From Tucson to El Paso on the same track: terrorism

By José Pertierra

From Cubadebate

Monday, on the eve of the trial against Luis Posada Carriles in El Paso, Texas, a terrorist in Tucson, Ariz., shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in the head. She lies between life and death. The would-be assassin, Jared Loughlin, fired an automatic weapon. As I write these lines, the toll has risen to six dead – including a girl who was born on Sept. 11, 2001 – and 13 wounded.

Tucson is 319 miles from El Paso. It is a four-and-a-half-hour trip by car, a line that strains dramatically at common points: hatred and terrorism. Except that now Tucson is in mourning, while in El Paso a criminal has full confidence in the laws of the United States. They don’t apply to him. Federal prosecutors protect him, trying him only as a liar, ignoring the memory of the dozens of people he has murdered.

Terrorism is a social cancer that threatens us all equally. We should be pained as much by the 2,752 people killed in the Twin Towers as by the 3,478 Cubans killed by terrorist actions against the island, organized from Miami for the past five decades. However, for the United States, there are first- and second-class victims, same as there are good terrorists and bad.

But anywhere, wherever it may be, those who sow hatred, reap terrorism. When the father of Congresswoman Giffords was asked if his 40-year-old daughter had enemies, Spencer Giffords said, “Yes, the whole Tea Party.” Last summer, Gabrielle Giffords’ opponent, a former Marine named Jesse Kelly who ran on the Tea Party ticket, called a fund-raiser for his campaign with the following message: “Let’s hit the target for victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.”

The Congresswoman was one of 20 Democrats elected in 2008 who voted for health reform and were then marked for defeat by Sarah Palin in a campaign called “takebackthe20” that included a map of each district in the legislature that had been selected as a target for attack by the Tea Party. Each was pictured as a target seen through a rifle sight.

Least important is whether Jared Loughlin – the murder suspect in Arizona – worked for the Tea Party or if Sarah Palin recruited him to try to kill Congresswoman Giffords. What’s essential is that both the Tea Party and Sarah Palin, with malice aforethought, cultivated a ferocious hatred against members of Congress who supported the health reform promoted by President Obama, a hatred that flourished in Loughlin’s perverse mind until it turned him into an assassin.

For over 50 years, that same hatred has been used against Cuba by the United States, which has encouraged, trained, and protected the terrorists who hold the island as a permanent target for aggression. The prodigal son of this hostility was and is Luis Posada Carriles. Declassified documents show that the CIA taught him to use explosives. It trained him to torture and kill. According to his own lawyer, everything that Posada Carriles has done in Latin America has been “on Washington’s behalf.”

Posada is the mastermind of one of the most heinous crimes in the history of international terrorism. On Oct. 6, 1976, two bombs containing C4 explosive – at the time only available to the CIA – exploded in a plane flying along the coast of Barbados, bringing the aircraft down. There were no survivors among its 73 passengers.

Just as Jared O’Loughlin did Saturday in Tucson, Posada killed a little girl of 9 years. Sabrina Paul was traveling with her family aboard the Cuban plane. The blast destroyed Sabrina’s chest and head. The evidence from the perpetrators and masterminds was overwhelming and because of it, Venezuela arrested Posada Carriles immediately and brought charges of murder against him.

However, Posada escaped in 1985 with the help of his American friends. He reappeared a few days later, furnished with work, food and shelter. The CIA found him employment in El Salvador as one of the main leaders of the Iran-Contra operation. His role was to facilitate the illegal transfer of weapons to the Contras in Nicaragua. Later, in 1997, he directed the bombing campaign against tourist facilities in Havana that took the life of the young Fabio di Celmo. He hired mercenaries who remain imprisoned on the island and have identified Posada Carriles as the man who paid for the “service.”

Washington continued to shelter Posada during his bloody sojourn through Central America. He was convicted in Panama in 2000 for trying to blow up an auditorium full of students at the university during a speech by President Fidel Castro, but his friends bribed the former president of Panama, Mireya Moscoso, and in 2004 she pardoned him – illegally according to the Supreme Court of Panama.

Posada arrived in Miami in March 2005. Venezuela immediately requested his extradition, asking Washington to return him to Caracas where he can account for the 73 people he murdered in the Cuban airliner. Instead of agreeing to the extradition request, the Bush administration filed charges against him for lying. Those are the charges that Obama’s prosecutors are now airing in El Paso.

The United States insists only in accusing Posada Carriles of lying to immigration officials. They have not filed charges of murder or terrorism against him and have not begun the process of extradition to Caracas. They protect him. Why is that?

Successive U.S. presidents, along with certain legislators, have cultivated for more than fifty years a visceral hatred of the Cuban Revolution. A hatred that has turned into spiritual and material support for terrorism. So much so that Senator Marco Rubio and members of Congress David Rivera and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen are among the donors to the legal fund that pays for Luis Posada Carriles’ defense in El Paso.

But terrorism is not fought a la carte – those that are inconvenient, yes; those that are convenient, no. Last Friday, referring to inmates who are in Guantánamo, Obama said that “the prosecution of terrorists in federal court is a powerful tool in our efforts to protect the nation and must be among the options available to us.” So why doesn’t he use that tool to try Luis Posada Carriles for terrorism?

Posada knows very well that if he is convicted in El Paso only for lying, he will not go to prison. The judge told him that earlier. He will be given credit for the year and a half he was behind bars when his immigration status was being debated, and will be let free. He is calm, without any remorse for their crimes. In fact, he told The New York Times in 1998 that “that Italian [Fabio di Celmo] was sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time. . . I sleep like a baby.”

What if Loughlin says something similar in Tucson? Would impunity apply?

José Pertierra is an attorney. His office is in Washington. He represents the Venezuelan government in its bid for the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles.