Cuban Exiles to Face Trial in Panama

[Judi Lynn]

Cuban Exiles to Face Trial in Panama
By Kathia Martinez Associated Press Writer
Published: Sep 6, 2003


PANAMA CITY, Panama (AP) - Four Cuban exiles originally accused of trying to blow up Cuban President Fidel Castro will stand trial on charges of conspiracy, possessing explosives and endangering the public's safety, a Panamanian judge has ruled.
Luis Posada Carriles, Gaspar Jimenez, Guillermo Novo and Pedro Remon were arrested after the Cuban president denounced a plot to kill him during an Ibero-American summit that was held in Panama's capital in November 2000. (snip)

(snip) Cuban officials claim that the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation, a powerful exile group opposed to President Fidel Castro's government, funded Posada Carriles. Prensa Latina reported that the organization had sent members to the preliminary hearing to pressure the judge into acquitting the defendants. (snip)

(snip) Posada, a veteran of the U.S.-run Bay of Pigs operation and former CIA operative, was acquitted in a bombing trial in Venezuela but remained imprisoned until he escaped in 1985. He has admitted organizing several Cuban hotel bombings that killed an Italian tourist and injured 11 other people in 1997. (snip)

(snip) Remon, 57, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison in 1986 in the March 1980 attempted murder of Cuba's former delegate to the United Nations and to an attempted bombing of the Cuban U.N. Mission in December 1979. (snip/...)

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/florida/MGA8PTK3AKD.html

(Supported by the Cuban American National Foundation)

[Osolomia]

1. Yet even 2004 Dem presidential candidates

are still taking campaign contributions from organizations with known links to terrorism (e.g. CANF) and even advocate giving these Batistiano "exiles" even more US taxpayers' money for their long lost "la causa" and no one bats an eye. Go figure!

[Mika]

2. Hey.. our (& the CANF's) terrorists = freedom fighters

Their Terrorists and Ours
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/TheirTerroristsorOurs.html

Luis Posada Carriles, on the other hand, was trained by the CIA as part of the Bay of Pigs invasion project, and has been a long-standing member of the Cuban refugee terrorist network. This network has been one of the most active and durable anywhere, because it was given legitimacy by U.S. sponsorship, has served U.S. aims, and has in consequence been under U.S. protection. The U.S. official and media treatment of Posada has reflected this protection and role of the network.

Posada came to public notice when a Cuban airliner was blown up in October 1976 killing 73 people. Two Cubans were apprehended, confessed, and implicated Posada and Orlando Bosch as fellow participants. Posada was caught and tried three times in Venezuela, but was acquitted on technicalities. Before a further trial could be held, he escaped prison. He next came into notice when Eugene Hasenfus's contra supply plane was shot down over Nicaragua in 1986, and evidence surfaced that Posada was an operative in the contra supply network, working for the Reagan administration at Ilopango airbase in El Salvador.

Plenty more on Posada.. http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/TheirTerroristsorOurs.html

[Judi Lynn]

5. What doesn't get emphasized too often is VERY ugly

They planned to blow Fidel Castro away while he was giving a speech in an auditorium with hundreds of students in the audience. They must have been interested in improving on their record of the 73 souls destroyed on the Cubana air liner October 6, 1976, some of whom were teen-aged members of the championship Cuban Fencing Team, as well as some students from Guyana.

If they hadn't been STOPPED in time, this would have been an unbelievable calamity.

I've heard from Miami residents that the local Cuba hate-radio stations have been soliciting funds from listeners since these men were arrested to aid financing their legal funds.

[Mika]

3. Its a barrel of monkeys

The dems are as in on the Miamicuban "exile" minority corruption as the repukes, in Miami-Dade

Just sickening.

The Miami Machine:
Cuban American Terrorists Triumph in Election 2000
http://afrocubaweb.com/miamimachine.htm

The Cuban right wing is very close to Jeb Bush, who has maintained ties with major Cuban American criminal figures, including the author of the largest HMO fraud in US history. The building that houses the all-powerful Cuban American National Foundation's headquarters happens to be owned and managed by IntrAmerican Investments, whose president is Jeb Bush. Bush and the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) are allies in the effort to end affirmative action in Florida, the "One Florida" intiative. The CANF has had documented involvement in several narcoterrorist operations, including those of Luis Posada Carilles over the years and the 1997 attempt to kill Fidel Castro where a CANF board member was indicted. After the Elian affair, the Cuban right had it in for the Dems and vowed to seek revenge for what they perceived to be a massive insult to their cause.

There was substantial Miami Cuban right wing involvement in the Miami Dade Canvassing Board decision to stop the recount: the mob which intimidated the Board was urged on by no less than two Cuban American members of Congress over the radio and on-site, in effect giving them the green light. The Gully reports that Congresswoman "Ros-Lehtinen, who is Cuban-American, was protesting against the recount outside the Miami-Dade county building last week while Sweeney was getting ready to utter his fateful phrase inside. Both she and Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart, the other Cuban-born Republican in the U.S. Congress, had called on Cuban-Americans to join the protest, in on-site interviews granted to Radio Mambi, Miami's biggest Spanish-language station." Both members of Congress support and are supported by the all powerful Cuban American National Foundation, the CANF.

The mob consisted of a mix of Cuban American thugs and Republican politicos from out of town, a mix reminiscent of Watergate. Whether they actually intimidated the commission or not is of course disputed but it is irrelevant for as the Gully reports, "two of the three canvassing board members ... county judges Myriam Lehr, an Independent, and Lawrence D. King, a Democrat, were re-elected to the bench thanks to the cut-throat political consultant Armando Gutierrez, last spotted as the 'spokesman' for Elian's Miami relatives." You'll remember Gutierrez as the political consultant who was paid $10,000 by the Family Court judge who ordered Elian into the custody of his Miami relatives. Gutierrez was very busy citing human rights abuses in Cuba as a reason for Elian to stay in Miami, land of the free.

We also have word from Peter Dale Scott that "Elections supervisor David Leahy of the Miami-Dade Canvassing Board, one of the three who voted to stop the recount, works for Penelas." Mayor Penelas also featured prominently in the Elian affair, siding with the hard liners. Scott is the co-author of Cocaine Politics and of an informative memorandum on Jose Basulto, another CANF ally who is at the heart of the current US Cuba phone dispute.

[Osolomia]

4. And like being travel banned and lied to apparently. Sickening indeed!

e.g. Castro's Cuba
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=291006

[Judi Lynn]

6. Here's a more detailed account of this near assassination

from a friend of DU in South Florida: :hi:

(snip)


Posted on Sun, Sep. 07, 2003

Exiles to be tried on lesser charges
Men, including three Miamians, accused of trying to kill Castro
BY FRANCES ROBLES
[e-mail]

PANAMA CITY - Four Cuban exiles accused of plotting to blow up President Fidel Castro three years ago must stand trial in November on lesser charges, a judge has ruled despite defense arguments that there was no convincing evidence against them.

The decision, announced near midnight Friday, ended a contentious three-day pre-trial hearing to determine the fates of former fugitive Luis Posada Carriles and Miamians Gaspar Jiménez, Guillermo Novo and Pedro Remón.

The four long-time anti-Castro activists were arrested here in November 2000, at the start of the 10th Ibero American Summit, when Castro startled the crowd at the conference by announcing that Cuba's most wanted man was in Panama City plotting to kill him. Panamanian police descended on Posada's hotel, capturing the four as the 75-year-old Posada took an afternoon nap.

POSADA'S BAG

The investigation later netted José Manuel Hurtado, a local man the men had hired to drive them around. Hurtado told investigators that he found a bag ''Posada always carried'' in the Mitsubishi he had rented. When he went to return it, Posada's hotel was surrounded by police cars. (snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/6711262.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The story was out quite a while ago that someone had paid off Panamanian officials when it was suddenly announced they had discovered the detonating devices were somehow missing from the material they had originally taken at the time of the arrest. Without the detonating devices, some claim there is no proof of an attempted assassination, so a lesser charge must be pressed.

The ORIGINAL charge was murder at the time they apparently HAD all the necessary evidence. This kind of thing is NOT new where exile assassins are involved.

For one thing, lots of articles claim Posada escaped from a Venezuelan prison, dressed as a priest:
(snip) Posada Carriles escaped from jail in Venezuela in 1985, reportedly disguised as a priest.

He resurfaced in El Salvador working on a clandestine operation to airlift tons of arms and ammunition to Nicaraguan rebels fighting the left-wing Sandinista government. It was run by Lt. Col Oliver North from the Old Executive Building
and led to the Reagan administration's worst political scandal over the secret sale of arms to Iran to illegally fund the Contras. (snip/...)

http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~delacova/bay-of-pigs/plotters.htm

Here's a snippet which relates to CANF paying Venezuelan authorities to get Posada "sprung:"
(snip) He protested that he did not order the attack and blamed it on a Cuban colleague but was held for nine years until a spectacular escape in 1985 in which prison officials admitted being bribed. Posada told the Times that Mas Canosa and other leaders of the Cuban American National Foundation paid to get him out of Venezuela. (snip)

http://www.robertscheer.com/1_natcolumn/98_columns/071498.htm
A Startling Tale of U.S. Complicity
By Robert Scheer
Published July 14, 1998 in the Los Angeles Times