How Can U.S. Let This Terrorist Go?
By Albor Ruiz
New York Daily News
September 14, 2006
http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/story/452310p-380645c.html
Forget the war on terror. According to a federal judge, a man with a
lengthy rap sheet that includes terrorist acts in several countries,
Luis Posada Carriles, should be set free on the streets of America.
As if to add insult to injury, Judge Norbert Garney recommended
releasing him on Monday, Sept. 11, the fifth anniversary of the
attack on New York.
No matter that Posada Carriles - born in Cuba and a naturalized
Venezuelan - is accused of, among other crimes, planning the bombing
in 1976 of a Cuban passenger jetliner over Barbados that killed 73
civilians.
Posada Carriles has been in an immigration jail in Texas since he
entered the U.S. illegally last year. Also, last year, an
immigration judge decided that he should be deported - but not to
Venezuela or Cuba, where, the judge said, he could be tortured.
Yet Garney wants to free him.
"The court recommends that petitioner's request for habeas corpus be
granted and that petitioner be released subject to terms and
conditions of supervised release," he wrote.
If Garney's recommendation is approved by the Justice Department,
Posada Carriles could be free in about 30 days. It would be a slap
on the faces of the families of the Cuban airliner victims. And it
would make a mockery of President Bush's war on terror.
Even more so considering that on March 22, U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) denied his release for very specific
reasons: Posada Carriles, ICE said then, was a "danger to the
community" and "a risk to the national security of the U.S."
It wasn't the first time. The former Immigration and Naturalization
Service also had deemed him a danger to the U.S., but President
George H.W. Bush granted him resident status anyway.
Posada Carriles is 78, but he is no kindly grandfather. Actually,
blowing up an airliner was only one of many terrorist acts in which
the former CIA operative is said to have participated. His denial is
not surprising.
In Aug. 26, 2004, he was released from a Panama jail after Mireya
Moscoso, that country's outgoing president, pardoned him. He had
been in prison, accused of plotting to assassinate Cuban dictator
Fidel Castro at a summit of Latin American leaders in 2000.
He wanted to use 33 pounds of explosives - enough to destroy an
armored car and damage everything within 220 yards. He was sentenced
to eight years for endangering public safety.
From Panama, he went into hiding in Central America. He's also still
a fugitive from Venezuela, where in 1985 he escaped from jail. He is
wanted there for his role in the bombing of the Cuban jetliner.
The South American country has an extradition treaty with the U.S.,
but with the tense relations between Washington and Caracas, no one
expects the suspected terrorist to be sent back.
Posada Carriles also has boasted of having planned six Havana hotel
bombings in 1997 in which an Italian tourist died and 11 people were
wounded.
Yet Garney is recommending his release. Hard as they try, federal
authorities cannot find any country willing to take in such an
unsavory character, including Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica
and El Salvador.
President Bush has said, "If you harbor a terrorist, you are a
terrorist." And if the war on terror is real and not a political
ploy, all terrorists, even the ones who agree with U.S. foreign
policy, must be prosecuted.
The case of Posada Carriles is one more argument for freeing the
Cuban Five, who are serving long sentences for trying to stop terror
attacks to their homeland.
"The outrage of five Cuban anti-terrorists being imprisoned while
the notorious terrorist Luis Posada Carriles is recommended for
release makes an absolute mockery of justice," said Gloria La Riva,
national coordinator of the Committee to Free the Cuban Five.
A recommendation issued, as if to add insult to injury, on the fifth
anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history.