Vol. 71/No. 18      May 7, 2007

In response, the governments of Cuba and Venezuela issued strong protests. A march of 50,000 people in Bayamo, southeastern Cuba, condemned his release the evening of the judge’s ruling.

A mercenary in the CIA-organized Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, Posada, who was born in Cuba and later became a naturalized Venezuelan citizen, has a decades-long history of violent attacks on Cuba. He was involved in a midair bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people in 1976. He admitted organizing a bombing campaign against Cuban hotels in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist and wounded dozens. In November 2000 he led a failed assassination attempt in Panama against Cuban president Fidel Castro. He and three others were arrested and convicted for this attempted murder, but were pardoned by the Panamanian government in 2004.

In May 2005 Posada entered the United States and asked for asylum. He was arrested and held in an immigration jail in El Paso. A grand jury indicted him on charges of lying to immigration authorities on how he entered the country.

An immigration judge ordered Posada deported to any country that would take him except Cuba and Venezuela—both of which have demanded his extradition—saying he might be tortured there. No other country has agreed to take Posada to date.

The Cuban government reacted angrily to Posada’s release. “Cuba condemns the shameful decision to release terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and points to the United States government as the only one responsible for this cruel and despicable action, which seeks to buy the terrorist’s silence regarding his crimes in the service of the CIA,” its April 19 statement said. Posada’s release is not only an insult to the Cuban people, it said, but “to the people of the United States themselves.”

In another statement published in Cuba’s daily Granma, Fidel Castro also put the blame squarely on Washington. “Those who bought his freedom while the terrorist was held in prison in Venezuela, so that he could supply and practically conduct a dirty war against the people of Nicaragua, resulting in the loss of thousands of lives and the devastation of a country for decades to come,” Castro said, “could not possibly act any different.”

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez said his government will protest Posada’s release at the United Nations.

In Miami, Miguel Saavedra, president of Vigilia Mambisa, an ultrarightist group that has physically attacked defenders of the Cuban Revolution, welcomed Posada’s release.

Elena Freyre, executive director of the Cuban-American Defense League, called his release “absolutely appalling.”

“We here feel very strongly that he [Posada] should be brought to justice,” said Andrés Gómez, national coordinator of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, a Miami-based group that supports the Cuban Revolution. “We have held many demonstrations in past years and press conferences, demanding that the government prosecute him as a terrorist, and we will not give up until it is done.”
 
 
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