[News] Fidel Castro - The terrorist walks

[Anti-Imperialist News]

A Brutal Reply
The Terrorist Walks
By FIDEL CASTRO

George W. Bush is undoubtedly the most genuine representative of a  
system of terror forced on the world by the technological, economic  
and political superiority of the most powerful country known to this  
planet. For this reason, we share the tragedy of the American people  
and their ethical values. The instructions for the verdict issued by  
Judge Kathleen Cardone, of the El Paso Federal Court last Friday,  
granting Luis Posada Carriles freedom on bail, could only have come  
from the White House.

It was President Bush himself who ignored at all times the criminal  
and terrorist nature of the defendant who was protected with a simple  
accusation of immigration violation leveled at him. The reply is  
brutal. The government of the United States and its most  
representative institutions had already decided to release the monster.

The backgrounds are well-known and reach far back. The people who  
trained him and ordered him to destroy a Cuban passenger plane in  
midair, with 73 athletes, students and other Cuban and foreign  
travelers on board, together with its dedicated crew; those who bought  
his freedom while the terrorist was held in prison in Venezuela, so  
that he could supply and practically conduct a dirty war against the  
people of Nicaragua, resulting in the loss of thousands of lives and  
the devastation of a country for decades to come; those who empowered  
him to smuggle with drugs and weapons making a mockery of the laws of  
Congress; those who collaborated with him to create the terrible  
Operation Condor and to internationalize terror; the same who brought  
torture, death and often the physical disappearance of hundreds of  
thousands of Latin Americans, could not possibly act any different.

Even though Bush's decision was to be expected, it is certainly no  
less humiliating for our people. Thanks to the revelations of "Por  
Esto!" a Mexican publication from the state of Quintana Roo later  
complemented by our own sources, Cuba knew with absolute precision how  
Posada Carriles entered from Central America, via Cancun, to the Isla  
Mujeres departing from there on board the Santrina, after the ship was  
inspected by the Mexican federal authorities, heading with other  
terrorists straight to Miami.

Denounced and publicly challenged with exact information on the  
matter, since April 15, 2005, it took the government of that country  
more than a month to arrest the terrorist, and a year and two months  
to admit that Luis Posada Carriles had entered through the Florida  
coast illegally on board the Santrina, a presumed school-ship licensed  
in the United States.

Not a single word is said of his countless victims, of the bombs he  
set off in tourist facilities in recent years, of his dozens of plans  
financed by the government of the United States to physically  
eliminate me.

It was not enough for Bush to offend the name of Cuba by installing a  
horrible torture center similar to Abu Ghraib on the territory  
illegally occupied in Guantánamo, horrifying the world with this  
procedure. The cruel actions of his predecessors seemed not enough for  
him. It was not enough to force a poor and underdeveloped country like  
Cuba to spend 100 billion dollars. To accuse Posada Carriles was  
tantamount to accusing himself.

Throughout almost half a century, everything was fair game against our  
small island lying 90 miles away from its coast, wanting to be  
independent. Florida saw the installation of the largest station for  
intelligence and subversion that ever existed on this planet.

It was not enough to send a mercenary invasion on the Bay of Pigs,  
costing us 176 dead and more than 300 wounded at a time when the few  
medical specialists they left us had no experience treating war wounds.

Earlier still, the French ship La Coubre carrying Belgian weapons and  
grenades for Cuba had exploded on the docks of Havana Harbor. The two  
well synchronized explosions caused the deaths of more than 100  
workers and wounded others as many of them tool part in the rescue  
attempts.

It was not enough to have the Missile Crisis of 1962, which brought  
the world to the brink of an all-consuming thermonuclear war, at a  
time when there were bombs 50 times more powerful than the ones  
dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It was not enough to introduce in our country viruses, bacteria and  
fungi to attack plantations and flocks; and incredible as it may seem,  
to attack human beings. Some of these pathogens came out of American  
laboratories and were brought to Cuba by well-known terrorists in the  
service of the United States government.

Add to all this the enormous injustice of keeping five heroic patriots  
imprisoned for supplying information about terrorist activities; they  
were condemned in a fraudulent manner to sentences that include two  
life sentences and they stoically withstand cruel mistreatment, each  
of them in a different prison.

Time and again the Cuban people have fearlessly faced the threat of  
death. They have demonstrated that with intelligence, using  
appropriate tactics and strategies, and especially preserving unity  
around their political and social vanguard, there can be no force on  
this earth capable of defeating them.

I think that the coming May Day celebration would be the ideal day for  
our people, --using the minimum of fuel and transportation-- to show  
their feelings to the workers and the poor of the world.

Havana, April 10, 2007.