National Committee to Free the Cuban Five

Posada trial marked by firsts

by Jay Weaver
Dec. 4, 2010
Reprinted from Miami Herald

The upcoming trial of Luis Posada Carriles will mark the first time that evidence gathered by Cuban authorities and the FBI will be presented in a U.S. courtroom to show the former CIA operative's alleged role in a string of Havana bombings.

Also for the first time, a jury will hear controversial but key evidence: Posada's taped interview with a New York Times freelance journalist, who quoted him admitting that he masterminded the deadly plot to attack the Havana hotels in 1997.

But serious questions have already surfaced about the recordings that evoke comparisons to Richard Nixon's infamous Watergate tapes: They have a four-minute, 20-second gap involving Posada's commentary about a recruit convicted in Cuba of carrying out the mission, according to court records.

The trial, set for Jan. 10 in El Paso, Texas, will be a spectacle of sorts: Posada, 82 and living in Miami-Dade, has for decades been a magnet for controversy during a career striving to topple Cuba's leader, Fidel Castro.

The Cuban exile militant stands accused of lying under oath about his leading part in the hotel bombing campaign that killed an Italian tourist -- though he is not charged with causing the death.

Trained by the CIA in sabotage and explosives during the Cold War, Posada has been embraced as a hero in South Florida's Cuban exile community but vilified as a terrorist in Cuba and Venezuela and held responsible for the hotel assaults as well as a 1976 Cuban airliner bombing that killed 73, including the Cuban youth fencing team.

FOCUS ON PERJURY

In the Texas trial, the challenge for federal prosecutors will be establishing Posada's involvement in the Havana attacks so they can prove their accusation: That he committed perjury in 2005 when he told U.S. immigration authorities that he wasn't involved in "soliciting others" to carry out the bombings -- despite allegedly admitting he did so in a 1998 New York Times article. In the story, freelance journalist Ann Louise Bardach quoted Posada as saying that he directed the bombing attacks to damage Cuba's tourism industry.

"We didn't want to hurt anybody," the story quoted Posada as saying. "We just wanted to make a big scandal so that the tourists don't come anymore."

But years later, at his 2005 deportation hearing, Posada denied having admitted to Bardach that he orchestrated the bombings. He said the interview was in English and therefore he misunderstood questions and misstated his answers because he had difficulty understanding the language.

Posada's Miami lawyer, Arturo V. Hernandez, has insisted that his client was not the mastermind and did not lie during his immigration hearing to deport him from the United States.

Hernandez has sought unsuccessfully to throw out Bardach's 1998 interview, which she recorded in Aruba.

In court papers, the federal judge presiding over the case said the unexplained gap on the recordings concerned her because it came as Posada and Bardach were talking about his connection to a Salvadoran man convicted of the bombing attacks.

Raúl Cruz León, imprisoned under a death sentence in Cuba since 1997, has confessed that he placed several of the bombs in hotels, restaurants and bars, killing the Italian tourist and wounding others.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone described the gap as an "extended period of time" and noted it was a "matter of central importance in the perjury counts" against Posada, according to her court order. The judge also found that in addition to the possible "erasure," there were 15 other unexplained gaps on four recorded tapes with Posada.

The judge said she decided to allow all five hours of the recordings in as evidence because she found Bardach to be a "credible witness" when she testified in a closed Nov. 15 hearing about her interview and her handling of the tapes with The New York Times. Bardach said she did not know why there were gaps in the recordings, but "allowed that accidental erasures could have happened," according to the judge.

Cardone said she found "no evidence of tampering by design."

At trial, Justice Department lawyers also plan to introduce more than 3,500 pages of official Cuban and Guatemalan records related to the bombing investigation that were turned over to Posada's lawyer in November.

Hernandez said in court papers that they deliberately supplied the police investigative reports in a "belated" manner. He has urged the judge to throw them out.

The government lawyers said the investigative reports detail the Havana bombings and their locations, planners and types of explosive devices used. They also focus on arrests, suspects, witnesses and a falsified Guatemalan passport allegedly used by Posada. The FBI obtained one report summarizing the case during a visit to Cuba in 2006.

The lawyers also disclosed some of their legal strategy, including plans to call two Cuban police officials as witnesses, as well as the Cuban medical examiner who conducted the autopsy on the 32-year-old Italian tourist, Fabio di Celmo. They also plan to call his best friend, an Italian who was standing next to him during the 1997 explosion at the Copacabana Hotel.

But the Cuban government has denied the Justice Department's request to allow two Salvadoran men charged or convicted in the bombings to travel from the island to Texas to testify at Posada's trial, according to federal prosecutors.

The two men are Otto René Rodríguez Llerena and Francisco Chávez Abarca. Llerena is serving a 30-year sentence for the hotel bombings. Abarca was extradited in October from Venezuela to Cuba, where he faces trial for his role in the bombing plot.

"Both men implicate the defendant as an organizer of the campaign to cripple tourism by the bombings, and their testimony would further expose the defendant's lies under oath to immigration officials," attorneys in the Justice Department's counterterrorism section wrote in court papers.

FBI EVIDENCE

Justice Department lawyers also plan to use FBI evidence reviewed by a federal grand jury in New Jersey.

FBI agents collected records showing about $19,000 in wire transfers from New Jersey to Posada in El Salvador and Guatemala between October 1996 and January 1998. The FBI believes the money was used to finance the bombing.

The New Jersey panel was considering whether to charge Posada and others with murder conspiracy in the Italian's death, but it never returned an indictment.

Instead, the Justice Department charged Posada with lying during his citizenship application about how he entered the United States in March 2005. He said he arrived by bus through Texas, but authorities said Cuban exiles transported him by boat from Mexico to South Florida.

In May 2007, Judge Cardone threw out the perjury charges, accusing the U.S. government of engaging in "fraud, deceit and trickery."

Cardone's dismissal was overturned by an appellate court, which led to a new indictment in April 2009 charging Posada with lying about his entry into the United States and his involvement in the Havana hotel bombings.