Washington protects Terrorist Luis Posada Carriles
Speaking from the Miraflores Palace in Caracas, where he welcomed his Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Chavez recalled that Posada Carriles masterminded the 1976 mid-air bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed all 73 people on board and that he also practiced torture and killings in Venezuela.
Chavez added that the infamous terrorist escaped from Venezuela in 1985 while awaiting a court’s verdict for his participation in the 1976 attack against the Cuban airliner.
“Why doesn’t the Obama administration comply with the extradition of the father of all terrorists in this continent?” the Venezuelan leader asked in reference to an extradition request filed by Caracas more than four years ago in virtue of a bilateral treaty signed with Washington in 1920.
Chavez was responding to statements made by the US State Department’s spokesman, Ian Kelly, who demanded that Chavez and Ahmadinejad discuss the alleged participation of Iran in terrorist actions.
In this respect, Ahmadinejad warned that the United States lacks the necessary moral authority to be concerned over a topic about which it has a lot to explain to the international community.
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Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles, born February 15, 1928, nicknamed Bambi by some Cuban exiles is a Cuban-born Venezuelan anti-Castro militant and former CIA operative.
Posada has been convicted in absentia of involvement in various terrorist attacks and plots in the Western hemisphere, including involvement in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed seventy-three people and has admitted to his involvement in other terrorist plots including a string of bombings in 1997 targeting fashionable Cuban hotels and nightspots.
In addition, he was jailed under accusations related to an assassination attempt on Fidel Castro in Panama in 2000, although he was later pardoned by Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso in the final days of her term.
In 2005, Posada was held by U.S. authorities in Texas on the charge of illegal presence on national territory before the charges were dismissed on May 8, 2007. His release on bail on April 19, 2007 had elicited angry reactions from the Cuban and Venezuelan governments.
The U.S. Justice Department had urged the court to keep him in jail because he was “an admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks”, a flight risk and a danger to the community.
On September 28, 2005 a U.S. immigration judge ruled that Posada cannot be deported, finding that he faces the threat of torture in Venezuela.