Doug Lorimer
Following a 1.2 million-strong march in Havana, Cuba, on May 17 demanding that the US government arrest CIA terrorist Luis Posada, US immigration authorities in Miami detained Posada on May 19 on the grounds that he had entered the US illegally two months ago. Posada, a naturalised Venezuelan, is wanted in Venezuela for his involvement in the bombing of a Cuban airliner in October 1976 that killed 73 Cubans and Venezuelans over the Bahamas.
Reporting Posada's arrest, the May 19 Washington Post observed that it "creates a dilemma for the Bush administration, which has taken a strong stand against terrorism in all forms but has also been reluctant to cross the politically potent Cuban exile community in south Florida, many of whom support Posada ...
"Posada was trained by the CIA, served several years in the US Army and took part in countless anti-Castro demonstrations throughout Latin America in the 1960s and rose to a high-ranking post in the Venezuelan security agency. He has been a suspect in several terrorist bombings, the most serious being the 1976 airliner attack."
Venezuela issued a request to the US government to extradite Posada in early May, however US officials denied having proof that Posada was in the US. In an interview with the Miami Herald a week before his arrest by US immigration officials, Posada said that he had illegally crossed the US-Mexican border with the help of a smuggler. From Texas, he took a bus to Miami, where he took a break from his terrorist activities, read Confucius and painted images of his native Cuba.
In an interview with Venezolana de Television on the evening of May 18, Venezuelan justice minister Jesse Chacon said that it is now up to the US to prove that it is truly committed to the fight against terrorism by extraditing Posada to stand trial in Venezuela.
Venezuelan foreign minister Ali Rodriguez told reporters that the US is obligated to honour the extradition request. "We are waiting for the US government, signatory to extradition agreements with Venezuela since 1992, to contribute to the capture of this criminal, thus honouring their ethical and moral obligations."
Cuban National Assembly speaker Ricardo Alarcon supported Venezuela's demand, telling Associated Press: "Bush has to prove he is sincere about terrorism. What the United States has to do now is clear: If there is a request for his extradition it has to attend to it according to its own laws."
On May 20, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a close ally of revolutionary Cuba, denounced Washington for only charging Posada with violating US immigration laws. "The CIA knew those lords of death were going to put the bomb on the Cuban plane", Chavez said in a televised speech in the eastern city of Cumana.
That same day, Associated Press reported that a declassified CIA document, also made public in Venezuela on May 18, said the agency had a report from an informant in June 1976 that a group headed by Posada's associate Orlando Bosch planned "to place a bomb on a Cubana Airline flight travelling between Panama and Havana".
From Green Left Weekly, May 25, 2005.
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