[News] Fidel calls mass march to demand Posada's arrest

[News at freedomarchives.org]

Fidel Castro Calls for March on US Interests Section in Havana to Demand
Arrest of Terrorist Posada Carriles

Havana, May 10 (RHC-Late Bulletin)-Cuban President Fidel Castro spoke to the
nation from the International Convention Center in Havana on Tuesday night,
further discussing the presence of terrorist Luis Posada Carriles on US soil
and calling for a march on the US Interests Section in Havana next Tuesday.

Posada Carriles, who is wanted in both Cuba and Venezuela for the bombing of
a Cuban airliner with the loss of life of all on board, recently requested
political asylum in the United States, but the Bush administration continues
to deny his existence in Miami.

The Cuban leader began by condemning the manipulations of the Bush
administration which, he said, is paying back the extreme right wing in
Florida for ensuring the victory of the US president in the fraudulent
elections of 2000. The pay-back is the White House protection of its own -
people like Posada Carriles.

Fidel Castro then commented on an article which appeared in The New York
Times on Monday which questioned the US government's approach to the Posada
Carriles case as defining its real policy on terrorism.

The Cuban president focused on part of the article which indicated that
Posada Carriles was present at a meeting in Santo Domingo in June of 1976 in
which two bombing plots were discussed - one, which took place on Sept. 21,
1976, in the heart of Washington, was the assassination of the former
foreign minister of Chile, Orlando Letelier, along with his US aid, Ronni
Moffitt. The other was the bombing of the Cuban airliner on October 6th - 15
days later - in the worst terrorist attack in Cuban history.

Referring to the comments of Posada Carriles' friends who report that the
terrorist is quietly reading and painting at a house in Miami while awaiting
a response to his request for asylum, Fidel Castro commented what a
cultivated man he was. Such cultivated activity admitted by Posada Carriles
included planting bombs seven years ago in Cuban hotels, one of which killed
an Italian visitor.

In November 2000, Posada Carriles travelled to Panama, accompanied by
Guillermo Novo, who had been convicted in the Letelier bombing but had been
acquitted on appeal; Gaspar Jiménez, convicted of attempting to kidnap a
Cuban diplomat in Mexico in 1977; and Pedro Remón, convicted of the
attempted murder of Cuba's ambassador to the United Nations in 1980. They
were all convicted of plotting to assassinate Fidel Castro in Panama during
an international summit. The four were subsequently pardoned by then
Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso who has extensive links with the Miami
right-wing. All four men now walk free in Miami.

Such is their history, these people might have invented terrorism, commented
the Cuban leader. We will show them what the people of Cuba think. Let us
all march next Tuesday here in Havana before the US Interests Section. We
must demand punishment for these terrorists in the United States, called
Fidel Castro. We must protest terrorism and call for justice and an end to
the war in Iraq. We must prevent further fascist attacks on this 60th
anniversary of the defeat of Nazi fascism in Europe. He received a standing
ovation by all those present in the Convention Center.

Fidel Castro then went over an article recently written by Canadian
journalist Jean-Guy Allard who interviewed a Dutch investigator into the
J.F. Kennedy assassination and placed Luis Posada Carriles at Dealy Plaza in
Dallas at the exact time that Kennedy was shot dead on November 22, 1963.
Who knows what role Posada Carriles had in the Kennedy assassination,
commented the Cuban president. The Cuban-born terrorist has been involved in
so many clandestine acts of kidnappings, bombings, torture and assassination
that it is highly likely he had some part in the killing of the US
president.

There are other links in this case, said the Cuban leader. Faced with the
energetic opposition of the US Department of Justice, the current US
president's father pardoned Posada Carriles' partner, the terrorist Orlando
Bosch in 1990. Bosch, aside from also being condemned by Venezuela for the
bombing of the Cuban airliner in 1976, was also almost certainly involved in
the Kennedy assassination according to the Dutch investigator Win Dankbaar.
Kennedy was never forgiven by the right-wing Cuban exile community for his
lack of support for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961.

This is very important for us to expose, concluded Fidel Castro, for us and
for all of Latin America. The threat is there. We must respond to it.

Quoting Cuba's national hero, Jose Marti, Fidel Castro ended by reminding
Cubans that "A rampart made of ideas is stronger than one made of stone".

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