Federal judge in Texas denies call for mistrial, lets Posada perjury case continue
By Will Weissert
From the Associated Press
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the perjury trial of an elderly ex-CIA agent can continue although defense claims that prosecutors let a covert Cuban intelligence agent testify while delaying divulging his true identity were valid.
The politically charged case against Luis Posada Carriles, 83, ground to a halt Feb. 10, when the defense moved for a mistrial — its fifth such request in five weeks. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone then delayed the proceedings for 11 days, saying she needed time to fully consider the motion.
She found U.S. attorneys were indeed deliberately slow in turning over documents providing information about one of their star witnesses, saying “it is difficult for this court to believe the government simply overlooked this material,” but she also ruled that wasn’t enough to throw the case out.
The Cuba-born Posada spent decades crisscrossing Latin America as a Washington-backed Cold Warrior and is considered the nemesis of former Cuban President Fidel Castro. He faces 11 charges of perjury, obstruction of justice in a terrorism investigation, and immigration fraud.
Prosecutors claim Posada lied while seeking American citizenship during immigration hearings in El Paso, making false statements under oath about how he sneaked into the U.S. in March 2005 and about having a Guatemalan passport under a false name. They also charge he failed to acknowledge planning a series of 1997 hotel bombings in Cuba that killed an Italian tourist.
In a 1998 interview with the New York Times, Posada admitted responsibility for the attacks, saying they were meant to cripple tourism in Cuba — but he has since recanted that. He has been living in Miami since being released from an immigration lockup in 2007.
The defense took issue with the testimony of Lt. Col. Roberto Hernandez Caballero, an official at Cuba’s powerful Interior Ministry, claiming prosecutors knew he was an undercover agent prepared to lie for the Castro government but delayed providing documents showing that so he could take the stand without objection.
Hernandez Caballero testified two weeks ago that he was merely a veteran criminal investigator assigned to the 1997 bombings of some of Cuba’s most-luxurious hotels. However, Posada’s attorneys contended Hernandez Caballero testified in a separate federal hijacking trial in Florida in 1997 that he worked for Cuban counter-intelligence. They said prosecutors were slow to provide a transcript of that earlier testimony.
They also say prosecutors delayed turning over two previously classified FBI documents that could help Posada’s case.
The prosecution had claimed it only received the transcript of Hernandez Caballero’s 1997 testimony two weeks ago and turned it over to the defense immediately and that the FBI information wasn’t reliable.
The judge ruled the defense was correct and warned prosecutors Tuesday, “No further violations will be tolerated.”
She didn’t say why she was allowing the trial to go forward when the defense claims were valid, but she said previously she wasn’t interested in declaring a mistrial.
After ruling Tuesday, Cardone summoned the jury without offering them an explanation for the delay. As the seven women and five men filed in, the judge simply smiled and said “everyone looks well-rested.”
Hernandez Caballero returned to the witness stand and began painstakingly recalling the bombings from 1997 that killed Italian citizen Fabio di Celmo and wounded about a dozen other people.
The defense also had asked Cardone to consider throwing out three charges against Posada related to his lying about planning the Cuban hotel bombings. Those charges accuse him of obstructing a U.S. counter-terrorism investigation, and without them Posada faced a much lighter sentence.
Cardone rejected that motion Tuesday as well.
Posada worked for the CIA in the 1960s and 70s. He later moved to Venezuela and became head of that country’s intelligence service. He was acquitted by a Venezuelan military tribunal in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger airliner, but escaped from prison before a civilian retrial was completed.
In the 1980s, he helped support U.S.-backed Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Posada also was arrested in Panama amid a plot to kill Castro during a visit there in 2000. He received a presidential pardon in 2004 and turned up in U.S. territory the following March. He sought political asylum, then U.S. citizenship, prompting the El Paso hearings and, eventually, the charges he now faces in this case.
