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 News from Around the Americas | August 2006 
Alleged Bomber and Castro Foe Posada Carriles Remains in US Jail
 AFP
| | Recently declassified US documents show that Posada Carriles had worked for the CIA at least from 1965 until June 1976. (AFP/Teresita Chavarria) |
A US judge ended a hearing on the fate of Luis Posada Carriles, suspected of bombing Cuban targets in hopes of bringing down Fidel Castro, without deciding whether he should remain in a US jail or be freed.
Posada Carriles, 78, brought witnesses to the El Paso, Texas courtroom to say that no country wanted him, and asked to he freed, pointing to a US Supreme Court decision that people arrested for immigration violations cannot be held indefinitely.
Witness Donald George, of the US immigration service, said in the overfilled courtroom that several countries had been approached about hosting Posada Carriles, but declined: Canada, Guatemala, Mexico, Costa Rica and Honduras.
Another witness, Miguel Jimenez, said that El Salavdor's President Elias Antonio Saca had rejected the idea outright.
However, two countries do want the former CIA agent: Venezuela and Cuba for bombings against Cuban targets, in an attempt to topple Cuban Communist strongman Fidel Castro.
He is wanted in Venezuela for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner, in which 73 persons were killed. He was detained in Venezuela in 1976, but fled prison in 1985.
US officials refuse to release him to Venezuela, where he holds citizenship, or Cuba, where he was born, saying he might be tortured. But they also have refused to free him because he is a threat to national security.
Posada Carriles was detained by immigration officials in May 2005 for entering the United States illegally. He asked for asylum.
Posada Carriles was jailed for eight years in Panama in a bomb plot to assassinate Castro during an Ibero-American summit in Panama in 2000. He was pardoned by outgoing president Mireya Moscoso.
He made his way to the United States, where he was eventually arrested in May after he requested asylum and later withdrew the request.
Cuban and Venezuelan authorities accuse the US government of harboring a known terrorist.
Recently declassified US documents show that Posada Carriles had worked for the CIA at least from 1965 until June 1976, and he reportedly helped the US government ferry supplies to so-called Contra rebels, who waged a bloody campaign to topple the socialist Sandinistas in Nicaragua. |
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