14 May 2007 20:25:31 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Anthony Boadle
HAVANA, May 14 (Reuters) - Cuba staged a mock trial on Monday for an
anti-Castro militant it says the United States has avoided prosecuting
for acts of terrorism.
Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative who is accused of bombing a
Cuban airliner and tourist targets in Cuba, walked free in the United
States last week when a U.S. judge dismissed immigration charges against
him.
Red flags covered the walls of the once elegant Vedado Tennis Club where
Cuba's Communist Youth organization set up an "anti-terrorist tribunal"
that will hear witnesses for two days and condemn the Cuban exile for
acts of violence against Cuba.
Law students acting as judges in black togas began court proceedings
against the man Cuba accuses of masterminding the 1976 downing of an
airliner that killed all 73 people aboard.
Cuba says he also planned a wave of bomb blasts in Cuban hotels and
nightclubs in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist.
Posada Carriles, 79, was arrested for the plane bombing in Caracas,
where he lived at the time. He escaped from prison in 1985 while
awaiting a second trial.
Venezuela, Cuba's leftist ally, requested his extradition from the
United States after he was arrested in Miami in 2005, but got no response.
Posada Carriles was detained after he sneaked into the United States
illegally. He was released on bail last month and immigration fraud
charges were dropped on Tuesday.
Cuba said the immigration indictment was a "smoke screen" by U.S.
authorities to avoid prosecuting Posada Carriles for acts of violence
that would have revealed his links over 25 years to the Central
Intelligence Agency.
Havana accused the Bush administration of hypocritically disregarding
anti-terrorism measures it put in place after the Sept. 11 attacks in
the United States.
Posada Carriles could still face a U.S. indictment by a federal grand
jury impaneled in Newark, New Jersey to determine his role in the 1997
bombings in Havana.
In a 1998 interview, Posada Carriles told The New York Times he plotted
the wave of bomb blasts from Central America funded by Cuban exiles in
Miami. He later denied saying this.
Cuba has recently provided the FBI with new evidence to pin the bombings
on the Cuban exile. An exchange of information in 1998 brought no U.S.
action against armed exiles in Miami but led to the arrest of five Cuban
spies monitoring anti-Castro groups in Florida.
"The U.S. authorities have enough proof to prosecute Posada Carriles as
a terrorist with what we have given them," Interior Ministry
investigator Lt. Col Roberto Hernandez told Reuters.
Hernandez said indicting Posada Carriles for acts of violence would put
an end to the impunity exiled groups have enjoyed for decades in
launching attacks, such as strafing Cuban hotels with machine guns from
passing speed boats.
"Putting Posada Carriles on trial would restore the U.S. government's
authority and put a bunch of terrorists in Miami out of business," he said.
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