Luis Posada Carriles finally goes on trial - for his minor offenses - NOT for the BIG ones!

[Magda Hassan]

I heard that the trial had to be postponed for a day or 2 because of snow in Miami???? This was a Cuban source.

[Peter Lemkin]

Those now protecting Posada also conspired against Kennedy



http://www.granma.cu...ner-Posada.html

Those now protecting Posada also conspired against Kennedy

Jean-Guy Allard

WHEN asked if those currently protecting the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles in Miami belong to the same Cuban-American mafioso family which conspired to assassinate Kennedy in the 1960s, Division General (ret.) Fabián Escalante Font, for years head of Cuban State Security, affirmed, "It's the same mob."

For the man who has spent years investigating every aspect of the assassination of the former U.S. President, a number of the characters who remain linked to the terrorist mechanism giving support to Posada, were members of Operation 40, mounted by the CIA in parallel with the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, to eliminate leaders of the Cuban Revolution and repress its supporters.

And, among these CIA hired killers appear various individuals linked to the assassination of JF Kennedy in Dallas.

"This is the root of all the terrorists," notes Escalante, in reference to that CIA-founded organization which is still active, with offices in downtown Miami, benefiting from FBI complacence and even protection, as well as that of district attorneys.

DEATH SQUAD ALONGSIDE THE INVADERS

Escalante recalled that the individuals selected in Miami by Joaquín Sanjenis, ex-chief of police during the Carlos Prío presidency in Cuba, included a number of people who are still living and active within terrorist circles in Florida.

"When preparations for the Bay of Pigs expedition began at the end of 1960, I think, Operation 40, the police intelligence and counterintelligence apparatus of the mercenaries, of the invasion brigade, was also created. Sanjenis began to bring in former police agents, former repressors, people closely linked to terrorism, who he had used in Cuba in the 50s in acts of repression, assassinations…"

"Operation 40's mission was to come in behind the invaders and, as these people moved in to take towns, they were going to seize archives, murder officials.

After the Bay of Pigs defeat, Operation 40 initially changed into a security apparatus of the Cuban-American mafia in Miami, "until those people began to acquire economic power in the heat of Operation Mongoose."

"They were going to get a lot of money, the millions of dollars invested in the CIA base known as JM/WAVE. By 1963, those people began to change, at the same time as elements in the Cuban-American mafia did. That's when they began to lobby, to try and impose a policy toward Cuba."

Escalante recalls that, by the end of 1960, all those aircraft that took weapons, military supplies and food to the mercenaries in Guatemala and then to Puerto Cabezas in Nicaragua returned to the United States.

COVER FOR LEE HARVEY OSWALD

So it was that, in April 1963, when Lee Harvey Oswald Kennedy's alleged assassin turned up in New Orleans "to prepare his cover as a sympathizer with the Revolution, formed a Cuba support committee with himself as the only member all in the office building shared by the Cuban Revolutionary Council, the CIA counterrevolutionary organization there. The building was also used by a fascist organization founded by the FBI and called Democratic Cuba."

In New Orleans, the only thing that Oswald did was to act as a sympathizer with the counterrevolution and then a sympathizer of the revolutionary government, Escalante, author of a number of books on this subject, commented.

In addition to Posada, some of those individuals still have a public presence in Miami. They include Félix Rodríguez Mendigutía, involved in the assassination of Che Guevara; Antonio Veciana, founder of Alpha 66; Orlando Bosch, Posada's accomplice in the sabotage of a Cuban passenger plane; Guillermo Novo Sampoll, linked to the assassination of former Chilean Foreign Minister Letelier; Virgilio Paz Romero and José Dionisio Suárez, perpetrators of the crime; Gaspar "Gasparito" Jiménez Escobedo, the murderer of Artagnan Díaz Díaz; Pedro Remón Rodríguez, the murderer of Félix García Rodríguez and Eulalio Negrín in New York; José Basulto and others.

"Alpha 66 is part of what the CIA called autonomous operations that originated a long list of acts of terrorism beginning in the 1960s."

IN VENEZUELA, POSADA ALWAYS WORKED WITH THE CIA AND THE DISIP

In Venezuela, Posada was always linked with the secret police while continuing his work for the CIA, Escalante notes.

Later, when the revolutionary resistance was allegedly ended, in the mid-70s, Posada grew bored of being a repressor, given that he had turned his hand to business operations, and created a private, paramilitary police "which did everything."

"And it was Joaquin Chaffardet, now resident in the United States, who saved Posada in the U.S. immigration court. When Orlando Bosch arrived in Venezuela, he had a support role, but the man established there was Posada Carriles. He was in contact with Carlos Andrés Pérez. It was he who knew Orlando García, Andrés Pérez' chief bodyguard.

"This Orlando García was a member of Sanjenis' group, from the Cuban police… he was from the gangster mob of the 1940s…"

Those people included characters as important as Rafael "Chi Chi" Quintero, from the U.S. National Security Council. "And it was he who said that if the whole truth of Kennedy's death were to come out, the United States would discover the greatest scandal in its history."

For Escalante, the characters currently surrounding Luis Posada Carriles in Miami and who are giving him logistical and financial support are from the same mob which, in the 60s, conspired to assassinate John F. Kennedy.

"They are the same people," he commented. "The same ones who went to Chile in the wake of the coup d'état against Salvador Allende and offered themselves to Augusto Pinochet as the thugs of the operation… Orlando Bosch, Dionisio Suárez, Aylwin Ross, the Novo Sampoll brothers, all of that mob from Operation 40.

"The same people… if you look, you'll find Félix Rodríguez Mendigutía, who assassinated Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara; you'll find Luis Posada Carriles; you'll find José Dionisio Suárez, one of Letelier's killers… all of what they called the war on the ways of the world."
------------------------------------------------------------------
Another way of wording it is that those who participated in the JFK Assassination are still very much in control of many of the levers of power in the USA.....if not most of the levers of power.....

[Peter Lemkin]

CIA Terrorism Trial: Posada Admitted to Explosive Smuggling Amid '97 Cuban Blasts
10th March 2011

By Will Weissert (CP)

EL PASO, Texas A key prosecution witness testified Thursday that he heard a former CIA operative and anti-communist militant discuss how to smuggle explosives into Cuba during a period in 1997 when a series of bombs were exploding at top Havana hotels.

Cuban-American engineer Antonio "Tony" Alvarez worked for a Florida-based investment firm that built a power plant in Guatemala. He said he shared an office there with two associates who introduced him to Luis Posada Carriles, now charged with 11 federal counts of perjury, obstruction and immigration fraud.

Posada, 83, isn't charged with the bombings, only for lying about them under oath. Born in Cuba, he spent decades crisscrossing Latin America as a Cold Warrior largely backed by the U.S. government and was considered a nemesis of ex-Cuban President Fidel Castro.

But Posada sneaked into the U.S. in 2005 and underwent immigration hearings in El Paso, during which prosecutors allege he lied about how he made it into the country and about using a Guatemalan passport with a false name. They also say he failed to acknowledge masterminding the bombings in Cuba between April and September 1997, which rocked hotels and an iconic tourist restaurant in Havana and a resort in the beach community of Varadero, killing an Italian tourist and wounding about a dozen others.

Alvarez, 75, told jurors he began to suspect Posada and his colleagues when he discovered disassembled calculators and an empty plastic tube marked "C-4 Dangerous Explosives" and bearing a stamp from "Mexican Military Industries" in his Guatemala City office. He said he then installed a hidden intercom system and heard the three "talking about money for distributing bombs."

"They were talking about the manner in which the defendant would send some explosive materials to Cuba," Alvarez said, using fluent English to recall a conversation that was in Spanish. "The defendant said they have a mechanic who works for Aviateca Airlines who will help them out and bring the materials."

Aviateca was then Guatemala's national carrier.

Posada attorney Arturo Hernandez objected and part of that answer was stricken from the record as hearsay, but the jury heard it anyway. Asked how he recognized Posada's voice, Alvarez replied, "because of the particular way he speaks."

Posada has a deep slur, the result of being shot in the face during an assassination attempt in Guatemala in 1990 that cost him part of his tongue.

Alvarez said he didn't record what was said, only remembered it. Still, he was the first witness since the trial began nine weeks ago to directly link Posada to explosives. Previous testimony focused only on his boasts about having been involved. Alvarez said he alerted Guatemalan authorities and that when they did nothing, he contacted the FBI.

In 1998, Posada granted an interview with the New York Times, saying he wanted to generate publicity for the Cuban bombing campaign. He was quoted as saying that those attacks were meant to scare tourists, but not kill anyone. After Alvarez, the prosecution's lone remaining witness is Ann Louise Bardach, the reporter who interviewed Posada.

Alvarez said that at age 15 or 16 he began dating Lidia Castro, the half-sister of Fidel. He said the pair was in love for nine years but broke up in 1959 the same year Castro's rebels took power because he had an affair. Alvarez said he fled for the U.S. in 1961, after being warned that Raul Castro, who became Cuba's president in 2009, was out to get him.

Hernandez quizzed Alvarez about his relationship with the Castro family. Alvarez responded that he has no plans to return to the island as long as the Castro brothers are still in charge.

Alvarez also described working as an informant for U.S. Customs between 1984 and 1986 against a New York City restaurant owner with ties to Colombia's Medellin Cartel and drug lord Pablo Escobar. Alvarez said he was a frequent customer at the eatery and posed as a man looking to launder money. He said he even wore a wire but was never paid for his services.

Hernandez suggested Alvarez associated with drug traffickers and also said he became wealthy from U.S. government payoffs, but Alvarez said his wife's cancer treatments had drained his finances. Mention of her health caused Alvarez to cry on the stand.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadia...Id=6196941

[Peter Lemkin]

US jury acquits Cuban-born ex-CIA agent

(AFP) 1 day ago

EL PASO, Texas A US jury found an elderly Cuban-born former CIA agent, wanted in Venezuela and Cuba for several deadly bombings, not guilty on charges of perjury and immigration fraud.

Judge Kathleen Cardone read the verdict after the jury deliberated for three hours after the 13-week trial of Luis Posada Carriles, a fierce opponent of former Cuban president Fidel Castro.

Tears were shed as Posada Carriles, 83, hugged his three defense attorneys at the end of the trial in which 33 people testified, including several flown in from Cuba.

"My path hasn't finished yet -- the nature of the struggle has changed, but it is still the same," an emotional Posada Carriles told reporters in English after the verdict was read.

He vowed to keep trying to peacefully "restore what Cuba was once," and added: "I hope that what happened here serves as an example to the justice in my country, Cuba, that unfortunately is under the hands of a dictator."

US prosecutors had pursued Posada Carriles for years.

Arrested and jailed in 2005 for illegally entering the country, Posada Carriles was released on bail in May 2007 by a federal judge in Texas who said the US government had tricked the ex-CIA contractor by using a citizenship interview to obtain evidence against him.

He was charged with 11 counts of perjury, obstruction and immigration fraud in the case, and had faced up to 60 years behind bars if convicted.

A Cuban-born Venezuelan national, Posada Carriles spent years allegedly trying to overthrow the Communist government in Cuba.

In 1976 he was jailed in Venezuela for allegedly masterminding the downing of a Cuban jet off Barbados that same year that killed 73 people. The plane had taken off from Caracas.

He escaped in 1985, but was sentenced to eight years in jail in Panama for a 2000 bomb plot to assassinate Castro. He served four years before being pardoned.

Cuba accuses him of several assassination plots against Castro, and of involvement in a 1997 Havana hotel bombing that killed an Italian tourist.

US officials have refused to extradite Posada Carriles to either Cuba or Venezuela, despite extradition requests, on grounds that he could be tortured.

In Miami, Cuban exile leaders were thrilled at the outcome.

"Justice has prevailed, even though the Cuban dictatorship sent witnesses to destroy the credibility of (Posada Carriles) and to denigrate the Cuban community in the United States," said Ninoska Perez-Castellon, who heads the fiercely anti-Communist Cuban Liberty Council.

"They cannot say that it was not a just trial with anti-Castro influences, because it didn't even take place in Miami," she said.

Cuba "has been left without one of its propaganda tools," Orlando Gutierrez, who heads the Cuban Democratic Directorate, another anti-Castro group, told AFP.

"This is a legal decision in a country where the rule of law is respected -- something that does not exist in Cuba," Gutierrez said.

Declassified US documents show that Posada Carriles worked for the CIA from 1965 to June 1976.

With a tangled past reaching back to the doomed CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 and intelligence operations in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile and Argentina, Posada has been a constant embarrassment to Washington.

A key plank of the US case, was an interview with the New York Times Posada Carriles gave in 1998 about several bombings that took place in Cuba a year earlier. The daily quoted him as saying that he was responsible for planning the attacks.

However, in the trial Posada's defense team denied the allegations, saying he does not understand English well and could not have made the statements.

Posada Carriles's lead attorney, Arturo Hernandez, pleaded that the US Justice Department back off from further cases.

"Leave my client alone," he said. "It is time to allow him to live in peace in Miami with his family."

[Magda Hassan]

Yes, I saw that in the Cuban press. No surprise for me. But it is bad news. So many died because of this monster. A big loss for justice.

[Scott Kaiser]

Havana, Cuba (CNN) -- For most of his 82 years, Luis Posada Carriles has endeavored with a single-minded determination to bring down the Cuban Revolution.

An anti-Castro Cuban exile and former CIA operative, Posada is accused by the Cuban government of blowing up a commercial airliner, masterminding a bombing campaign of Havana tourist attractions and attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro.

While denying that he was behind those attacks, Posada, in his rare public comments, called himself "a soldier" not opposed to using violence to force change in Cuba.

Before falling ill and stepping down as president, Fidel Castro referred to Posada as the "most dangerous terrorist in the Western hemisphere" and called for him to be bought to justice for alleged attacks that date back over 30 years.

On Monday, Posada will face trial -- but not on those charges and not in Cuba. He will be tried in the United States for lying to immigration officials.

The "case reads like one of Robert Ludlum's espionage thrillers, with all the plot twists and turns Ludlum is famous for," one of the judges who has heard the case over the last five years wrote in the court records.

Posada faces 11 counts of lying to officials about how he entered the United States in 2005 and his alleged involvement in attacks on Cuba. He faces five to eight years in prison if convicted.

For Margarita Morales, Posada's trial provides little comfort. Morales' father Luis Alfredo Morales Viego was killed in the 1976 bombing of a Cubana Airlines flight.

"It's painful to know that Posada Carriles is only being tried for lying to immigration officials," Morales said, tears in her eyes. "How long do I have to put up with him being called a liar when he's a killer, a terrorist?"

The bomb exploded shortly after Cubana Flight 455 took off from Barbados, killing all 73 passengers and crew aboard. Morales, a trainer for Cuba's national fencing team, was one of 24 team members to die in the crash.

Following the crash, Posada was arrested and tried in Venezuela where he had worked for the country's intelligence services. While awaiting trial for the airplane bombing, he escaped from jail.

Posada denied involvement in the attack. But a declassified CIA document obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University quoted Posada as saying, "we are going to hit a Cuban airplane."

Venezuela, whose president Hugo Chavez is a staunch ally of Cuba, continues to seek Posada's exradition for the airliner bombing case. So far, U.S. courts have declined to extradite Posada citing his fear of being tortured in Venezuela.

"If Posada Carriles were instead named 'Mohammed,' he would have been extradited a long time ago," said Jose Pertierra, the attorney handling Venezuela's extradition request. "There's a lot of skeletons in those closets and I am sure there's folks in Washington who don't want to see Posada Carriles get extradited because he might sing like a canary."

While Posada is not being tried for being a terrorist, he does face charges for allegedly lying about terrorism.

In 2005, Posada was arrested by Homeland Security agents after giving a press conference in Miami where he denied involvement in the airline bombing or targeting civilians in his war against the Cuban government.

Initially, he was charged with entering the United States illegally but then federal prosecutors also indicted Posada for lying to immigration officials about his alleged involvement in a series of bombings in Havana in 1997.

In 1998, Posada admitted to The New York Times that he had dispatched a group of operatives to Cuba to set off bombs in hotels and restaurants in the hopes of ruining the island's tourism industry. An Italian businessman Fabio Di Celmo was killed in one of the bombings.

''It is sad that someone is dead, but we can't stop,'' Posada told the newspaper. ''That Italian was sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Asked if he felt remorse, Posada told the paper, ''I sleep like a baby.''

Several of those operatives were captured in Cuba and implicated Posada during their trials, according to Cuban government media reports and video shown on the island of the men's testimony.

In court filings, Posada's attorneys argue that his English was too poor to understand the reporter's questions. The interviews were recorded though and are expected to be a central part of the government's case against Posada.

Fabio Di Celmo's father, Giustino, has lived in Cuba since the 1997 bombing that took his son's life. He was in his room at the Copacabana Hotel when the C-4 plastic explosives went off in the lobby where his son was.

"I never thought that a bomb had gone off," Di Celmo said in an interview. "Fifteen minutes later, I was told Fabio had been killed."

A piece of shrapnel from the bomb had gone through his son's neck.

"If the bomb went off 15 or 20 minutes later when the (hotel) restaurant was open, it would have been a bloodbath," Di Celmo said. "How do you fight ideas by murdering people?"

This is old news, perhaps, after Luis is gone, I will be able to release a lot more of this story, I also have the full court transcripts.

[Scott Kaiser]

Now, remind me why the 'terrorists' hate America again?
It is a travesty that he is only on charges for immigration issues. I doubt anything will come from it anyway.

Something did. it was a $50,000 PR Bond. Don't shoot the messenger, shoot the message.

Oh, and a lot of court room drama to appease Fidel.

[Magda Hassan]

This is old news, perhaps, after Luis is gone, I will be able to release a lot more of this story, I also have the full court transcripts.

His days are numbered. I will look forward to more on this.

[Peter Lemkin]

This is old news, perhaps, after Luis is gone, I will be able to release a lot more of this story, I also have the full court transcripts.

His days are numbered. I will look forward to more on this.

Scott, were you his lawyer in that matter?

[Magda Hassan]

This is old news, perhaps, after Luis is gone, I will be able to release a lot more of this story, I also have the full court transcripts.

His days are numbered. I will look forward to more on this.

Scott, were you his lawyer in that matter?

Don't think Scott is a lawyer but did interview Posada in relation to finding stuff out about his father.