Venezuela Will Push U.S. to Hand Over Man Tied to Plane Bombing

[Judi Lynn]

Source: New York Times

Venezuela Will Push U.S. to Hand Over Man Tied to Plane Bombing

http://graphics8.nytimes.com.nyud.net:8090/images/2009/01/23/world/23venez_600.JPG

Adalberto Roque/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Portraits of the victims of the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people on
display in Havana in 2007. A Cuban exile in the United States is accused of masterminding
the attack.

By SIMON ROMERO and DAMIEN CAVE
Published: January 22, 2009
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela will press the Obama administration in the coming days to extradite a former senior official in Venezuela’s secret intelligence police so that he can be tried for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people, according to lawyers for the government here.

The move will test the new administration’s willingness to engage on a festering issue that has further strained America’s relations with Venezuela and Cuba. Both nations have depicted the case of Luis Posada Carriles, an elderly Cuban exile who is a naturalized Venezuelan and a former C.I.A. operative, as an example of hypocrisy by Washington in its fight against terrorism.

Mr. Posada, 80, is charged here with masterminding the bombing of a Cubana Airlines plane as it flew above Barbados, killing all 73 people on board, including dozens of Cuban civilians and a 9-year-old Guyanese girl. It was the Western Hemisphere’s first act of midair terrorism, the bloodiest of a series of bombings aimed at weakening Fidel Castro’s government.

At the time of the bombing, Mr. Posada was operating a private security firm here, after holding senior posts in Venezuela’s intelligence police. He was imprisoned in Venezuela for nine years while facing charges of plotting the bombing with another Cuban exile, but escaped in 1985 to El Salvador aboard a shrimp boat.

Mr. Posada has lived freely in Miami since 2007, when a federal judge in Texas dismissed an indictment against him on immigration fraud charges. He had entered the United States from Mexico, and was detained for two years until his release. He now spends his days painting landscapes, which are sold by the dozens at shows in Miami frequented by a shrinking but powerful group of hardened anti-Castro exiles.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/world/americas/23venez.html?_r=1&ref=world

[cosmicone]

1. Let's hand him over NOW ... enough hypocrisy. n/t

[acmavm]

2. It't put up or shut up time when it comes to real terrorists. This guy

should have never been allowed into this country let alone be aforded the protection of our government for so long.

His CIA handlers maybe should feel a little nervous themselves.

[No Elephants]

3. I guess we only mind some terrorism, not all?

[bertman]

4. I'm surprised that Dubya didn't give him a Medal of Freedom. Our terrorists are usually

referred to as patriots.

[peacetalksforall]

5. Hooray! A terrorist who was allowed to live in the U.S. by Republicans.

One who may have had the backing and/or help of the CIA as well as funding through the CIA as well as CANF or some other Cuban American foundation.

Find a corner room of a prison in Venezuela and use his art income for nursing and care.

You can't just destroy a commercial airplane full of people and get protected for the rest of your life by the U.S. of America.

He was a macho tough guy (full of of himself and his power) who is now 80 years old in body.

If he is not extradited, he will live in history as the blight he is on our history along with the Cuban American foundations and facilitators and their Republican Party operatives, including judges.

[Billy Burnett]

6. There's Orlando Bosch also.

Dozens and dozens of Miamicubano exile terrorists roam about freely, some still doing dirty deeds, even boasting about their recent exploits and ops in Cuba.

When the US government did nothing to stop their illegal ops against Cuban infrastructure the Cuban government embedded five agents into the stream of "defectors" arriving (being smuggled) into the USA. These agents were keeping an eye on these civilian paramilitary exile groups and some even joined their ranks undercover. When Cuba reported some of the exile's ongoing acts of terrorism and plans -violations of the US's own Neutrality Act- to US authorities, the FBI used that information NOT to stop the illegal terror ops being waged by the exiles, but they arrested the Cuban agents trying to uncover exile terror plots in order to protect their homeland. They were not involved in any anti US activities (other then being unregistered agents of a foreign gov).

These five brave Cubans working to stop terrorism, convicted by a S Florida kangaroo court trial, are serving 25+ years hard time in US Supermax prisons scattered around the US, and the US government has denied visitation visas to their family members preventing them from visiting - a violation of the Geneva convention.

Gerardo Hernández • René González • Antonio Guerrero • Ramon Labañino • Fernando González

They are known as "The Cuban Five", and they are heroes in Cuba.


You can read about them and their cause here --> www.freethefive.org

[peacetalksforall]

7. I didn't mention Bosch because I thought he died. ???

I did a quickie on Wiki and didn't find a death date.

I did find these two paragraphs:
(And I saw links to testimony of seeing Bosch in Dealey Plaza .... as an extra mention).

"History
Orlando Bosch was in contact with CIA in 1962 and 1963, as the agency itself admitted, as recorded in the National Security Archive <3>. At this time, Bosch was the General Coordinator of the Insurrectional Movement of Revolutionary Recovery (MIRR). He was a member of the anti-Castro Operation 40.

Belgian researcher Marcel Dehaeseleer believes that Orlando Bosch is the "dark-skinned man" who sits next to the Umbrella Man in the famous Zapruder film footage of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Bosch testified to the House Select Committee on Assassinations that he was at home in Miami when the president was assassinated.

Orlando Bosch entered Venezuela in mid-September 1976 under protection of Venezuelan president Carlos Andres Perez, according to the National Security Archive <4>. A CIA document described a $1,000-a-plate fundraiser in Caracas, Venezuela, held between September 22 and October 5, 1976, to support the activities of Orlando Bosch. The informant quoted Bosch as making an offer to Venezuelan officials to forgo acts of violence in the United States when President Carlos Andres Perez visited the United Nations in November, in return for "a substantial cash contribution to organization." Bosch was also overheard stating: "Now that our organization has come out of the Letelier job looking good, we are going to try something else." Several days later, Posada was reported to have stated that "we are going to hit a Cuban airplane" and "Orlando has the details." (Both the Bosch and Posada statements were cited in an October 18, 1976 report to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger posted by the National Security Archive on May 17, 2005.)

Miami area law enforcement officials linked Bosch to several dynamite bombings, including a blast in the offices of Mackey Airlines in 1977, after the airline announced plans to resume flights to Cuba. <5>

Flight 455
On October 6, 1976 Cubana Flight 455 was destroyed after takeoff by the detonation of a bomb that had been placed in the aircraft toilets. All seventy-three people on board were killed, including many young members of a Cuban fencing team. Five people from North Korea were also killed on board the flight. This bombing would have been plotted at the same meeting, attended by Luis Posada Carriles and DINA agent Michael Townley, where Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier's assassination, in Washington, D.C. in 1976, was decided. Bosch was jailed in Venezuela awaiting trial for his role concerning the Cubana Flight 455 bombing, but he was never convicted of these charges."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_Bosch

[peacetalksforall]

8. Protected by the Bushes for all these decades. Here's an older, but

insightful article written by Saul Landau explaining one aspect of Jeb and Cubans.

http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?page=archives_landau_jeb1

(tni - Transnational Institute)

[Peace Patriot]

9. Thanks for all this info!

There is a recent situation in Miami, with a Bushbot U.S. attorney prosecuting 4 Venezuelans and 1 Uruguayan, based on what was obviously, to me, a Bushwhack/CIA black op/dirty trick. A rich Miamian named "Guido" Wilson smuggled a suitcase packed with $700,000 U.S. cash onto a private jet connected to the Venezuelan oil industry, got caught (possibly a staged incident) by a customs official at the airport in Buenos Aires, and managed to talk his way back to Miami, where he became "state's witness" for the Bushbot U.S. attorney, claiming that the money was intended from Hugo Chavez to Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (both leftist presidents) for her campaign. The U.S. Bushbot attorney then prosecuted the above five for "failure to register with the A.G. as agents of a foreign government"--a really, really thin charge--for an alleged conversation in which they tried to convince Guido not to link the money to the Venezuelan government. (Since when does free speech merit a jail sentence? Even if they said this, there was no evidence that they were acting for the Venezuelan government!) Four pleaded guilty in deals with the U.S. attorney; one maintained his innocence, but was convicted.

Fernandez won her election handily, without the money--and is furious about these allegations, headlined in the Miami mafia-controlled Miami Herald every day during these trials, and she pleaded with the Bush administration to stop this slander. As Venezuela's VP said, if they had wanted to give money to Fernandez, they would have taken it on Chavez's plane the next day with diplomatic immunity. (Chavez visited Argentina the day after "Guido" was caught at the airport). The whole thing was set up to smear Chavez and Fernandez--two good, people-friendly, democratically elected presidents--to "divide and conquer" their strong alliance (Fernandez said it won't succeed), but especially to add to the Bushwhack/corpo 'news' false portrait of Chavez as a "dictator" and powermonger (--a campaign of lies and propaganda, in my opinion aimed at Oil War II: South America*).

So what business does a Bushbot U.S. attorney have, in trumping up a prosecution in Miami, regarding an incident that was strictly a political matter between two countries and their citizens in South America. As a matter of fact, while Venezuela has a law against foreign money in political campaigns (egregiously violated by the Bushwhacks), Argentina does not. So the alleged suitcase full of money was not even a crime. What it was was a set-up opportunity to make in appear like a crime, in Miami.

These men who were prosecuted should be given amnesty and allowed to return to their countries. With the exception of the trial of Gov. Seigelman in Alabama (and several others in Mississippi), and of course the kangaroo courts at Guantanamo Bay, I don't know of a more unfair, politically motivated, bullshit prosecution than this one.

-----------------------

*(You've probably noticed the "dictator" theme. I won't go into all the ways that it is a goddamned lie--except to say that I think I can convince you, if you ask me to, and if you have even a partially open mind about it. I've been more concerned lately about what the lie is for--what is the ultimate goal of this very intense propaganda? And I think there is sufficient evidence to be concerned about a Bushwhack war plan in South America--aimed at gaining control of Venezuela's oil reserves in the state of Zulia on the Caribbean--that could become Obama's own "Bay of Pigs" disaster. I am very, VERY worried about this, and will explain if you ask.)

[Judi Lynn]

10. Venezuela again requests extradition of Cuban exile

Posted on Friday, 01.23.09
LUIS POSADA CARRILES
Venezuela again requests extradition of Cuban exile

Venezuela is planning to renew pressure for the extradition from the United States of Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles, now living in Miami.

BY CASEY WOODS AND ALFONSO CHARDY
[e-mail]
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez -- hoping that the Obama administration will be more receptive -- is planning to press a request for the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles so the militant Cuban exile can be re-tried for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.

Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro is preparing a document in a bid to awaken interest in Washington for the extradition request filed soon after Posada sneaked into the United States in 2005, said José Pertierra, an attorney who represents the Venezuelan government in the U.S. capital.

''The foreign minister in Venezuela is preparing something that we'll be submitting soon to the State Department,'' Pertierra told The Miami Herald Thursday evening. ``Our request is still pending. We are going to be ratifying it and asking the Obama administration to follow up on the case.''

Renewed Venezuelan pressure for Posada's extradition is not a surprise: The change of administrations offers Caracas a new opportunity to press its case.

The Bush administration, which had tense relations with Chávez's anti-American government, never acted on the Venezuelan extradition request.

''We think the Bush administration had a certain political debt . . . to the extreme right-wing element in Miami and therefore was also reticent to send back Posada Carriles,'' Pertierra said in a telephone interview. ``The Obama administration has no debt to the right-wing element in Miami.''

More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/868371.html

[Judi Lynn]

11. CIA and FBI Documents Detail Career in International Terrorism; Connection to U.S.

LUIS POSADA CARRILES
THE DECLASSIFIED RECORD
CIA and FBI Documents Detail Career in International Terrorism; Connection to U.S.

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 153

For more information contact
Peter Kornbluh - 202/994-7116

May 10, 2005

Update - May 18, 2005 - Documents featured on May 17, 2005 edition of ABC's Nightline

Washington D.C. May 18, 2005 - The National Security Archive today posted additional documents that show that the CIA had concrete advance intelligence, as early as June 1976, on plans by Cuban exile terrorist groups to bomb a Cubana airliner. The Archive also posted another document that shows that the FBI's attache in Caracas had multiple contacts with one of the Venezuelans who placed the bomb on the plane, and provided him with a visa to the U.S. five days before the bombing, despite suspicions that he was engaged in terrorist activities at the direction of Luis Posada Carriles.

Both documents were featured last night on ABC Nightline's program on Luis Posada Carriles, who was detained in Miami yesterday by Homeland Security.

In addition, the Archive posted the first report to Secretary of State Kissinger from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research on the bombing of Cubana flight 455. The report noted that a CIA source had overheard Posada prior to the bombing in late September 1976 stating that, "We are going to hit a Cuban airliner." This information was apparently not passed to the CIA until after the plane went down.

There is no indication in the declassified files that indicates that the CIA alerted Cuban government authorities to the terrorist threat against Cubana planes. Still classified CIA records indicate that the informant might actually have been Posada himself who at that time was in periodic contact with both CIA and FBI agents in Venezuela.

~snip~
The documents include a November 1976 FBI report on the bombing cited in yesterday's New York Times article "Case of Cuban Exile Could Test the U.S. Definition of Terrorist," CIA trace reports covering the Agency's recruitment of Posada in the 1960s, as well as the FBI intelligence reporting on the downing of the plane. The Archive also posted a second FBI report, dated one day after the bombing, in which a confidential source "all but admitted that Posada and Bosch had engineered the bombing of the airline." In addition, the posting includes several documents relating to Bosch and his suspected role in the downing of the jetliner on October 6, 1976.

Using a false passport, Posada apparently snuck into the United States in late March and remains in hiding. His lawyer announced that Posada is asking the Bush administration for asylum because of the work he had done for the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1960s. The documents posted today include CIA records confirming that Posada was an agent in the 1960s and early 1970s, and remained an informant in regular contact with CIA officials at least until June 1976.

In 1985, Posada escaped from prison in Venezuela where he had been incarcerated after the plane bombing and remains a fugitive from justice. He went directly to El Salvador, where he worked, using the alias "Ramon Medina," on the illegal contra resupply program being run by Lt. Col. Oliver North in the Reagan National Security Council. In 1998 he was interviewed by Ann Louise Bardach for the New York Times at a secret location in Aruba, and claimed responsibility for a string of hotel bombings in Havana during which eleven people were injured and one Italian businessman was killed. Most recently he was imprisoned in Panama for trying to assassinate Fidel Castro in December 2000 with 33 pounds of C-4 explosives. In September 2004, he and three co-conspirators were suddenly pardoned, and Posada went to Honduras. Venezuela is now preparing to submit an official extradition request to the United States for his return.

According to Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Archive's Cuba Documentation Project, Posada's presence in the United States "poses a direct challenge to the Bush administration's terrorism policy. The declassified record," he said, "leaves no doubt that Posada has been one of the world's most unremitting purveyors of terrorist violence." President Bush has repeatedly stated that no nation should harbor terrorists, and all nations should work to bring individuals who advocate and employ the use of terror tactics to justice. During the Presidential campaign last year Bush stated that "I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world." Although Posada has reportedly been in the Miami area for more than six weeks, the FBI has indicated it is not actively searching for him.

More:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/index.htm

[Judi Lynn]

12. Venezuela to Ask Obama for Posada Extradition

Venezuela to Ask Obama for Posada Extradition

Venezuela says it will soon ask the Obama administration to extradite the CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles, wanted for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed seventy-three people. The Bush administration harbored Posada, refusing to extradite him to Venezuela or Cuba. Venezuelan lawyers say they’ll present the US with new evidence of Posada’s guilt.

http://i2.democracynow.org/2009/1/23/headlines

[Ichingcarpenter]

13. Venezuela To Ask New US Gov't To Hand Over Posada

Source: CBS4

Jose Pertierra, a lawyer for the Venezuelan government in Washington, says a 3-1/2-year-old extradition request for 80-year-old Luis Posada Carriles will be reactivated and presented to the U.S. State Department in the coming days.

Pertierra says President Hugo Chavez has signed off on diplomatic guarantees that the Cuban-born Posada would have his safety ensured and receive a fair trail if extradited.

Posada, a naturalized Venezuelan, now lives freely in Miami. He once held a prominent role in Venezuela's secret police.

Read more: http://cbs4.com/local/Luis.Posada.Carriles.2.916494.html

[IndianaGreen]

14. Posada Carriles is a terrorist responsible for the downing of a passenger jetliner

He is also a naturalized Venezuelan citizen and as such should be extradited to Caracas to face justice.

[struggle4progress]

15. Venezuela again requests extradition of Cuban exile (Miami Herald)

... ''We think the Bush administration had a certain political debt . . . to the extreme right-wing element in Miami and therefore was also reticent to send back Posada Carriles,'' Pertierra said in a telephone interview. ``The Obama administration has no debt to the right-wing element in Miami.''

Posada's Miami attorney, Art Hernandez, said he expects to prevail in any federal court extradition proceedings because of a standing federal prohibition against removing Posada to Venezuela.

An immigration judge in 2005 ordered Posada deported from the United States, but prohibited federal authorities from sending him to Venezuela or Cuba. Hernandez said the immigration court ruling would deter any federal court from attempting to extradite Posada to Caracas ...

After figuring in the Iran-contra scandal in the mid-1980s, Posada settled in El Salvador and was implicated in the bombing of tourist sites in Cuba in the 1990s ...

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/868371.html

[struggle4progress]

16. Iran-Contra and Posada (A.K.A. Ramon Medina)

... After bribing his way out of prison in Venezuela in September 1985, Posada went directly to El Salvador to work on the illicit contra resupply operations being run by Lt. Col. Oliver North. Posada assumed the name "Ramon Medina," and worked as a deputy to another anti-Castro Cuban exile, Felix Rodriguez, who was in charge of a small airlift of arms and supplies to the contras in Southern Nicaragua. Rodriguez used the code name, Max Gomez. This document, released during the Congressional investigation into the Iran-Contra operations, records both Posada and Rodriguez obtaining supplies for contra troops from a warehouse at Illopango airbase in San Salvador ...

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/index.htm

Maybe Nicaragua should cook up an extradition request

[NBachers]

17. Send Orlando Bosch with him!

A prescient DU post from 2006, with a notable photo of villains:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2762695

ck4829 (1000+ posts) Mon Nov-20-06 10:15 PM
Response to Reply #31
36. Here's some information
Operation 40 was a CIA-sponsored undercover operation in the early 1960s, which was active in the Caribbean (including Cuba), Central America, and Mexico. Created by US President Eisenhower in March 1960 after the 1959 Cuban Revolution and presided by vice-president Richard M. Nixon, it included people such as Frank Sturgis (who would later become one of the Watergate burglar), Felix Rodriguez (a CIA agent who later hunted down Che Guevara), Luis Posada Carriles (now held in the US under illegal immigration charges, he is demanded by Venezuela for his key role in the execution of the 1976 Cubana Flight 455 bombing), Orlando Bosch (founder of the CORU counter-revolutionary organization, which organized Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier's murder in 1976), Rafael 'Chi Chi' Quintero, Virgilio Paz Romero, Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz, Bernard Barker, etc. Members took part in the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion directed against Fidel Castro's regime.


Here's the guys in the Operation, among those pictured are Felix Rodriguez, Porter Goss, Barry Seal.