Posada Carriles’ trial is postponed indefinitely
By José Pertierra
From the Mexican daily La Jornada
Everything seems to indicate that the U.S. government’s strategy is to delay, postpone and set back the trial of Luis Posada Carriles until he dies of old age in Miami.
The latest postponement occurred last Friday in El Paso. Judge Kathleen Cardone announced that the trial that was scheduled for March 1 would be postponed for an indefinite time.
Posada Carriles is an international fugitive with 73 counts of murder pending against him in Caracas. Venezuela formally asked for his extradition on June 15, 2005, but Washington chose to try him for lying instead of extraditing him for murder. In 2007, he was accused of making false statements in connection with his illegal entry into the United States.
The prosecution has evidence that Posada entered the country aboard a boat named Santrina with some fellow conspirators. However, Posada claimed that, at the age of 79, he had entered the country on foot through the border with Mexico. That’s a tale nobody believes.
Posada’s lies suited the Bush [family] because they allowed Bush to freeze the terrorist’s extradition while the charges of perjury were heard in federal court.
After Barack Obama assumed the presidency, the prosecution added other counts to the case, accusing Posada of obstructing an investigation on international terrorism when he denied his role in the 1997 terrorist campaign against Cuba. That was something Posada Carriles had boasted about during an interview with The New York Times, when he admitted being the intellectual author of the bombs that exploded in Havana, killing Italian tourist Fabio de Celmo.
Every time Posada feels pressured, he threatens to talk about his relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The documents his lawyer has submitted to the court are full of those threats and insinuations. They even say that everything Posada has done in Latin America has been in Washington’s behalf.
His novel legal strategy includes claiming that the CIA taught him to lie, use false names and carry fake passports. He wants to appear in court as a soldier of the U.S. intelligence agency to claim that everything he did was under Washington’s supervision.
The prosecution fiercely opposes that strategy, because what Washington wants least is for someone to uncover the skeletons that are hidden in Langley’s closets. One thing Posada is right about: the CIA’s mendacity is greater than its operatives’. What was the role of the CIA in the dirty war in Latin America? Who was the real culprit for the explosion of the Cubana Airlines plane in 1976 that killed 73 civilians: the CIA or Posada? What role did the agency play in the terrorist campaign against Cuba’s tourist installations in 1997?
To keep Posada from playing the valuable card of telling all he knows, the government has arranged for the court to keep under seal more than 90 percent of the documents that have been submitted to the court. Only the prosecutors, defense lawyers and the judge may review them. Neither the press nor the public has access to them. Some journalists have accused Judge Cardone of not keeping the case open and transparent.
But the request for secret litigation came from the prosecution. It is very rare for a judge to force the government’s hand to reveal sensitive information that may allegedly damage U.S. national security.
What is clear is that the true objectives of the prosecution are being achieved. So far, the litigation is a secret process and the case remains in a legal limbo, without a precise date for the trial. Judge Cardone’s decision calls for a “status conference” on May 20. At that hearing, she wants to know the status of the case, so as to determine if she can finally set a date for the trial.
Meanwhile, Venezuela’s bid for extradition is still pending and Posada Carriles continues to enjoy full impunity for the murder of the 73 defenseless persons on board a passenger airliner. When Posada’s lawyers meet with the prosecutors May 20 in El Paso to review the status of the case, will anybody tell the judge that this international terrorist has spent five years in the United States without answering for his crimes?
Or that Giustino di Celmo has spent 12 years waiting for the murderer of his son Fabio to be tried? And that the relatives of the victims of Cubana de Aviación Flight 455 have spent almost 34 years waiting for justice to be served in the murder of their loved ones? What are they waiting for? For the murderer to die of old age in Miami?
José Pertierra in an attorney with offices in Washington. He represents the government of Venezuela in its request for the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles.
