Posada Carriles: Newsy Update

[magbana]

Amazingly, this is a pretty straight-up article for the Miami Herald. The Bush administration will leave the “Posada Problem” to the next occupants of the White House, that is, if the 80 year-old doesn’t die first. Of course, Posada’s death would ensure that all the nasty CIA plots, murders, terrorist bombings, and the names of Cuban exiles and US Government officials that helped along the way would go to the grave with him.

Regardless of who lands in the White House in 2009, if Posada goes to trial for any of his terrorist crimes, it will only raise the issue of the Cuban Five who came to the US to prevent further terrorist attacks on Cuba such as those committed by Posada.

The Cuban Five are five Cuban men who are in U.S. prison, serving four life sentences and 75 years collectively, after being wrongly convicted in U.S. federal court in Miami, on June 8, 2001. Their case is on appeal and they are awaiting the decision from the Federal District Court in Atlanta.

For more info: www.freethefive.org



http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking_news/story/433085.html
MIAMI HERALD

Posted on Mon, Feb. 25, 2008

Serious legal questions loom for Posada

BY JAY WEAVER

Luis Posada Carriles, the anti-Castro Cuban militant, celebrated his 80th
birthday this month at an undisclosed location in Miami, but many serious
legal and political questions about his alleged crimes as a younger man
still loom as large as ever.

In New Jersey, Posada is the ''target'' of a federal grand jury
investigation into the series of 1997 tourist-site bombings in Havana, his
attorney Arturo Hernandez confirmed to The Miami Herald. Posada has long
denied any involvement in the bombings.

In Washington, Posada's alleged role in the bombing of a 1976 Cuban airliner
that killed 73 people is being revisited by a Democratic lawmaker from
Massachusetts who plans to hold congressional hearings on the matter in the
spring.

And Posada's immigration status remains an issue with the Justice Department,
which is pressing its appeal of a Texas judge's decision to dismiss an
indictment that charged the Cuban with lying about his 2005 entry into the
United States.

Indeed, everyone seems to have something to say about the former CIA-trained
explosives expert who remains a freedom fighter in the minds of some and an
international terrorist in the eyes of others.

Posada isn't talking to the media, but his attorney says the octogenarian is
an innocent man in poor health who wants to spend the rest of his life in
Miami among family, friends and exiles.

Perhaps Posada's most serious legal challenge is in Newark, N.J., where a
federal grand jury, now in its third year, is weighing whether to indict
Posada on conspiracy charges for the killing of an Italian tourist in a 1997
hotel bombing in Havana.

Justice officials won't comment, but they have a fax and other documents
showing that Posada allegedly coordinated $3,200 in wire transfers from
Cuban exiles in New Jersey to co-conspirators in Central America for the
bombing campaign. Also, FBI agents have questioned jailed bombing recruits
in Cuba and key witnesses in the United States and Central America familiar
with Posada's alleged mission to disrupt the Cuban tourism industry.

One potential witness -- a notable writer who coauthored a 1998 New York
Times series on Posada's history of violent activities against former Cuban
leader Fidel Castro -- said she received grand jury subpoenas but has not
testified before the New Jersey panel.

The series was based on her six-hour interview, most of it tape-recorded,
with Posada in which he admitted to masterminding the Havana tourist-site
bombings.

''They do not need me,'' author Ann Louise Bardach said.

Miami lawyer Thomas Julin, who represents Bardach for The New York Times,
declined to comment and specifically refused to discuss whether Bardach had
turned over her subpoenaed decade-old tapes of the Posada interview.

Julin told The Miami Herald that the tape matter was ''still unresolved,''
without elaborating.

It's unclear, however, whether the next person to occupy the White House in
2009 will continue to pursue the politically sensitive case against Posada.

At least one member of Congress -- Rep. William Delahunt, a Massachusetts
Democrat -- is more than willing to enter the political fray.

But Delahunt's interest has nothing to do with the 1997 bombings. He's
interested in Posada's alleged role in the bombing of a 1976 Cuban airliner
that killed 73 people, including members of the Cuban national fencing team.

Posada was acquitted by a Venezuelan military tribunal. While awaiting a
retrial by a civil court in Venezuela, Posada escaped from prison in 1985.

Delahunt, who declared Posada ''a notorious terrorist'' at a congressional
hearing in November 2007, accuses the Bush administration of a double
standard because it has refused to designate Posada as a terrorist.

Delahunt, annoyed by the government's lack of response to Venezuela's
extradition request to try Posada, has drafted a resolution calling on the
administration to urge the United Nations to create an ad hoc tribunal to
prosecute him. He also plans to hold more public hearings on Capitol Hill.

''You cannot talk about a war on terror while Posada is still running around
Florida,'' said Caleb Rossiter, one of Delahunt's top aides.

But Posada has supporters in Washington, mainly Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a
Republican from California.

In defending Posada, Rohrabacher points out that a 1977 taped interview by a
New York-based journalist reveals that he never admitted to planting the
airliner bomb.

In a Jan. 30 letter to a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, Rohrabacher
said testimony by journalist Blake Fleetwood in connection with his 1977
taped interview of Posada and fellow anti-Castro militant Orlando Bosch in a
Venezuelan prison was inconsistent with the reporter's own tapes.

At the November congressional hearing, Fleetwood testified that Posada
talked about his history as a CIA operative, setting up a detective agency
in Venezuela and conspiring with Bosch on numerous violent campaigns against
the Castro government -- including the airline bombing.

Rohrabacher, in his letter, accused the journalist of implying that Posada
admitted to a ''personal involvement in the bombing.'' After the congressman
reviewed a transcript of the taped prison interview, he said it revealed
that Posada ``actually denied any involvement when asked several times about
the downing of the airliner.''

Fleetwood, a former New York Times reporter who had written a major piece on
the Posada-Bosch interview for another publication three decades ago, said
Rohrabacher has distorted his statements.

In an e-mail to The Miami Herald, Fleetwood wrote: ``There is no doubt in my
mind, from what Posada told me during my interview, that Posada was deeply
involved in the conspiracy that culminated in the planting of the bomb and
the deaths of 73 innocent civilians.''

Hernandez, Posada's attorney, denied that his client was involved in any
way. He described Posada as a patriot who fought on the right side during
the Cold War, volunteered in the Bay of Pigs invasion, served in the U.S.
Army and devoted his life to toppling Castro.

He dismisses the allegations of Posada being a terrorist to political
hyperbole.

''There are political agendas that have been propagating a view of Posada
that's not supported by the facts,'' he said. ``Since they don't have anyone
else, they have to use Posada as a poster boy that there's hypocrisy at the
highest levels of government.

``He's not a terrorist. He's never been a terrorist.''

2008 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miamiherald.com
Back to

[Judi Lynn]

1. Good grief! Dana Rohr Rohrabacher, that filthy fat pondscum.

He's a dead center right-wing terrorism enthusiast himself. The reason they can't show Luis Posada Carriles planted it is because he and Orlando Bosch HIRED men to plant it, who called them the minute the plane exploded, killing everyone on board.

As for Posada Carriles having beeen implicated in terrorism in his "earlier" years, how does SEVERAL YEARS AGO sound? He was, as you probably remember, in prison, on a charge, tampered down from the original, after he and some other exile terrorists from Miami were discovered in a plot to destroy an auditorium while Fidel Castro was speaking to a large audience. Had they not been discovered, possibly THOUSANDS of people would have been killed, instead.

As it was, someone got the fuse and removed it from the evidence room in Panama, so it knocked down the value of th crime, and they were STILL in prison when Panama's former governor, Mireya Moscoso PARDONED THEM ALL on the next to last day in office, immediately before calling the Cuban exiles in Miami to tell them what she had done, and retiring to Miami, herself, where she also lives to this day.

Close friend/puppet of _{George W. Bush} she paved the way for getting this clown completely free of all responsibility for what would have been a horrendous criminal terrorist act. Filthy a-holes.



Mireya Moscoso is sitting between Condoleeza Rice and Laura Bush as they all attend a celebration of black participation in the arts in the U.S. This is an unusual situation when a government head actually goes with the first family to a strictly domestic event. Very cozy, isn't it?

[magbana]

2. Moscoso Got $4M - No Wonder Powell is in the Pic Above. Cause He Helped, Too!

POWELL AND REICH PERSONALLY INTERVENE

Moscoso obtained $4 million for pardoning Posada and his accomplices

Granma International
April 07, 2005
The pardon of international terrorists Luis Posada Carriles, Pedro Crispín Remon Hernández, Gaspar Jimenez Escobedo and Guillermo Novo Sampol was negotiated in Miami by Ruby Moscoso, sister of the then Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso, for the sum of $4 million, according to documents published on the internet.

It is also revealed that Posada Carriles used false documents provided by the US embassy in Panama to leave that country.

The documents, titled "All the corruption and bribes in Panama's pardon of the four anti-Castroites" and "The implication of the ex-Panamanian police chief, the Miami anti-Castroites and the US government in the release of the four anti-Castroites pardoned in Panama," signed by Raúl Gómez, were published on the website Rebelión a few days before Posada's "reappearance" in Florida. Their contents corroborate information that has been circulating in Panama and Miami ever since their controversial release on August 26.

The texts reveal that the money was delivered to the Moscoso sisters in the form of a commercial transaction payment through a bank in Liechtenstein, Europe's financial paradise. The operation was directed by Pedro Gómez, a Cuban-American linked to the Mellon United National Bank in Miami, who also took care of payments to the Panamanian defense lawyers, headed by narco-lawyer Rogelio Cruz, famous for the degree of his financial demands.

Gómez was part of the so-called Committee for the Freedom of the Imprisoned Brothers in Panama, which was collecting money to pay for legal expenses. The "treasurer" is a member of the movement led by Ramón Saúl Sánchez, whose exploits in the terrorist organization Omega 7 -- together with Pedro Remón -- are well known.

The document's author explains that during his visit to Panama in March of 2004, on the occasion of the trial of Posada and his cronies, Gómez boasted in a luxurious restaurant in that country's capital that he was certain that the four terrorists would be released. "In any case, the boys will be free before the year is over," he affirmed.

TAKEN OUT OF THEIR CELLS AT 4:30 A.M.

Beginning at 12 midnight on August 26, an impressive security operation was mounted around the Panamanian prison El Renacer, with units from the Institutional Protective Service (SPI) and elite police agents. The prison's director, Mr. Carlos Arjona, was present.

At 4:30 a.m. (local time) on August 26, Posada and his three accomplices were taken out of El Renacer, some 40 kilometers from the capital. They were driven, in hoods, to Tocumen International Airport, where two small planes were waiting -- after having arrived the morning of the previous day -- to take them to San Pedro Sula, in Honduras.

The special operation to remove the pardoned criminals was personally overseen by Carlos Barés, former chief of the National Police.

The airplanes were chartered and paid for by known Miami capos, including Leopoldo Fernández Pujals; Jorge Mas Santos, of the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF); the terrorist Santiago Álvarez, and members of the so-called Cuban Liberty Council (a split-off of the CANF), which does not exclude the monetary intervention of the US government and the advisement of its special services.

FALSE DOCUMENTATION PROVIDED BY THE US EMBASSY

A few days prior to the pardon, narco-lawyer Rogelio Cruz informed Barés that Posada possessed false documents provided by the U.S., and that "using them, he could leave Panama with no problem whatsoever, as long the terrorists had his support." The decision to free Posada and his accomplices was agreed "in early August" during a meeting of ministers "by unanimous vote," leaving the president the "option of setting a more convenient date."

Mireya Moscoso, whose mandate ended on August 31, signed decree No. 317, issued on August 25, to grant a presidential pardon.

The morning of August 25, 2004, a meeting convened by Moscoso was held at Garzas Palace, the seat of the presidency, where decisions were made on details of the operation for the clandestine exit. Upon her arrival, both Cruz and Barés were welcomed by Ruby Moscoso, first lady of the Republic and the sister of the president.

POWELL AND REICH INTERVENE

The text affirms that "according to sources with direct access to the presidency," the then US Secretary of State Colin Powell brought up the subject of Posada Carriles with Moscoso during a visit to Panama in December of 2003, and informed her that it was in the interest of the US government for the terrorists to "benefit from the legal process."

Powell "went to tell her in person that Bush was interested in the Cuban prisoners being judged in absentia." That information was reflected at the time by the Panamanian daily El Siglo.

Previously, during a meeting of the Panamanian National Security Council (CSN) at the end of 2003, US Ambassador Linda Watt intervened to ask for a solution to the Posada case that would not benefit Cuba.

On January 20, 2004, Otto Reich, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, met at the US embassy in Panama with the CSN coordinator, who assured him "that President Mireya Moscoso would pardon the terrorists before September."

Moscoso met with Reich on January 21. One of Posada's lawyers later affirmed that Foreign Minister Harmodio Arias had confided to him that Reich had asked for the release of the extremists.

On another occasion, Mayín Correa, a former mayor and a radio personality on KW Continente, confirmed that information by specifying that Mireya Moscoso promised at the time to put an end to the trial once the sentence was handed down.

During that same period, information was circulating in Miami to the effect that Otto Reich had "arranged everything."

Nevertheless, in August of 2004, Moscoso, denying the existence of a plan to pardon them, affirmed: "I haven't thought about it, but now I am going to think about it."

The document also indicates that the former Panamanian president made a "private trip to Miami" at the end of June of 2004, when she came under heavy pressure" from Bush administration officials and extremist Cuban-American groups in that city. In Panama, her decision to live in Miami -- where she had previously lived for 10 years -- is well known.

According to the document, in addition to the millions negotiated by her sister, Moscoso received a 2005 Lincoln Town Crown car, valued at $125,000.

Since September, Moscoso has been the object of various charges of embezzling $23.4 million in presidential discretional funds and $45 million donated by the Taiwanese government during her mandate (1999-2004).

The Panamanian press has published some details of the millions spent by the former president, including purchases of jewelry, fancy dresses, trips and gifts totaling $23 million.




http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/cuba/2989.html

[roody]

3. Moscoso IS moscosa.

[Judi Lynn]

4. ~ ~ ~ ~ Space reserved for LOUD, VULGAR SWEARWORDS ~ ~ ~ ~

This is a link to save. I had no idea about the deeper, less public aspects of this hellacious hijacking of the law for politics and profit.

Had heard Moscoso has been the subject of embezzlement charges. That is probably another reason she had to get out of there in a flash, as soon as the protection of the Presidency and its power ended.

As for the enormous profit she scored, simply astounding, but not at all unlike these criminals, right?

So glad you found this material and shared it. I really don't intend to forget this information, and I'm keeping the link. Damn! It really, REALLY makes you sick.

[Judi Lynn]

7. More on that right-wing stooge, Bush Buddy Moscoso:

Gómez asks high court to lift 10 legislators' immunity

by Eric Jackson, mainly from other media

Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez has petitioned the Supreme Court to lift the immunity from investigation and prosecution of nine members of the National Assembly and one member of the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN). The latter is no obscure deputy in a regional body that does little of substance, but former President Mireya Moscoso herself.

Gómez wants to investigate Moscoso on two complaints of pilfering public funds, one in relation to the diversion of some $72 million in aid from Taiwan to a private foundation that she and her friends and relatives set up and from which large "administrative salaries" were extracted, and one about the more than $1000 per day in public funds that Mireya used to buy herself clothing and jewelry over the course of her five-year presidency.

As a former president, Moscoso has the legal right to a seat in PARLACEN, which carries with it immunity from investigation and prosecution. When she first left office in September of 2004, auditors began to uncover a tangle of peculation and financial abuses by the ex-president, her sister Ruby Moscoso de Young (who served as Mireya's "first lady") and other members of her inner circle. As these complaints were being forwarded to prosecutors, Moscoso belatedly was sworn in as a PARLACEN member. Although she doesn't attend the regional body's meetings, she does have the same immunity that deputies who actually show up for the job enjoy.

More:
http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_11/issue_24/news_01.html

PATHETIC, ISN'T IT?

[algoreagain]

5. Carriles should be in jail

But don't hold your breath. Only muslim terrorists are prosecuted.

[Judi Lynn]

6. He should not only be in jail, he should be buried UNDER the jail.

There are 73 people, including children, and the Cuban national fencing team, and Guyanese medical students who were killed, as well as the Italian tourist in one of the hotels he hired Central American assassins to bomb, who owe their murders to him.

He's lucky he has the U.S. President, and the C-4 loving violent reactionary faction of the Miami "exiles" to protect him.

Welcome to D.U., algoreagain! :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: