By Jean-Guy Allard:

ON April 9, a jury in the nation which has afforded itself the right to draw up a list of countries allegedly sponsoring terrorism, found international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles innocent of 11 charges of perjury, fraud and obstruction. The El Paso court judge announced the decision, which cannot be appealed.

The jury of seven women and five men announced their verdict after just three hours of deliberations, having been instructed by Judge Kathleen Cardone – appointed by George W. Bush – who presided for the second time over a trial at the end of which Posada was free to return to his Miami home.

"Anytime a jury has a case, there's no telling what they might do. But we respect the jury's decision," Timothy Reardon, the assistant US attorney, stated. Reardon, also from the anti-terrorist section of the Justice Department, was incongruously sent by Washington, while the government refused to acknowledge Posada as a terrorist and try him as such, in line with international agreements signed by the U.S.

Venezuela is still demanding Posada’s extradition on 73 charges of homicide, an application filed in 2005 when the terrorist appeared in Miami.

Upon acquitting him, the jury failed to acknowledge – despite all the evidence presented – Posada’s illegal entry into the United States via the Miami River aboard the shrimp boat Santrina, preferring to believe his ‘coyote’ story.

Implicitly, nor was Posada’s role in the series of bomb attacks in Havana in 1997, which resulted in the death of Italian tourist Fabio di Celmo acknowledged.

A collaborator with Batista’s police, upon his arrival in the United States Posada was recruited by the CIA and admitted into Operation 40, a plan to massacre Cuban revolutionaries as part of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

The CIA placed him in repressive agencies in Venezuela, where he led the deadly "cleansing" operations of the DISIP (former Venezuelan secret police) starting 1967, and as an operative in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

He was detained in Venezuela as the mastermind of the sabotage of the Cubana passenger plane in 1976, killing all 73 persons aboard but, with CIA help, escaped from prison, going on to handle the drugs for weapons operation from the Ilopango airbase in El Salvador.

In November 2000, Posada was arrested in Panama in relation to a conspiracy to assassinate the Cuban leader Fidel Castro during the Ibero-American Summit, and was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment for acts of terrorism. He was released in 2004, pardoned by former president Mireya Moscoso, under pressure from the upper echelons of the Cuban-American terrorist mafia and their protectors in Washington and Miami.

Translated by Granma International

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