If Holder wants to play chess, that's okay with me: Posada Cariles indicted!

[EFerrari]

U.S. indicts Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles, links him to tourist bombings

BY ALFONSO CHARDY
[e-mail]

A federal grand jury handed up a new indictment against Luis Posada Carriles, for the first time linking the Cuban exile militant in a U.S. legal proceeding to a series of 1997 tourist-site bombings in Cuba that killed an Italian national.

The superseding indictment from the grand jury in El Paso does not charge Posada, 81, with planting the bombs or plotting the bombings but with lying in an immigration court about his role in the attacks at hotels, bars and restaurants in the Havana area. The perjury counts were added to the previous indictment that accused Posada of lying in his citizenship application about how he got into the United States. Another new charge is obstruction of a U.S. investigation into ``international terrorism.''

The indictment marks the first time since Posada arrived in the United States seeking asylum in March 2005 that the government has said he was involved in the Cuba bombings. A federal grand jury in New Jersey had been investigating Posada's alleged involvement in raising money for the bombing campaign among Cuban exiles in Union City, but no charges have been handed up there.

The new charges almost certainly will dismay Posada's supporters in the Cuban exile community who view the exile militant as a hero in the continuing struggle against the Cuban regime.

http://www.miamiherald.com/457/story/991499.html

Luis Posada Carriles

Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles (born February 15, 1928) (nicknamed Bambi by some Cuban exiles)<1> is a Cuban-born Venezuelan anti-Castro militant.<2> A former CIA operative, Posada has been convicted in absentia of involvement in various terrorist attacks and plots in the Western hemisphere, including involvement in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed seventy-three people<3><4> and has admitted to his involvement in other terrorist plots including a string of bombings in 1997 targeting fashionable Cuban hotels and nightspots.<5><6><7> In addition, he was jailed under accusations related to an assassination attempt on Fidel Castro in Panama in 2000, although he was later pardoned by Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso in the final days of her term.<8><9>

In 2005, Posada was held by U.S. authorities in Texas on the charge of illegal presence on national territory before the charges were dismissed on May 8, 2007. His release on bail on April 19, 2007 had elicited angry reactions from the Cuban and Venezuelan governments.<10> The U.S. Justice Department had urged the court to keep him in jail because he was "an admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks", a flight risk and a danger to the community.<7>

On September 28, 2005 a U.S. immigration judge ruled that Posada cannot be deported, claiming that he faces the threat of torture in Venezuela.<11>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Posada_Carriles

This is a big break from BushCo's protecting this real terrorist. It doesn't nail him directly on his murders but it's something. Go, Eric!

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

1. it is about time

this guy has been way too free for waaaay too long

[EFerrari]

2. He downed a planeful of people and has been responsible

for many other acts of terrorism.

I never thought anyone would ever get in his face. Good news, finally. :)

[FrenchieCat]

3. There's a lot of good news where that came from coming.....

You just wait and see!

[EFerrari]

5. You don't have to sell me our president, Frenchie Cat.

I will disagree with him but it will be like disagreeing with family, not like attacking an enemy.

[FrenchieCat]

7. So, I should just STFU, hey?

Ookay!

[EFerrari]

8. Not at all. I just meant, you don't need to convince me

that supporting our president is a good idea.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=5517464

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=5828394

[peacetalksforall]

4. I'm thrilled. Some justice and fair play - both missing during the right wing

control - for decades. He has been an on and off again terrorist on our soil and elsewhere.

The next big question - does Venezuela get to extradite Posada Carilles.

This guy might be continuing his (art) painting in one of our jails or in Venezuela.

Finally - justice. Thanks to whomever pushed forward on this.

[EFerrari]

6. I'm astonished that in the middle of everything else, he was indicted.

This terrorist that Bush protected because he was one of BushCo's hitmen.

:wow:

[Judi Lynn]

11. Here is a photo of the guy talking with some of his devoted supporters in Miami:

http://miamiherald.typepad.com.nyud.net:8090/photos/uncategorized/2008/05/04/posada_at_big_5.jpeg

Big Five Club in Miami supports Luis Posada Carriles legal defense fundraiser

Published: Sun May 04, 2008

Alfonso Chardy | Cuban Colada Blog

One reason several traditional Cuban exile groups organized a tribute dinner to Luis Posada Carriles, the Cuban exile militant, emerged during the Friday night event when one of his closest supporters rose to introduce the guest of honor.

Nelly Rojas, a longtime Posada friend, told the packed banquet hall at the Big Five Club in west Miami-Dade, that supporters will soon be asked to contribute money for the Cuban militant’s legal defense fund.

Rojas said the Luis Posada Carriles Support Group was being “reactivated’’ and that soon it will stage a series of events aimed at raising funds to pay for Posada’s legal expenses.

Rojas said money was needed to cover anticipated “considerable’’ expenses associated with Posada’s pending criminal case stemming from an indictment in El Paso, Texas. The indictment accused him of lying to immigration officials about how he sneaked into the United States in March 2005.

More:
http://havanajournal.com/politics/entry/big-five-club-in-miami-supports-luis-posada-carriles-legal-defense-fundrais/

[EFerrari]

9. Kick

[Judi Lynn]

10. This is so UNEXPECTED by now! Holy smokes. Everyone knew about it by July, 1998,

when the New York Times published his interview with Ann Louise Bardach, and Larry Rohter, A Bomber's Tale.
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/13/world/bomber-s-tale-decades-intrigue-life-shadows-trying-bring-down-castro.html?scp=11&sq=Anne%20Louise%20bardach&st=cse

Bill Clinton could have done the right thing, and most clearly _{George W. Bush.} During _Bush's reign of terror, Posada took part in planning another bombing, this one in Panama, to blow up a university auditorium where Fidel Castro was scheduled to give a speech to THOUSANDS of people. Luckily for everyone concerned, the Cuban secret police in securing the location discovered the plot and informed the Panamanian police.

The bombers were put in prison, someone took the fuse material from the evidence room, and the charges were reduced for the bombing. Then, on her LAST DAY IN OFFICE, Panama's Governor Mireya Moscoso pardoned all four men, and moved immediately to Miami. Where ELSE?

Here's an article written during their stay in the Panamanian slammer:

Panama: Exile says aim was Castro hit
BY GLENN GARVIN
[e-mail]

PANAMA -- One of the four Cuban exiles arrested in Panama last year in connection with an alleged plot to kill Fidel Castro told investigators in an ``informal conversation'' that he planned to assassinate the Cuban leader with a car bomb but changed his mind at the last minute, Panamanian authorities say.

In a series of interviews with The Herald this week, the officials also offered the most complete account yet of the events leading up to the arrest of four alleged conspirators last November -- including a disclosure that Castro himself personally delivered a key piece of information to Panamanian investigators.

According to the officials, 70-year-old Luis Posada Carriles, a veteran of countless previous anti-Castro conspiracies, told investigators that he called off the plan to kill Castro during a Latin American summit in Panama because too many innocent people would have been harmed as well.

Posada Carriles and three Miami men are in jail here on charges of illegal possession of explosives and conspiracy.

More:
http://fiu.edu/~fcf/pana11301.html

In the meantime, Miami Cuban "exile" radio hosts were working their audiences to raise money for the lawyers' expenses for these four buttheads.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
EFerrari, this is one of the FINEST stories ever posted here, and one of the last I ever expected to see.

What a triumph!

They'll be so surprised in Cuba, and in Venezuela, the country which wanted him back since he escaped from prison THERE while serving time on his Cubana airliner sentence.

This is wonderful. Hope it scares him spitless. He never saw this coming, after knowing _Bush, by God was looking after him.

[cali]

12. whoa. this is great news.

better late than never.

[eomer]

13. Let me take this opportunity...

to say that Posada is a murderer, that Fidel and Raul Castro are murderers, and that Che Guevara was a murderer.

I'm thrilled that Posada has been indicted. From your story it looks like they still aren't charging him with the actual murders; I hope they eventually do and that he will die in a U.S. prision.

On the other hand, I think that we on the left can look for leftist leaders who are not murderers, just like I expect that people on the right should do.

[Judi Lynn]

14. How many revolutions to overthrow violent, vicious dictators do you think are conducted

without killing some of the oppressors?

Do you imagine no one was harmed by the Americans during the Revolutionary War? Are you claiming that Cuba could NOT kill the death squad members, the torturers, etc., but OTHER countries and other people may?

Baloney.

"We on the left?" Really?

Why not just post a link to some history of a necessary revolution against a racist, filthy, entirely corrupt, violent government which did NOT involve killing some people. You'd be doing "us leftists" a real favor by educating "us."

[eomer]

15. What I imagine...

is that innocent people didn't have to be murdered. For example, el Che didn't have to murder a man who joined Che's troops when they were in the man's area but then wanted to drop out when the troops were ready to move on. This man was not a death squad member or a torturer.

A distinction must be made between justified actions in an armed conflict versus the unnecessary and unjustifiable killing of innocents. Otherwise Posada's actions would be justifiable too since they occurred in the context of an armed struggle for freedom.

[Judi Lynn]

16. Posada is not struggling for freedom. His country has moved on without him.

They made their choice by fighting for years to win their revolution.

By the way, do you have any links which offer credible information on pure blood lust on the part of the Cuban revolution?

I'm surprised you imagine there's a justification for blowing up airliners, hotels, and what would have been an auditorium full of young adults attemding the speech by Fidel Castro in Panama, had they not been caught before they could pull it off.

That's not done for the sake of "freedom." All the corrupt, dirty, racist a-holes the Cuban people threw out of their goverment moved to places like Miami, where they continued their corrupt, violent ways.

The people of Cuba are so lucky they're gone.

[eomer]

18. Perhaps not, but freedom has not yet come to Cuba.

Supporting the Revolution in its early days was the right thing to do.

But somewhere along the line the Revolution went bad. Freedom is not the word to describe what exists in Cuba today. We can strive for something much better than what exists there now.

I oppose totalitarianism, no matter which label (left or right) is cynically attached to it.

[Judi Lynn]

20. "We" need to stay out of their business, for a change.n/t

[eomer]

22. Does "we" include "you" or just "me"?

You seem to post about Cuba a lot more than I do.

Under the Geneva Conventions (and morally), war crimes are not just their business; they are the business of all citizens of the world.

[Judi Lynn]

23. Would you be kind enough to post any link to Cuba's war crimes?

They've been sinned against for a very long time, going back all the way to the 1800's.

Would you consider this a war crime, taken from a testimony by Cuban "exile" terrorist Eduardo Arocena, during his murder trial, a testimony regarding earlier acts of terrorism against the Cuban people?

Profile: Eduardo Arocena
Positions that Eduardo Arocena has held:
Task Force Chief, CIA
Related Entities:
Member OMEGA-7

Eduardo Arocena was a participant or observer in the following events:
September 10, 1984: Anti-Castro Cuban Testifies Ship with Germs Sent to Cuba in 1980 Eduardo Arocena, leader of the Cuban-exile militant group OMEGA-7, testifies during his trial in New York that in the latter part of 1980 a ship traveled from Florida to Cuba with “a mission to carry some germs to introduce them in Cuba to be used against the Soviets and against the Cuban economy, to begin what was called chemical war, which later on produced results that were not what we had expected, because we thought that it was going to be used against the Soviet forces, and it was used against our own people, and with that we did not agree.” The testimony is later used by some to support the allegation that Cuba’s 1981 Dengue fever epidemic, which infected 300,000 and killed 154, was the result of US biowarfare.

http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=eduardo_arocena

http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu.nyud.net:8090/2008/07/31/interna/felix_garcia.jpg

Dead diplomat, Felix Garcia

http://2.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_HyyDHyAwI6k/SPgWh5802XI/AAAAAAAADbI/hHV8vxmc4Z4/s400/Arocena+fbi+hq.jpg

McCain's terrorist: Eduardo Arocena.
Convicted murderer Eddie Arocena, being taken from FBI headquarters. Photo by Marice Cohn / Miami Herald.

16 October 2008
Bill Ayers? McCain Campaign Connected to REAL Terrorists

'McCain's campaign and advisers find themselves allied with and/or supporting militants who have committed acts that any reasonable observer would define as terrorism'
By A.L. Bardach / October 15, 2008

The campaign of John McCain has made much of Barack Obama's relationship with Weather Underground bomber-turned-university professor Bill Ayers, whom Republicans call an "unrepentant terrorist." Indeed, the Obama-Ayers connection has become a centerpiece of the McCain-Palin campaign. V.P. nominee Sarah Palin mentions Ayers in practically every public appearance, and John McCain has all but promised to bring up Ayers in tonight's debate.

McCain's campaign, however, has its own questionable connections to terrorists. Since John F. Kennedy's failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Florida's Cuban-Americans have been regarded as a reliable Republican voting block. And from 1960 until Sept. 11, 2001, some exile hard-liners in Miami endorsed a double standard on terrorism in which anti-Castro militants and bombers were judged to be "freedom fighters," regardless of the civilian deaths and collateral damage they caused in Cuba and the United States, as well as elsewhere. While the Cuban-American community has undergone dramatic changes—with the majority now supporting dialogue with Cuba and an end to restrictions on travel and remittances—hard-liners still control the major levers of power in Miami. Such is their clout in turning out reliable voters that McCain dropped his stance of 2000, when he said he would support normalizing relations with Cuba even under Fidel Castro. ("I'd be willing to do the same thing we did with—with Vietnam.") McCain has allied his campaign with the Cuban Liberty Council, an uncompromising anti-Castro group that has all but dictated policy to George W. Bush. Two of the council's most prominent members, media personality Ninoska Perez-Castellon and her husband, Roberto Martin Perez, have been among McCain's most dedicated campaigners and champions in Miami.

As a result, McCain's campaign and advisers find themselves allied with and/or supporting militants who have committed acts that any reasonable observer would define as terrorism. On July 20, while campaigning for McCain in Miami and just prior to speaking at a McCain event, Sen. Joe Lieberman met with the wife of convicted serial bomber Eduardo Arocena and promised to pursue a presidential pardon on his behalf. Arocena is the founder of the notorious Cuban exile militant group Omega 7, renowned for a string of bombings from 1975 to 1983. Arocena was convicted of the 1980 murder of a Cuban diplomat in Manhattan. In 1983, Arocena was arrested and charged with 42 counts pertaining to conspiracy, explosives, firearms, and destruction of foreign government property within the United States. He is currently serving a life sentence in federal prison in Indiana. His targets included:

* Madison Square Garden (he blew up an adjacent store);

* JFK airport (Arocena's group planted a suitcase bomb intended for a TWA flight to Los Angeles—in protest of the airline's flights to Cuba. The plane would have exploded if not for the fact that the bomb went off on the tarmac prior to being loaded);

* Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center (causing damage to three levels of the theater and halting the performance of a music group from Cuba);

*the ticket office of the Soviet airline Aeroflot;

*and a church.

He also attempted to assassinate the Cuban ambassador to the United Nations.

Arocena was also convicted of the 1979 murder of New Jersey resident Eulalio José Negrín. The 37-year-old Negrín, who advocated diplomacy with Cuba, was machine-gunned down as he stepped into his car, dying in the arms of his 13-year-old son.

Nevertheless, Lieberman, who at the time was McCain's first choice for vice president and is said to top McCain's list for secretary of state, was caught on video promising Miriam Arocena he would petition Washington to grant a pardon to her husband. "It's my responsibility; it's my responsibility. I will carry back. I will carry it back," Lieberman told Arocena just before addressing a group at a McCain event. "I think of you like you were my family. ... I'll bring it back. I'll do my best."

Queried on the matter, a Lieberman spokesman demurred, telling the AP, "Sen. Lieberman does not intervene in criminal proceedings including requests for pardons. The correspondence was merely forwarded without any comment, endorsement or support whatsoever."More:
http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/bill-ayers-mccain-campaign-connected-to.html

[eomer]

26. Here is the case of someone my wife and I are acquainted with whose father was executed:

Title
Teniente Coronel

First name
Francisco

Last name
Hernández Leiva

Death attribution detail
Ché Guevara was in command of La Cabaña.

Case description
He had received a safe conduct from Commanders Camilo Cienfuegos Ché Guevara clearing him of all charges. Summoned to testify as a witness against a Batista officer in Santa Clara, he testified that he knew nothing about the charges and was immediately passed from witness to accused. At his trial the prosecutor asked the revolutionary tribunal instead sentenced him to 30 years. That same evening he was executed by firing squad without a word leaking out to his relatives. His trial was adversely reviewed by the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists.

http://www.cubaarchive.org/rms/cuba/cgi-bin/cuba/cuba?f=0&u=749|-6180ZxYz-91|63367013701

Executions of prisioners, which are a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, number at least in the hundreds. Here's a partial list of executions:

http://cubaarchive.org/home/images/stories/che_guevara_victims_11.20.08.doc

The case of Francisco Hernandez Leyva is listed as number 52 on the second page.

And, yes, I agree that the acts committed by Arocena were a war crime as were the acts committed by Posada. I also believe that Batista executed prisoners, and those are war crimes too.

War crimes committed by one side are no justification for war crimes committed by the other.

[peacetalksforall]

25. You say somewhere along the line the Revolution went bad. Would you consider

that it went bad when you consider the timing -

the first to leave were Batista supporters.

the U.S. refused to acknowledge/accept the revolutionaries.

the USSR saw an opportunity.

the Revolution needed financial help.

everyone leaving after that said they were fleeing communism.

fleeing communism meant generous financial support in the U.S.

ever since then being for the people meant being a communist.

the U.S. rulers made a big deal of instilling fear in the minds of Americans.

and they repeated the entire scenario with terrorism instead of communism.

and they tried to use biological weapons to feed fear and profits from it (Rumsfeld) and who know who else in the administrations.

These people, Posada Carilles and many more, were authorized U.S. government terrorists just as we suspect new terrorists have been used in the Middle East and especially Iraq by the U.S. and Britain.

The U.S. is still getting away with it because we're still falling for it. (We have the Patriot Act to contend with which serves many clandestine purposes against us in the name of fear.)

We must keep in mind that this man is not in trouble for his terrorism and all the other still living ant-Castro terrorists are still living free thanks to the overwhelming generosity of the U.S. Government.

The communism angle died with the Berln Wall, but it didn't die with Cuban-Americans and their U.S. Government Senators and Representatives on both sides and the CIA and Immigration Agencies. Many have become rich from the domination and fear angle. Our money has made many people rich - people who have been 'in' on the war on us. We have suffered from propaganda and political and government positions. We have just gone through 50 years of lies.

The American people are fools for the lies.

[eomer]

27. Yes, I agree with almost all of that.

I know people who fled communism and didn't receive "generous financial support" and there may be a couple of other nits I could pick but they are minor details -- I agree with the gist of what you are saying.

But that doesn't justify summary execution of prisoners, imprisoning people for non-violent political activity, or a dictatorship lasting 50 years.

We should be opposed to the type of crimes committed by the Castro regime, whether the perpetrators claim to be on the left or not.

[mod mom]

17. LPC's ties to JFK's assassination:

Luis Posada Carriles' U.S. Asylum Application
Re-Opens JFK Unsolved Assassination Case


by Wim Dankbaar, [e-mail], April 16, 2005
I am sure it will come as a surprise if I say that Bush has his fingerprints all over this case, but that is purely because of ignorance of the public. And the public is being kept ignorant because the mainstream press does not report on it. But there is ample documentary and testimonial evidence to tie Bush senior to the Bay of Pigs, the anti-Castro cause and the Kennedy assassination. It's beyond the scope of this interview to list that evidence here, but you have to understand that the Kennedy assassination stems from the same forces that were trying to oust Fidel Castro, which were basically Organized Crime, Cuban exiles, CIA and Big Oil in Texas. Bush connects to all four. They all wanted Cuba back and saw the Kennedy's standing in their way.

Their collaboration is now a matter of public record, from the Bay of Pigs, but also in the CIA/Mafia plots to kill Castro. Organized crime was under an unprecedented attack from Robert Kennedy, JFK wanted to abolish the oil depletion allowance and splinter the autonomy of the CIA, and the hawks in the Pentagon found him soft on communism and war. On top of that they blamed him for the failure of the Bay of Pigs, to make it worse he fired the top three men of the CIA. They openly called him a traitor. He was threatening their existence. So he had to go. It is as simple as that. They got rid of him in a coup d' état, displaying an arrogance of power by shooting him from opposite directions in broad daylight, and then lying to the American public in a cover-up that should insult the intelligence of every American who has only remotely looked at the evidence. Even despite the fact that most of that evidence was kept away. Imagine you film the murder of a President today. You could sell it for millions of dollars and it would go over every TV screen in the world. But not in Kennedy's case.

-snip

An apple does not fall far from its tree. In the early sixties George H. W. Bush is personally involved in the formation of Operation 40, a super secret CIA-team of assassins to eliminate unsympathetic political leaders. Initial target: Fidel Castro. But, as history will show, Operation 40 won't be confined to foreign leaders only.

Operation 40 is mainly assembled from Cuban exiles. A few names are: Felix Rodriguez, Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Guillermo Novo Sampol, Ignacio Novo Sampol, but also later Watergate burglars Frank Sturgis, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez and E. Howard Hunt.


-snip

http://www.john-f-kennedy.net/luisposadacarriles.htm

[Judi Lynn]

19. Thank you, mod mom. This is the kind of information people need to see.

Here's a photo of some of the members of the assassination squad, Operation Forty, in the CIA, at a nightclub in Mexico City:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/JFKseal4.jpg

"This photograph was taken in a nightclub in Mexico City on 22nd January, 1963. It is
believed that the men in the photograph are all members of Operation 40. Closest to the
camera on the left is Felix Rodriguez. Next to him is Porter Goss and Barry Seal.
Tosh Plumlee is attempting to hide his face with his coat. Others in the picture
are Alberto 'Loco' Blanco (3rd right) and Jorgo Robreno (4th right)."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKseal.htm

[mod mom]

21. Thanks for the photo. For me, much of the information I gained is thanks to

DUer Octafish. I always take the time to read through his posts because so much sourced information is made available. :hi:

I'm sure it's just a coinky-dink that Bush's Director of Central Intelligence is in that photo. You have to have blinders on not to make the connections.

[Judi Lynn]

24. Those threads are absolutely not to be missed. So much good information in one place.

He makes deep inroads in common ignorance on subjects our corporate media refuse to cover truthfully.

Wouldn't miss them, either.

You're right, we've got a very strange picture there!