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 News from Around the Americas | May 2005 
Cuban Exile Whisked Away After His Arrest
 Oscar Corral & Alfonso Chardy - The Miami Herald
| | Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles was arrested by federal agents, then taken away by helicopter. |
Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles, accused of terrorism, briefly came out of hiding Tuesday before he was arrested by federal immigration authorities and whisked away in a Homeland Security helicopter.
Posada, who has been linked to the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner and to a 1997 series of bombings at tourist hotels in Havana, was arrested in Miami-Dade on the same day Cuban President Fidel Castro mounted a massive march in Havana to accuse U.S. leaders of hypocrisy for sheltering the accused bomber.
And his arrest came just hours after Posada, who has been hiding in the Miami area since he entered the United States illegally in late March, held an invitation-only news conference under tight security at a warehouse near Hialeah.
There, he said he didn't want to make trouble for the United States and declared that he was willing to withdraw an application for asylum and leave the country voluntarily.
"I lived 30 years clandestinely and if my place is to live again in the underground, I'll do it," said Posada, dapper in a cream-colored suit, dark blue tie and light blue shirt.
The arrest created a new quandary for the Bush administration, as exile activists accused officials of caving in to Castro.
"It is sad that the American government has granted Fidel Castro, the No. 1 terrorist in the world, his wishes that Mr. Posada Carriles be arrested," said exile leader Osvaldo Soto, whose son is Posada's lawyer.
The Department of Homeland Security immediately released a statement saying it would not deport Posada to Cuba or its ally, Venezuela, which is requesting his extradition. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency "does not generally remove people to Cuba, nor does ICE generally remove people to countries believed to be acting on Cuba's behalf," the statement said.
Barbara Gonzalez, an ICE spokeswoman in Miami, declined to say where Posada was being held - though his attorney, Eduardo Soto, said he believed Posada was taken to Homestead Air Reserve Base in a helicopter before being placed on a plane.
His destination was unspecified. Male foreign nationals arrested by immigration officers in South Florida are generally taken to Krome detention center in west Miami-Dade County.
Posada, 77, was preparing to leave the country when he was arrested at a house in Southwest Miami-Dade where he had been staying, Soto said.
Soto said he had formally withdrawn Posada's asylum application shortly before the arrest. After hearing of the arrest, however, he said he plans to refile it, which is allowed under federal law.
The afternoon's dramatic events were foreshadowed early; Posada failed to show up for a 7 a.m. interview with federal immigration authorities related to his asylum application.
He wasn't there, but federal agents were "swarming" at the office off Brickell Avenue where the interview was scheduled, said Soto, who said he had postponed the interview at the last minute because his client was said to be sick.
Nonetheless, Posada looked healthy when he showed up for his secretive news conference three hours later and hinted that he would be leaving the country soon. After that, federal agents snagged him as he was stopping to pick up personal belongings at the house where he had been staying.
Agents drove Posada to an empty field, where he was loaded into a helicopter as Channel 51, Telemundo, carried the scene live on Miami television.
Posada's Miami-area benefactor, Santiago Alvarez, said the agents from Homeland Security told him they were prompted to act by an interview Posada gave The Herald that was published Tuesday.
In the interview, Posada had claimed that he eluded Homeland Security agents while taking a Greyhound bus from Texas to Miami, and he expressed surprise that the U.S. government was not actively looking for him. Immigration experts said his statements most likely incensed officials with Homeland Security.
"It was like waving a red flag in front of a bull," said Coral Gables immigration attorney Leopoldo Ochoa, amazed that Posada had consented to interviews before talking to asylum officers.
Alvarez had suggested at the news conference that Posada's departure was imminent and that he would leave as secretly as he had slipped into the country in March.
It was clear that U.S. officials had been trying to gather evidence about Posada's past. Several days ago, the Department of Homeland Security had subpoenaed tapes of an interview that Posada gave The New York Times in 1998. In that interview, he admitted a role in a string of tourist-site bombings in Cuba in 1997 that killed an Italian national.
The newspaper's attorney, George Freeman, filed a motion Monday in Miami federal court seeking to quash the subpoena.
As recently as Friday, several top officials in the Bush administration had said they were skeptical as to whether Posada was even in the country. On Tuesday, ICE announced that they had taken him into custody "pending review of his immigration status" within 48 hours.
Some U.S. officials this week had expressed concerns that Posada's presence in the United States - and his talking to the media - were an international embarrassment and a mockery of Homeland Security's claim the borders were more secure. But officials had also said they did not consider him an imminent threat to national security.
There were also indications the federal government was stepping gingerly into Florida's potential minefield of Cuban exile politics.
White House officials in recent weeks had reached out to Cuban American leaders in Miami to gauge the community's feelings about Posada, according to a state representative active in exile politics.
State Rep. David Rivera, a Miami Republican said he talked to two administration officials recently, but declined to name them. He said they discussed "what if" scenarios, and he told them the community would be outraged if Posada were deported to Cuba or Venezuela.
"It's never gone past casual conversations, but I believe they wanted a sounding board," Rivera said.
The White House referred calls to the Department of Homeland Security, where a spokesman said he was unfamiliar with any calls to community leaders.
Gov. Jeb Bush insisted he's not been at all involved in the case, telling reporters Tuesday in Tallahassee that he "heard about 10 days ago there was some prospect he was in the country."
"I've been busy," Bush said, shrugging. He didn't say whether he'd been in touch with the administration and offered no position about whether he supported or opposed Posada's request for asylum.
When Posada granted an interview to The Herald a week ago, he had said he was ready to be detained, pending resolution of his asylum case. He made a point of saying he wanted to stay in the United States, that he was done with a life of running.
By his 10 a.m. Tuesday news conference, things had changed.
The dozen or so journalists at the event were picked up and transported to the warehouse site by Posada's supporters - in separate vehicles from different parts of Miami-Dade County.
Posada told reporters he was thinking about leaving the country because of fears Castro wanted to turn his presence in South Florida into an international embarrassment for the United States: "Regarding my application for political asylum in the United States, I want to clarify that the Cuban dictator wishes to create an international situation to damage the image of the United States."
Castro has been on Cuban television frequently since early April, demanding that the Bush administration arrest Posada over the allegations he masterminded the Oct. 6, 1976, airliner bombing that killed 73. Posada repeated Tuesday that he had nothing to do with that attack, and said he'd be willing to submit to a trial by an international court on those allegations.
But he set conditions: Cuba must surrender for trial the pilots of the MiG warplanes that shot down two civilian aircraft from the United States in 1996, killing four Cuban exiles, and the crew of a Cuban boat that rammed and sank a tugboat full of refugees, killing about 40 in 1994.
Posada was acquitted twice in the jetliner case in trials in Venezuela, where he was living at the time as owner of one of the country's biggest detective agencies. He escaped from a Venezuelan jail in 1985 while a prosecutor's appeal was pending.
Posada told reporters Tuesday that he had submitted to a lie detector test in Miami recently about the airliner bombing - and passed it. In the test report, written by Thomas W.K. Mote, a forensic polygraph examiner, Posada denies a role in the bombing.
"It is the professional opinion of this examiner that Mr. Luis Posada Carriles was not deceptive to the issues in this matter that he was allegedly involved in the bombing of Cuban flight 455," Mote wrote. |
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