Word: posada
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that the region didn't back his war on terrorism, especially after most Latin American governments refused to bless his invasion of Iraq. But Latins argue that they had a hard time taking the Bush crusade seriously when he himself was harboring a suspected terrorist. That would be Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban exile suspected and arrested in various countries, and once convicted (though later pardoned), for crimes that included the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner that killed 73 people, the 1997 bombings of two Havana hotels that killed an Italian tourist, and a 2000 plot to assassinate Fidel...
...Obama Administration, a week before the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, looks set to reverse Posada's good fortune. Wednesday night, federal prosecutors filed a superseding 11-count indictment against the aging militant in which, for the first time, the U.S. links him to at least the 1997 bombings. It doesn't directly charge Posada with the crime, but it accuses him of lying about his role in it, claiming he perjured himself and obstructed justice in 2005 when, while answering questions from immigration authorities, he denied involvement in the Havana attacks even though he had told...
...case, the official shift in the treatment of Posada will most likely enhance the hemisphere's early optimistic mood about President Obama when he lands in Trinidad next week. "This will certainly be construed by Latin America as a positive step," says Daniel Erikson, a senior analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue, in Washington, and the author of The Cuba Wars. "The region sees the Posada case as one of the worst examples of a U.S. double standard regarding the rule of law, a subject we often lecture Latin America about...
Both Cuba and Venezuela, where Posada had citizenship when the the Cubana Airlines flight blew up in 1976, have demanded Posada's extradition. So far, federal judges have declined to send him to either country, where Posada insists he would be tortured. (Cuban President Raúl Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez have insisted he wouldn't.) But some analysts believe that if the U.S. were to eventually lock Posada away - a grand jury in New Jersey is investigating his involvement in the bombings - it might turn down the volume of the calls for extradition in Havana...
...Posada's is a quintessential Cold War story. As a CIA operative in the 1960s, he worked unsuccessfully to overthrow the communist regime of then Cuban leader Fidel Castro (who officially ceded power to his younger brother Raúl last year because of failing health). At the time of the 1976 airliner bombing, he worked for Venezuela's secret police. Despite abundant evidence against him, a Venezuelan military tribunal acquitted him of the Cubana attack. That verdict was overturned, however, and in 1985, while Posada was being tried in a civilian criminal court, he escaped disguised as a priest...