Cubans Demand U.S. Expel Terror Suspect

HAVANA (AP) - Cuban officials on Sunday used a vast May Day gathering to compare terror attacks on their country to those on the United States and to demand that the United States expel a man accused of blowing up a civilian jetliner.

Pedro Ross, head of Cuba's communist labor unions, accused U.S. President George W. Bush of a "complicit silence" in the case of Luis Posada Carriles, whose attorney says he is seeking asylum in the United States.

Speaking ahead of Cuban President Fidel Castro at Cuba's annual May Day rally, Ross demanded the immediate arrest of Posada and his extradition to Venezuela, where he awaits trial on charges of helping blow up a Cuban jetliner in 1976, killing 73 people.

Posada denies involvement in that incident. Cuban officials say he was involved in many other attacks. He at times has acknowledged planning bombings of Cuban hotels, one of which killed Italian tourist Fabio di Celmo.

Posada's lawyer, Eduardo Soto, says his client worked for the CIA for years and deserves asylum protection because he would face possible execution if returned to Cuba.

Soto says Posada, 77, entered the United States illegally through Mexico in March. Soto filed papers seeking political asylum in the United States earlier this month.

Venezuela's Supreme Court last week began processing an extradition request for a Posada, who is wanted there for treason and for the airline bombing.

Posada and three associates were imprisoned in Panama in an alleged plot in 2000 to kill Castro at a conference in Panama. They were pardoned last year by outgoing President Mireya Moscoso and Posada has not been seen publicly since then.
(snip/...)

"We must destroy everything within our cannons' range of fire. We must
impose a harsh blockade so that hunger and ... disease undermine the
peaceful population and decimate the Cuban army...

"To sum up, our policy must always be to support the weaker against the
stronger, until we have obtained the extermination of them both, in order
to annexe the Pearl of the Antilles", wrote US Secretary of War
Breckenridge on Christmas Eve, 1897.
(snip)

Who knows, it was a rather stupid thing for them to do but they were very affected by what happened. Because one thing is to put a bomb that explodes and to read in the papers what has happened. And another thing to watch with your own eyes when those people among whom you had been a few minutes before, are physically destroyed.

Apparently that shocked them and that they couldn't imagine that this would be the situation. Some people have interviewed them, have written books about that story and they always stressed that they didn't expect to watch, to see the result of their action and that may explain why they became so nervous.

So nervous that they acted in a very suspicious manner. Including going to the Embassy, to get protection. They were afraid of having been committed in a very serious crime.

Imagine that the plane had exploded a couple of hours later. It could have been near Jamaica, for example. Or in Jamaica, on the ground. It would have been more difficult to suspect that some individuals had left the plane in Barbados. But that having happened in front of everybody in that small island, with only two persons descending from the plane, two persons that immediately attempted to depart, going back And the fact has been very clearly documented that the only thing that they did in Barbados was to get in contact with Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch. Nothing else. They didn't go shopping; they didn't go to the beach; they didn't do anything in that tourist island. And allegedly they also went to the US Embassy. And there are two sources of information for that. I stress that point because years later the US Government would say that they had nothing to do with all that.
(snip/...)

Young and old Posada Carriles..

It's not an ordinary day in this usually busy air terminal, in that today, due to a labor dispute on the neighboring island of Trinidad, few aircraft are landing and taking off. Not much air traffic and not much heat. At this time, 12:21 p.m., one of the few air planes to have arrived here today has just landed. It's a huge 151-seater McDonnell Douglas four-engine DC-8 jet, Series 43, displaying Cubana Airlines registration number CUT-1201 on its blue, white and red tail. It has arrived from Port of Spain,Trinidad, where it made the initial stopover of flight number 455 which took off from Georgetown, Guyana, at 10:00 a.m. Its final destination, after a second stopover in Kingston Jamaica, is Havana.

Minutes later, after a precise, routine landing, its 51 passengers begin to descend the mobile stairway situated in front of the left wing and very close to the cabin. Some of them don raincoats; others use the brightly colored umbrellas provided by airport services. For the 41 passengers who are in transit (25 Cubans, 11 Guyanese and five Koreans), it's another brief stopover, less than one hour. For the other six (two Venezuelans, two Trinidadians, one Colombian and a Dutchman), whose tickets are for Seawell,it's the end of the Journey.

Among those descending to continue the journey, two groups of young and animated people attract attention, one speaking Spanish and the other English. One of these groups is made up of the 24 members of the Cuban fencing team which had swept the Central American fencing championship in Caracas one week earlier. They traveled to Trinidad on Viasa the day before to catch the Cuban flight. They are contented with their sports triumph, highly praised by the South American and Caribbean press, but are masking their feat with modesty. At this moment, they're surely thinking of the upcoming reception by their nation, to which they're returning heaped with medals. The other group consists of six Guyanese young people who are traveling to Cuba to study medicine. One of them, Raymond Persaud, 19, is flying for the first time. He previously turned down two scholarships in capitalist countries but, to the surprise of his father, a Baptist preacher in GeorgeTown, he immediately accepted the one offered him in Cuba, an island whose social and educational experience have interested him for a long time.

The group of 11 Guyanese is completed by economist Gordon Sobha, traveling to the German Democratic Republic; Margaret Bradshaw, 22, the wife of a Guyanese embassy official in Cuba, who had left in her country her first son, born just two months earlier; and nine-year-old Sabrina Harripaul, traveling to Kingston with her aunt and grandmother to catch a flight to Canada on another airline. Five Korean officials who are members of a cultural delegation; four Cubans from the Caribbean Shrimp Fleet, and another Cuban official in transit in Guyana complete the group of 45 passengers Continuing on the flight.
(snip/...)

Young and old Bosch
(who lives comfortably in Miami,
thanks to Bush *41's pardon.)

Terrorist Was Seen in Mexico on Route to Miami
By Yimel Díaz Malmierca and Alberto Monduy

Havana, April 20, (Trabajadores).- The departure from Panama of the dangerous international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, and his apparent disappearance in Central America on route to the United States was carefully studied and carried out in great secrecy to keep authorities from suspecting.

Addressing an audience that included survivors and relatives of victims of the numerous terrorist attacks launched against Cuba from US territory, President Fidel Castro provided further details about the path followed by Posada Carriles after he and three other Cuban-American terrorists were pardoned by outgoing Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso, during her last week in office in August 2004.

During his special address Wednesday evening, Fidel Castro cited an article in the newspaper “Por esto,” which circulates in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, and in which journalist Yolanda Gutierrez asserted that Posada Carriles had been seen and clearly identified walking the streets.

The article provided details of the activities of the crew of the “Santrina” shrimp boat whose skipper was Cuban-American terrorist Jose Pujols. According to the newspaper, Pujols said they had departed the Bahamas headed for Isla Mujeres, and that the crew belonged to an organization devoted to creating ecological awareness among the youth. Pujols had argued that while it might seem illogical to head for Isla Mujeres and then go on to Miami, that was their mission.

Fidel Castro noted that Pujols may have been referring to the boat’s stopover at Isla Mujeres to pick up Posada Carriles, adding that as had been informed on March 14, the boat had run aground at Isla Mujeres and Pujols had departed in a rush the following day, despite having been granted a two-day stay.

The Cuban president further noted that the newspaper reported that the crew list did not include the name of Posada Carriles or that of terrorist Santiago Alvarez, whose photo appeared in the newspaper.
(snip/...)