[News] Trial of terrorists who attempted to kill Fidel Castro begins

[News at freedomarchives.org]

 From GRANMA, Havana, March 15, 2004

Trial of terrorists who attempted to kill Fidel Castro begins

PANAMA, March 15 (PL)The trial of four terrorists who plotted to
assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro here begins today at the Maritime
Court offices, protected by security that includes 100 police officers,
including anti-explosives experts.

The hearing against Luis Posada Carriles and the other three terrorists who
attempted to kill the Cuban president is set to last until March 19, as
convened by Judge José A. Hoo Justiniano, the fifth Criminal Circuit judge.
A previous hearing against Posada and his accomplices  Guillermo Novo
Sampol, Pedro Remón Rodríguez and Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo  all of Cuban
origin, was suspended in November 2003, and then again last January.

The attempt on Fidel Castro was to take place during an event at the
University of Panama Paraninfo Amphitheater, where the Cuban president
spoke to some 2,000 students and guests in November 2000.

The repeated postponement of the trial was the result of actions aimed
solely at getting the charges dropped, according to Dr. Julio Berríos, one
of the four prosecuting attorneys.

The Court session includes evidence from Carlos Barés, head of the National
Police; his counterpart Alejandro Garúz of the Presidential Guard; and
chief of Panamanian Intelligence, Pablo Quintero Luna.

Berríos, who is also an academic at the University of Panama, affirms that
"the court has the necessary elements," and that there could be "no further
delay maneuvers to avoid justice."

"There are 43 volumes and thousands of pages on the trial proceedings in
the hands of justice," he said.

Posadas lawyer, an ex-convict of Panamanian justice, Rogelio Cruz, has
called for the release of his client and accomplices on several occasions
without success.

On Saturday, Cruz reported that the Organization of American States and the
Inter-American Human Rights Commission were monitoring the case.

The prosecution evidence also includes explosives seized by Panamanian
investigators, statements by other persons implicated, maps of the
university in the possession of the accused, and a written declaration to
be issued along with a call for an uprising by the Cuban people upon Fidel
Castros death.

There is also a document titled "David vs. Goliath" containing the plot,
operation and details to be carried out by the commando, Berríos informed
Prensa Latina.

Other defendants include César Matamoros, also of Cuban origin, and
Panamanian José Manuel Hurtado, who acted as driver for the terrorist
group. Hurtado confessed to having asked Matamoros what to do with the
suitcase packed with explosives after he heard on the radio that Posada,
Novo Sampol, Remón and Jiménez Escobedo had been arrested in a Panama
hotel.

According to Hurtado, Matamoros told him to take it away and bury it.

Posada and the other defendants analyzed the Cuban presidents route from
Tocumen Airport to the Caesar Park Hotel, and they decided on the Paraninfo
as the location for the attempt, according to judicial sources.

"The Public Ministrys opinion is that they should be convicted," Berríos
said. "There is sufficient material evidence and very valuable
circumstantial evidence: they way they entered Panama with false documents,
the locating devices they used at the border and the explosives, which were
finally found in the Las Mañanitas district in the outskirts of the
capital."

Cuban authorities attribute a whole range of actions against the island to
Posada, Novo Sampol, Remón and Jiménez Escobedo, including the mid-flight
sabotage of a Cuban airliner in 1976 that killed all 73 persons on board,
and the murder of several Cuban diplomats.

Relatives of the victims of some of those actions are to attend the hearing
as observers.

The seized explosives include 45 kilograms*  of C-4, and other quantities
of PETN and RTX explosives, all of them military supplies and unavailable
in Panama, which is part of the evidence.

[45 kilograms is about 100 pounds, a lot of plastic explosive.]

From:   Jane Franklin, JBFranklins


RE:     WHO ARE THESE TERRORISTS ON TRIAL IN PANAMA?

         When I wrote CUBA AND THE UNITED STATES:  A CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY,
I could not possibly follow the terrorist careers of every one of the
hundreds of Cuban-American terrorists unleashed against Cuba from the
United States; so I chose several whose terrorism I pursued.  Among those
are three of the four terrorists now on trial in Panama:  Luis Posada
Carriles, Pedro Remon, and Guillermo Novo.  To give a sense of the kind of
terrorists involved here, I'll offer a few examples of their activities.
Posada's murderous campaign alone could fill a book.  It is important to
remember that Posada told New York Times reporters (see July 12-13, 1998,
front-page articles) that leaders of the Cuban American National Foundation
(CANF) "discreetly financed his operations."  He said that CANF chairman
Jorge Mas Canosa (who died in 1997) "personally supervised the flow of
money and logistical support."
         After the defeat at the Bay of Pigs, Posada trained at Fort
Benning, Georgia, along with Felix Rodriguez and Jorge Mas Canosa.  In 1976
(when the first George Bush headed the CIA), Posada joined CORU, an
umbrella group founded that year by Orlando Bosch and aimed at terrorist
actions against Cuba and against countries and individuals considered
friendly to Cuba.  Along with Bosch, Posada has been charged with
masterminding the plot that blew up a Cubana Airlines passenger jet,
killing all 73 people aboard on October 6, 1976.   After escaping from the
Venezuelan prison where he was held for years, he went to El Salvador to
work with Felix Rodriguez in covert operations against the Sandinista
government of Nicaragua.  (Rodriguez reported directly to Oliver North in
the Reagan White House.)  Posada boasted to the Times reporters that he
masterminded the 1997 bombing campaign in Havana that led to the death of
an Italian (whose father is attending the trial in Panama City along with
other relatives of these terrorists' victims).  Posada has reportedly been
involved with several plots to assassinate President Fidel Castro.
         Pedro Remon was a member of OMEGA 7, one of the most murderous
Cuban-American groups based in the United States.  He was the triggerman in
the murders of both Eulalio Jose Negrin, a Cuban-American who was active in
a promoting better relations with Cuba and therefore was gunned down in
front of his nine-year-old son in New Jersey in 1979, and Felix Garcia
Rodriguez, a UN diplomat shot through his car window as he waited at a red
light in Queens in 1980.   His other terrorism includes an attempt to kill
Cuban UN Ambassador Raul Roa Kouri in 1980 and setting off a bomb at Cuba's
UN Mission.  He served a few years in prison.
         Guillermo Novo was also a member of OMEGA 7.  Early in his
terrorist career, he was part of the team that fired a bazooka at the
United Nations while Che Guevara was speaking to the General Assembly.  He
was also involved with the 1976 assassinations of Orlando Letelier, who had
been part of Salvador Allende's administration in Chile, and Ronni Moffitt,
an aide, in Washington, DC.  Novo served a short time in prison and then
was rewarded with a position in CANF's Information Commission.
         Gaspar Jimenez, the fourth terrorist now being tried, murdered a
Cuban official in Mexico and served six years.  He was indicted for the
1976 car bombing that blew off the legs of Cuban-American Emilio Milian,
who had dared to criticize terrorism by rightwing Cubans in Florida, but
the charges were dropped.  Posada told the Times reporters that Jimenez was
one of the Cubans who delivered cash from CANF supporters to Posada.
         These four terrorists were arrested in November 2000 because Cubans
had gathered evidence of their plan to assassinate President Castro as he
spoke in an  auditorium where hundreds of people would have been blown up
with the Cuban leader.  Cuba presented the evidence to Panamanian
authorities.  Without that evidence, there would have been horrible deaths
and casualties.
         For almost three-and-a-half years Posada's supporters have tried to
have the charges dropped.  As it is, the charges have been softened:
possession of explosives (C-4 plastic and others); illegal association in
order to commit a crime;  falsification of documents (passports, etc.);
danger to public safety.
         There are two major considerations for us here.  First, since U.S.
authorities do nothing to stop this kind of terrorism, Cuba must have
agents who are able to discover these plots wherever they are being
hatched; the Cuban Five, now imprisoned in far-flung cells of the U.S.
prison system, were trying to protect Cubans and other people from rampant
terrorism.  Secondly, Cuba has been under siege since 1959 and cannot
afford the luxury of a Fifth Column financed and encouraged by the very
forces that are imposing the State of Siege.
         The following article about the trial comes from Granma.
Siempre,
Jane Franklin
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jbfranklins


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