America’s Favorite Terrorist Goes Free
One of the most interesting and novel, websites around, Watching America, has a very interesting article up by Rolando Sarmiento Ricart, for the Adelante newspaper (Cuban), translated by Douglas Myles Rasmussen.
Rasmussen’s introduction:
Has the Bush Administration just released a known terrorist who had a hand in – among other things – the death of John F. Kennedy and the destruction of a passenger aircraft with 73 people aboard? According to this article from Cuba’s state-controlled Adelante, Luis Posada Carriles, who has just been set loose in Miami, is just such a man.
From the article:
To give a more precise description of his professional profile, Luis Posada Carriles is an expert at setting off C-4 explosives with a very short fuse, who goes from Bush to Bush, and whose detonations have not been silenced or hampered by the outrageous justice system in the United States or its famous Patriot Act.
And it’s a fact that the terrorist Posada Carriles, who has confessed to so many crimes, including the explosion in mid-flight of a Cubana Airlines plane with 73 passengers aboard, is an overall deadly threat to any nation, even the United States. This is the man that the Administration of George Bush is seeking to “judge” for his little immigrant lies, told in his quest to enter the land of the Anti-terror Gladiator.
It is very well-known that Posada Carriles, in Washington D.C. – the very heart of the United States, capital of the world’s most powerful nation – participated in a bombing attack that killed Chile’s former minister of foreign affairs, Orlando Letelier , and his North American associate, Ronnie Moffitt.
Sources very close to the terrorist also implicate him in the conspiracy to kill the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. Nevertheless, the present administration in the “White House” – in quotes – welcomes this new bin Laden with the assurance that he is no threat to anyone. It would be good to remember that the inveterate dynamiter, in a 1998 interview with The New York Times, named himself as the chief organizer of a series of bombing attacks on hotels, shops and a diverse array of civilian installations in Cuba during the summer of 1997. These acts of deadly vandalism resulted in the death of Italian tourist Fabio Di Celmo and wounded some others, among them children.
He confessed to planning to kill Castro in on the campus of the University of Panama, but he was later pardoned by President Mireya Moscoso, who is now retiring in…
The US.
There is an interesting question here: if the US opposes all terrorism, shouldn’t the US go after people like Carriles? And, shouldn’t the US actively try to disarm the PKK in Northern Iraq? One of the main problems for the US right now is that many people consider the US to be hypocritical. Terrorism is terrorism is terrorism. No?
To read more about Luis Posada Carriles, go here. A former CIA operative, active during the Cold War. Obviously, during the CW, other rules were in place. It was not about fighting terrorism, it was about fighting the communist threat. Communism might have spread throughout Latin America, which would have been a disaster for the US, and thus for the West as a whole.
I do not have a problem with the CIA trying to kill Castro – sadly all attempts failed I’d say.
There is a difference between trying to kill Castro and trying to prevent communism from spreading on the one hand, and terrorism on the other. It seems to me that Carriles crossed that line.
That being said, and this is important to point out, I simply do not know much about Carriles. In fact, this was the first time I heard his name. I read a bit up on him, but there is still much more to discover. The man is a bit of a mystery.
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12 Responses to “America’s Favorite Terrorist Goes Free”
Whether talking repressive dictators or terrorists, the operative question has largely been “but is he ours?”
Sure it’s hypocritical. Just as it was hypocritical for Reagan, Bush, Cheney, etc. to support Saddam long after he’d killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis when he was still ‘ours.’
They won’t go after Carriles because they’d lose the support of hardline Cuban expat voters in Florida. Because winning elections is their only principle.
I have read about Luis Posada Carriles many times but most of these accusations are new to me.
Can Cuba be described as having a free press?
We need an internationally accepted definition of terrorism as a criminal act, and a court with the power to give people fair trials when they are accused under this definition. The definition would run something like “terrorism is mass murder of civilians of a foreign nationality when one is not a regular soldier employed by a state at war with that nationality”. Soldiers are already governed by the Geneva Conventions, though it is true those are unevenly applied. Mass murder of your countrymen can be addressed easily enough by domestic courts.
We should then yield anyone accused of terrorism (or conspiring to engage in terrorism, etc) to such a court.
At the moment, lacking such a court, we should extradite Carriles and apologize for various atrocities done with our blessing by Contras, Pinochet, etc. in Latin America over the past 50 years. We need to recover an honorable reputation in the world, and even-handed prosecution of terrorists is a good first step.
Sincerely,
NT White
Sounds like moral relativism to me.
I don’t see how we can keep some terrorists locked up indefinitely, without access to attorneys or rule of law, yet set others free because they’re not a danger to our country, without losing credibility in Latin and South America. Our image down there is already poor, this just makes it worse.
He’s a republican terrorist. They are better than everybody else’s terrorists so naturally they get special privilege. I mean, killing Democrat Presidents, what’s that but an honor and a privilege to a republican?
PKK may be terrorist by US and European standard..but PKK was practicing this during cold war when Turkish state was raging terror against Kurds..now since 1995 as Turkish state moved towards democracy pkk has also started to review its policies and the eveidence is despite that CIA has handed pkk leader ocalan to Turkey. pkk has not had a firey response and instead decleared a cease fire and only fight back if turkish armey attack them..US has learn something useful in iraq this was you can not win a war only through military but political solution should be part of this..US now wants Turkey do exactly the same..turkey should recognise Kurdish people and give them their political and cultural rights (as required by EU) THEN pkk will automatically become week and will be easy to get rid of.
K. Ritter wrote:
> Sounds like moral relativism to me.
No.
But: hypocrisy, cynicism, “Florida is a mega-state”? Yes.
Hey Mike,
He also was responsible for bombing a Cuban Airliner in the 1970′s. Which I believe he killed like 40 to 50 civilians at the time, and the
US just politely looked the other way. He is a known terrorist, by this country.
Your article describes the entire problem with the US’s foreign policy, it is hypocritical.
I want to also mention that he is not a republican problem either, both parties in this country have politely looked the other way on this guy not just one.
The US has many faces ,some generous,some simply two-faced. They have made trade deals ,such as NAFTA,the conditions of which they break when it suits them e.g the 28% soft lunber duty from Canada.
The 1920 extradition treaty with Venezuela.Luis Posada Corilles is an escaped convict from Veezuelan Jail as well as he and Bosch bombing the airliner
If we don’t extradite him, will Chavez get ahead in line for the next Nobel Peace Prize? (Before or after his Kalazhnikov factory is in operation?) The lefties wanting Carriles extradited are seeing the same thing that Israeli activists are seeing with Pollard’s continued incarceration: Politics.
Set aside for a moment the Cuban exile community in Miami and Florida’s mega-state status and what a release could do for Florida’s vote in the future, even for Jeb Bush(!).
[For those who don't know Spanish, read slowly, and yes, the word with "fest" in it is self-explanatory.]
“Mientras en La Habana protestaban, en Miami, cubanos anticastristas festejaban por la libertad de Posada Carriles.”
(see below)
Consider the international politics and personal politics.
Who is continuing to hold Pollard in prison here for spying on Israel? Why, the Bush people, who have strong oil and Arab ties, the people who have sold out Israel before. Do activists on behalf of Pollard really believe the constant pestering by each successive new Israeli government for Pollard’s release (expulsion from the USA, whereupon he’d go to Israel, possibly even a formal deportation there) would be accepted by people with strong oil and Arab ties?
Who benefits from a Carriles extradition other than lefties here in the USA? Why, not only the government of Castro but that of Chavez. Now, do you think the Bush people are in a great hurry to extradite this guy, especially when Chavez and Castro are such good buddies?
“Venezuela solicitó de inmediato la extradición, pero el gobierno de Bush sostuvo que, si lo entregaba a ese paÃs, el encausado podÃa sufrir torturas o ser a su vez extraditado a Cuba.”
http://ipsnoticias.net/nota.asp?idnews=40721
Information on Carriles
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/index.htm
http://www.granma.cu/INGLES/posadacarriles.html
“His future is very uncertain.”
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Posada/Carriles/despierta/pasiones/Miami/elpepuint/20070421elpepiint_14/Tes
“I believe there is an understanding, not written, but an understanding between the government and Posada, that he will be treated well by the United States while he is in U.S. territory, in exchange for Posada not saying all that he could about the U.S. intelligence services. Keep in mind that Posada, by his own admission, is an individual who worked with the CIA since at least 1962.”
http://venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=2011
“This immigration Notice and Order listed conditions that Posada must abide by, including compliance with the court order; telephonic reporting every two weeks; continuous good faith efforts to obtain a travel document from any government in the world; and immediate in-person reporting to ICE upon the conclusion of the criminal proceedings against him. Additionally, the supervision order requires Posada to surrender to ICE for removal in the event that he obtains travel documents necessary to relocate outside the U.S.”
http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/newsreleases/articles/070419posada.htm
The Good Terrorist
A Case of Double Standards
http://www.economist.com/world/la/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9079907
Maybe President Clinton will extradite “the good terrorist” (as the Economist calls him) because he had worked on the US’s behalf at some time.