Legal Organizations Applaud Bail Denial For Terrorist Luis Posada Carriles
Apr. 13, 2007
NEW YORK —The National Lawyers Guild (NLG), the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL), the American Association of Jurists (AAJ), the Haldane Society, and the European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and Human Rights applaud the decision of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to deny bail to known terrorist Luis Posada Carriles in his pending immigration case. Posada stands accused in Cuba and Venezuela of masterminding the 1976 terrorist airline bombing that killed 73 people. A three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals characterized Posada as "a Cuban exile with a long history of violent acts against Cuba."
Posada was convicted in Panama after being caught in 2000 with over 30 pounds of explosives for the planned assassination of Cuban President Fidel Castro.
Posada was a CIA agent in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and may still be one. He was trained in explosives and sabotage at the notorious School of the Americas and was part of the CIA's "Operation 40" for the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Posada told the New York Times in July 1998 that he directed the 1997 bombings of Havana hotels. A 32-year-old Italian tourist, Fabio Di Celmo, was killed at the Copacabana hotel. While in Venezuela in the 1970s, Posada oversaw the killing of Venezuelan leftists as head of the Intelligence and Prevention Services Division (DISIP) of the national police.
After Posada was charged in Venezuela with the terrorist airliner bombing, the first in-air explosion of a commercial jet in history, the U.S. government hired him to coordinate the supply of munitions to the Nicaraguan contras from the CIA's Ilopango airbase in El Salvador.
NLG President Marjorie Cohn said, "George W. Bush has said that any government that harbors terrorists is complicit in murder and equally guilty of crimes of terrorism. Yet Posada has never been criminally prosecuted in the United States. His release on bail endangers people in Cuba, Venezuela and throughout the world."
The Guild, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, the American Association of Jurists, the Haldane Society, and National Law European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and Human Rights urge that Luis Posada Carriles be arrested and prosecuted in a competent international tribunal and/or extradicted to Venezuela for trial. |
