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Cuba asks for terror charges on cia operative { December 2007 }

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   http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2007-01-15T212020Z_01_N15430929_RTRUKOC_0_US-CUBA-USA.xml&WTmodLoc=PolNewsHome_C2_politicsNews-9

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2007-01-15T212020Z_01_N15430929_RTRUKOC_0_US-CUBA-USA.xml&WTmodLoc=PolNewsHome_C2_politicsNews-9

Cuba says U.S. must charge militant for terrorism
Mon Jan 15, 2007 4:20 PM ET

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba said on Monday the United States should indict Luis Posada Carriles, a militant anti-Castro exile accused in the bombing of a Cuban airliner, for terrorism instead of minor immigration charges.

The Cuban Foreign Ministry accused the U.S. government of protecting the former CIA operative from extradition to Venezuela to face charges of masterminding the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976.

A U.S. grand jury in El Paso, Texas, last week indicted Posada, 78, on seven immigration charges including one count of naturalization fraud and six counts of making false statements while seeking U.S. citizenship after he entered the country illegally in 2005.

"The U.S. government knows well, and has all the proof, about the innumerable acts of terrorism committed by Posada Carriles," the statement published by Granma, the ruling Communist Party's newspaper, said.

Havana said it hoped the immigration indictment will not become a "smoke screen to grant him impunity for the serious crime of terrorism."

The indictment may assure that Posada, who has been held without charges since May 2005, stays in custody. A federal judge had set a February deadline for his release unless legal action was taken.

Posada, who was trained by the CIA as an explosives expert in the early 1960s, has been a political hot potato for the Bush administration because U.S. foes Cuba and Venezuela consider him a terrorist for his suspected involvement in the airline bombing that killed 73 people.

They have sought to have him returned for trial but the United States has refused.

Cuba says Posada also planned bomb blasts in Havana hotels that killed an Italian tourist in 1997 and plotted to blow up Cuban President Fidel Castro during a regional summit in Panama in 2000.

Many Cuban-Americans, an important U.S. voting bloc, consider Posada a hero for his anti-Castro efforts and have urged the United States to let him go.

The U.S. government has fought attempts to release Posada but stopped short of formally calling him a terrorist, which would allow him to be held indefinitely. Seven countries have refused U.S. requests to take Posada in.

The U.S. indictment charges that Posada told immigration authorities he came into the United States overland with the help of a human smuggler when in fact he was brought in on a boat by Miami-based anti-Castro activists.

A month before his arrest in Miami, Castro said Posada had been smuggled into the United States on the motorboat Santrina owned by Miami exile Santiago Alvarez, who received a four-year prison sentence in November after pleading guilty in a Florida federal court to one charge of illegal weapons possession.

"The government of the United States has had to admit that our Commander in Chief was right," the Cuban statement said.

© Reuters 2007


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