesting article on Posada I've never seen before from the Miami New Times:

From miaminewtimes.com
Originally published by Miami New Times Aug 09, 2001
©2005 New Times, Inc. All rights reserved.

Fidel Made Them Do It
Posada Carriles is in jail -- again -- for plotting against Castro.
And again, he's sure it's Castro's fault.
BY KIRK NIELSEN

~snip~
He avoided scrutiny in 1986, when he inadvertently popped up as a coordinator of clandestine, and illegal, shipments of U.S. military aid to the Nicaraguan contras, at a time when Congress had cut off such assistance. His cover was blown when Eugene Hasenfus, a mercenary pilot shot down by Sandinista troops while on a secret contra supply mission, identified Posada as one of his bosses. The shootdown fueled the congressional investigations that soon erupted into the Iran-contra affair. But the Cuban explosives expert eluded the spotlight, which remained on Oliver North, Richard Secord, and others responsible for hiring him.
(snip)

http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs136.html

It has photos of the four who planned to assassinate Fidel Castro during a speech in a large auditorium in Panama, with info. on them, and a photo of Santiago Alvarez holding one of Posada Carriles's (who imagines himself an artist)
oil paintings.

The article mentions these people accused the Panamanian prosecuting attorney of being a communist, and accuse journalists who don't pander to them as being communists, too. Typical. We've seen that here from time to time lobbed by half-wits at people who disagree with them.

[Judi Lynn]

13. Here's a deposition of bomber Ricardo "Monkey" Morales Navarette

which was shared by a great poster at CNN's old US-Cuba relations message board in 2000. It's very interesting to look through, but it doesn't mention he was finally killed in an alleged bar fight in Key Biscayne, not terribly long after the deposition. You can tell by the fact he had trouble revealing his address that he was living in fear of retaliation at the time.



DEPOSITION OF
RICARDO MORALES NAVARETTE
PART I-A

http://cuban-exile.com/doc_026-050/doc0049.html

DEPOSITION OF
RICARDO MORALES NAVARETTE
PART II

http://cuban-exile.com/doc_051-075/doc0051.html

[DoYouEverWonder]

14. Wow, great stuff

Now how the hell am I supposed to get anything done this afternoon?

[Judi Lynn]

15. Heh, heh. I remembered it when I saw your C-4 post, thinking you

might see it as food for thought, like this segment from the second deposition:

PAGE 124

BY MR. WILLIAMS:
Q. I meant in the kind of more dramatic sense, you know, than the literary sense.
Why was Cab Calloway's house bombed?
A. He made some derogatory remarks, got into some brawl with another common friend, and we just went by there and put a bomb to the house, and that was the end of it, you know, and it was a surprise to everybody that there was grass inside the house.
Q. Well, now, I know, for example, if I want to give my friend Carhart a party and really surprise him, I will go out and spend a hundred bucks for one of those big cakes with a pretty lady inside delivered.
I get the impression that somebody must have disliked Cab Calloway an awful lot?
A. Oh, I did for sure.
Q. (Continuing) -- to spend that kind of money.
What does something like that cost, or what did it cost back then?
A. What?
Q. To have his hose bombed?
A. What do you mean "cost"?
Q. To pay the people to do it and buy the materials and that kind of stuff?
A. No, the material was free around town. It
-------------------------------
PAGE 125

was floating. There were pounds and pounds and pounds of C4 and dynamite and blasting caps.
Miami was a powder keg. In terms of money, cost nothing. I mean, anybody could, you know, give you -- "You've got any C4?" Yes, I've got fifty pounds." "Okay. Let me have ten pounds."
(snip/...)

http://cuban-exile.com/doc_051-075/doc0051.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Edited for spelling failure!
It really gets to you to realize all this has been going on for decades under the surface in South Florida. Downright creepy, isn't it?

[DoYouEverWonder]

17. I moved to Miami

in the late 70's. It was not even unusual to walk down Collins Ave and see Cuban Restaurants that had been blown up. I remember there was a bunch of bombings going on. Crazy place, always has been. I think it has something to do with the heat?

[HuffleClaw]

5. anyone suppose if this guy was a palestinian

he'd already be in some israeli jail?

[0007]

6. ....ain't that the truth!

[killbotfactory]

7. "militant" is a fancy word for someone who blew up a passenger plane

Usually we call them terrorists.

[Minstrel Boy]

16. yeah, isn't that precious? n/t

[Judi Lynn]

18. US Groups Want Posada in Venezuela

US Groups Want Posada in Venezuela

Washington, Apr 20 (Prensa Latina) Non-governmental organizations in the United States are demanding Thursday that President George W. Bush´s administration deport to Venezuela Cuban-born terrorist Luis Posada Carriles.

Civil groups, led by the ANSWER coalition, will also present today a peaceful protest in front of the US Immigration Court in the southern state of Texas, community sources told Prensa Latina.

US Immigration and Customs authorities meet criminal Posada Carriles today to consider the US citizenship´s request presented by his lawyers.

In addition to ANSWER, the Committee for Release of the Five Cuban, the Southwest Organizing Project, the Mexican National Brotherhood and the Latino Movement Forum are sponsoring the demonstration.
(snip/...)

~~~~ link ~~~~

[ronnie624]

19. Few things irritate me more

than deliberate attempts to bamboozle by the corporate media.

Since when can you REALLY correctly call a bomber/mass murderer a "militant?"

Just one of an infinite number of examples of the so called main stream media's campaign to mold perceptions and reinforce a world view that advances the cause of U.S. corporate imperialism--subtle and almost imperceptible to most but glaringly obvious to anyone who chooses to inform themselves. The ability to acquire information from myriad sources is key to our defense against being completely oppressed by the corporatist forces.