Posada Carriles Tells the El Paso Court “I lied because the CIA taught me how.” – Español
By José Pertierra
Translation: Machetera – Tlaxcala
In a motion presented yesterday before the federal court in El Paso, where he is being tried for perjury rather than murder, Luis Posada Carriles offers the curious defense that due to his many years of work with the CIA, his statements when interrogated by U.S. immigration officials shortly after illegally entering the United States in March of 2005 were “the result of confusion, mistake” and “faulty memory.”
Posada alleges that throughout his employment with the CIA, he used various false identities and passports to facilitate his undercover work against Cuba, Venezuela and other Latin American countries. So many lies have led him to be confused now, according to the 14 page legal argument his legal team has presented to Judge Kathleen Cardone.
The prosecutors wish to exclude all the evidence regarding Posada Carriles and the CIA from this trial, arguing that it is irrelevant as well as confidential. Washington knows that Posada has plenty to tell and it is trying to limit his testimony and the evidence to the greatest extent possible so as not to expose the crimes committed by Posada Carriles throughout his decades of work for the CIA.
There are declassified CIA cables in existence, for example, as well as confessions from the material authors of the crime, which establish that Posada was the intellectual author behind the explosion of a Cubana airlines civilian airplane on October 6, 1976, where 73 passengers were killed.
Venezuela presented a request for his extradition in June of 2005, and this remains pending, without the White House attending to it. Posada confessed to the New York Times in 1998 that he had orchestrated a terrorist campaign against hotels and restaurants in Havana which caused the cold-blooded death of Fabio Di Celmo in the Hotel Copacabana, as well as wounding many others.
In previous documents, Posada alleged that everything he did in Latin America, he did “in Washington’s name.” He wants the jury, which is to decide whether he is guilty of perjury, to hear all the evidence on March 1st and be made aware of his close relationship with the CIA. He also knows that the more he threatens to reveal about his relations with the CIA, the more those who conceal the skeletons in Washington’s closet begin to tremble.
In order to convince Judge Cardone that his relationship with the CIA is relevant to the trial in which he is being accused of being a liar, Posada Carriles’ defense is that it was the CIA who taught him how to lie. Hmmmm.
Machetera is a member of Tlaxcala, the international network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the author and translator are cited.
The Judge Presiding Over the Case of the Terrorist Posada Carriles Reacts to His Legal Technicality - Español
By Jose Pertierra
Translation: Laura Boué and Machetera – Tlaxcala
Kathleen Cardone, the U.S. judge who dismissed the first case against the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, accusing the Government of having engaged in “fraud, deceit and trickery” in his immigration interview and who later took up the legal case against him once again, has just opened an interesting window in the litigation.
In an order dated January 21, 2010, Cardone has revealed part of the inner workings of the case that will be heard on March 1st in El Paso, Texas, and whose documentation has until now been kept under seal and the strictest secrecy.
The judge has just published a document which openly cites a motion by Posada’s attorney to disallow Count One in the new trial, which accuses him of having made false declarations when he denied asking other people to carry out a series of bombings in Cuba.
Cardone’s document reveals that Posada does not deny having participated in a conspiracy to explode bombs in Havana in 1997, one of which killed the young Italian Fabio Di Celmo in a bar at the Hotel Copacabana. But he does not accept guilt for the homicide either. His defense is a legal technicality that the judge, through this order, absolutely rejects.
Count One has to do with a question that an immigration official posed to Posada in 2005: “Are the comments true that you made (to a journalist) for an article in the New York Times in which you admitted soliciting other people to carry out these explosions?” Posada responded in the following manner: “I am saying that is not true.” The prosecutors suggest that this answer is false and constitute perjury. Posada alleges that the answer is literally correct, because the article in the New York Times and the tape recordings made by the journalist Ann Louise Bardach do not include the word “solicit.” Consequently, Posada repeats, his answer is literally correct.
The motion presented by Posada’s attorneys did not convince Judge Cardone, who unequivocally declared that the question by the immigration official is not dependent on the word “solicit.” “The sense of the questions that were asked of Posada is not dependent on the precise use of that word.” In other words, Posada knew very well that the immigration official who interviewed him in relation to his application for residency in 2005, wanted to know if Posada denied having been involved in the 1997 conspiracy for having exploded bombs in hotels and restaurants in Havana in that year.
The person who carried out the murder of Fabio Di Celmo is a Salvadoran named Rene Cruz Leon, who admitted having placed at least six bombs in Havana, including the one that killed the Italian tourist. Cruz Leon confessed his crimes, was tried in Cuban courts and in 1999 was sentenced to death. Currently he is a prisoner in the Guanajay prison in Cuba.
Cruz Leon says that the person who recruited him and gave him the explosives is a Salvadoran named Francisco Chavez Abarca, one of Posada Carriles employees in El Salvador. A 1997 Miami Herald investigation revealed that Luis Posada Carriles recruited Chavez Abarca for a terrorist campaign against Cuba and that he in turn recruited Cruz Leon, who says he was promised $2,000 for every bomb that was set off in Havana. After Cruz Leon was arrested, Posada Carriles said, “He’s not a Cuban. He did it for money.”
Another of the material authors of the terrorism against Cuba in 1997 is the Salvadoran Otto Rodriguez Llerena, also openly linked with Luis Posada Carriles, who operated under the name of Ignacio Medina. He admitted that he’d been promised $1,000 for each C-4 bomb detonated. “My mistake was in letting Posada Carriles use me,” Rodriguez Llerena told the Miami Herald journalist Jim DeFede in 2005.
Posada Carriles’ defense argument oscillates between a technicality relative to the use of the word “solicit,” and the fact that everything the terrorist did prior to that in Latin America was done in the name of his employer, the CIA.
The Federal court in El Paso is not falling for the legal technicality, and it has not allowed him to use the CIA’s name in his defense. But “those who will make the decision about his innocence or guilt are, nevertheless, the jury,” Judge Cardone concluded in her order.
It’s worth recalling that the trial against Posada is not for murder in relation to the killing of Fabio Di Celmo. Nor is it about the terrorist campaign against Cuba in 1997, nor about the mid-air explosion of a plane full of passengers on October, 1976, for which there is an abundance of proof of Posada’s participation as its intellectual author. The prosecutor is charging him with having lied to U.S. government officials during the immigration process undertaken by Posada upon arriving in the United States, illegally, aboard the Santrina yacht in March of 2005.
He is strictly being judged as a liar in order to give the impression that “something is being done” against terrorism. Meanwhile, the extradition request presented by Venezuela on June 15, 2005 remains pending. Until now President Obama has paid it no attention, just like President George W. Bush.
Laura Boué and Machetera are members of Tlaxcala, the international network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the author and translators are cited.
One of the most interesting things about the few news articles that have trickled out so far about the US Americans from Idaho who are currently under arrest in Port au Prince for trying to kidnap 33 Haitian children is that none of them mention the terrible irony in the occupation of the leader of the bunch, Laura Silsby. Silsby, according to her own website, is the “founder and CEO of [Boise, Idaho based] PersonalShopper.com, a leader in the evolution of personalizing the e-commerce experience for women.”
In the United States of America where anyone who’s experienced a reasonable amount of success in running a business is therefore deemed qualified to meddle in anything at all that catches their fancy, from politics to setting up an orphanage/international adoption agency, this should shock no-one. After all, doesn’t Madonna do her personal child shopping in Malawi? And doesn’t everyone want to be like Madonna?
I’m not sure which is more offensive really, the latest story about the U.S. military refusing to airlift any more Haitians to the U.S. for medical treatment due to a political money squabble, or the fact that Silsby and crew clearly view Haitian children as something like a pet rescue operation – why bother asking anyone for permission? They’re just Haitians after all. And is there anything more adorable than a tiny suffering Haitian?
But it’s nice to see the U.S. Embassy in Port au Prince rushing to assist the kidnappers, providing them with, in the words of the Associated Press, “bug spray and MREs to eat.” Bug spray, as everyone knows, is extremely toxic when ingested, but it certainly does seem like an appropriate meal in this case.
Ya se acabaron las vacaciones, y Machetera por fin puede volver a atender su vasto imperio editorial y su desbordado buzón.
Como nuestros fieles lectores conocen, de vez en cuando tomo una de las cartas de la sección de comentarios y la publico por separado si merece una respuesta punto por punto. El remitente de esta carta en particular, un tal Matt Lawrence, que la envía desde una dirección de correo electrónico creada en honor al divertido nombre de su “ficticio” personaje piloto, Trig Combs, comenzó a copiar y pegar su carta no sólo para Machetera sino para otros activistas de solidaridad, y lo está haciendo en nombre de los Cinco Héroes. Copiar y pegar es pura vagancia (si uno va a defender a terroristas como Hermanos al Rescate lo menos que puede hacer es tratar de ser original), pero en fin, ese grupo nunca se ha destacado por su gran capacidad intelectual. (Nota para Lawrence: hangar se escribe con “a”.)
El principal objetivo de la carta de Lawrence parece ser pregonar su libro. Déjenme aclarar, tomando prestada la frase favorita de Obama. Eso no va a pasar aquí. Su segundo objetivo es desprestigiar a los corajudos Cinco Héroes. Eso seguro que no va a pasar aquí.
By Mark Weisbrot, Center for Economic and Policy Research
On Monday, six days after the earthquake in Haiti, the US Southern Command finally began to drop bottled water and food from an air force C-17. US defence secretary Robert Gates had previously rejected such a method because of “security concerns”.
If people do not get clean water, there could be epidemics of water-borne diseases that could greatly increase the death toll. But the US is now sending 10,000 troops and seems to be prioritising “security” over much more urgent, life-and-death needs. This in addition to the increase of 3,500 UN troops scheduled to arrive.
“The contempt we have been taught to entertain for blacks, make us fear many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience.” – Alexander Hamilton in letter to John Hay, 1799.
“Only those who hate the black population, see hatred in blacks.” – José Martí, Montecristi Manifesto, 1895
The recent earthquakes that have demolished the city of Port au Prince and its surroundings have left Haiti stateless, ever poorer, desperate and in need of long term global assistance. A world-wide rescue operation has been initiated. But, it is questionable to what extent the best interests of the people of Haiti have been and will be considered, in the long run.
First, the foreign aid teams “rescued” and took out of the country the non-Haitians, particularly the Europeans, Americans and assorted other tourists. The Voice of America on Jan. 16 reported: “In the last day or so the United States and French governments have started running passenger flights out of the country [Haiti] for evacuees from those countries. People line up and wait for a plane to arrive so they can leave Haiti and leave behind what is a very difficult, traumatic experience for many.”[1]
Second, five days have gone by without any real significant distribution of medical supplies, food or water to the neediest people. Keep reading →
While the U.S. is figuring out where and how to insert more “compassionate warriors” per capita in Haiti than it has in Afghanistan, the better to go after Venezuelan oil when the opportunity presents itself, Cuban doctors are going about actually helping sick and injured Haitians. This remarkable video report by CNN Radio’s Steve Kastenbaum shows how they’re doing it, while possibly endangering Kastenbaum’s career (see the Herb Matthews example).
Clever, isn’t it? Such a soothing name, such a lovely idea. Kind of like Medecins Sans Frontieres or what was that other one? Oh right… CIA Reporters Sans Frontieres.
On January 10th, three young Argentinean climbers from Neuquén province reached the summit of Aconcagua, the highest mountain on the American continent, with an elevation of 22,831 feet above sea level. This extraordinary feat, accomplished by Santiago Vega, a radio and television journalist, Aldo Bonavitta, a bank clerk, and Alcides Bonavitta, a social activist, had a political objective as clear as it was noble: expressing the solidarity of the Argentinean people with the cause of the five Cuban anti-terrorism fighters, held by the empire in its prisons for eleven years, under conditions that are not even applied to the worst serial criminals in that country. Moreover, they were condemned in an absolutely flawed trial that makes their incarceration an affront to due process and the rule of law. The Cuban intelligence agents Ramon Labanino, Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez were unjustly and illegally imprisoned for investigating terrorist activities in Miami’s Cuban community and their case constitutes an emphatic denial of the so-called war on terrorism that Washington claims to be waging. Keep reading →
As we wait to learn the identity of the mystery Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI) “subcontractor” who was handing out cellphones and laptops like Santa Claus in Cuba this December, let’s deconstruct the recent statement by Dr. James Boomgard, DAI Chief Executive Officer, denying DAI’s relationship to U.S. intelligence services.
Boomgard said: “The detained DAI subcontractor was not working for any intelligence service.”
In this post Clinton “it depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is” world, perhaps that was meant as some kind of denial. What Boomer did not say was that the detained subcontractor was not doing the work of U.S. intelligence.
In an interview the former CIA agent Phil Agee gave to Dennis Bernstein of the Flashpoints radio program in March 2005, he explained how intelligence work came to be shifted from the CIA to contractors such as the National Endowment for Democracy and their associated subcontracting NGOs such as DAI, Chemonics International (“an international development consulting firm that promotes meaningful change to help people live healthier, more productive, and more independent lives”), Partners for Democratic Change, Albert Einstein Institution, Freedom House and countless others. Agee was speaking specifically though not exclusively of Venezuela on that occasion. Keep reading →
Posada Carriles Tells the El Paso Court “I lied because the CIA taught me how.” – Español
