[News] The Posada Trial Takes a Historic Turn

[Anti-Imperialist News]

The Posada Trial Takes a Historic Turn

Peter Kornbluh | February 9, 2011

February 9­In El Paso, Texas, the perjury trial 
of the infamous violent Cuban exile Luis Posada 
Carriles took a historic turn today. For the 
first time in a long dramatic history dominated 
by hostility and aggression, US government 
prosecutors formally presented evidence of 
terrorism committed against Cuba in a court of 
law­against one of its own former CIA operatives. 
Even more extraordinary, the evidence comes in 
the form of a Cuban Ministry of Interior 
investigator explaining photographs and police 
reports to the jury relating to a series of 
explosions in Havana hotels, including the Hotel 
Copacabana which killed a young Italian 
businessman Fabio Di Celmo on September 4, 1997. 
“Cuba Cooperating in US case against ex-CIA 
agent,” reads tomorrow’s news headlines.

The godfather of anti-Castro Cuban violence over 
the last four decades, Posada is being prosecuted 
for immigration fraud relating to how he 
illegally entered the United States in March 
2005. But the Obama Justice Department added 
three counts of perjury relating to a far more 
important crime: Posada’s role in a series of 
seven bombings that rocked Havana hotels and 
other tourist sites between April and September 
1997.  “The defendant is alleged to have lied 
about his involvement in planning the bombings in 
Havana,” state court filings by the Justice 
Department’s Counterterrorism Division. “The 
United States intends to prove that the bombings in Cuba actually occurred.”

This week marks the first time that concrete 
evidence is being presented to the jury on how 
those bombings took place and the damage they 
wrought.  The jury has been shown photographs 
taken by Cuban authorities of the bloodstained 
floor of the hotel.  Portions of a Cuban 
investigative study, known as the “Volcan 
report,” which discusses the cause of, and 
circumstances surrounding Fabio Di Celmo’s death, 
are due to be introduced as evidence during the 
testimony of Major Roberto Hernandez Caballero­he 
was Cuba’s lead detective on the hotel bombing 
investigation­who took the stand today.

The importance of this moment in US-Cuban 
relations cannot be overstated. Posada was 
originally trained in demolitions by the US 
military and put on the CIA payroll in 1965 to 
train and supervise other exile groups in 
sabotage, explosives and violent 
operations.  Declassified CIA and FBI 
intelligence reports, posted on the website of 
the National Security Archive, identify him as a 
mastermind of a mid-air bombing of a Cuban 
jetliner that took the lives of all 73 men, women 
and children on board in October 1976. Most 
recently, Posada was arrested in Panama with a 
carload of C-4 and dynamite in what he admitted 
to U.S. officials was a plot to assassinate Fidel 
Castro at the Ibero-American summit in November 
2000.  By prosecuting him on charges related to 
his acts of terrorism, even if they are only 
perjury charges, the United States is effectively 
repudiating a dark past that its own Cold War 
officials and covert operatives set in motion.

For Cuba, where Posada is public enemy number 
one, having its day in court is also a turning 
point in a longstanding effort to collaborate 
with US officials to put Posada behind bars. 
Cuban authorities have been forced to set aside 
their understandable suspicion that the trial is 
for all for show, not for justice.  (After all, 
how can the United States, which purports to be 
the leader in the campaign to fight international 
terrorism, prosecute one of the world’s most 
infamous terrorists only on perjury charges?) 
Since Posada popped up in Miami some six years 
ago, Cuban authorities have repeatedly welcomed 
teams of FBI investigators and Justice Department 
lawyers to Havana. They turned over almost 1,500 
pages of investigative records for use in the 
trial and made Posada’s accomplices, now in 
prison in Cuba, available for interrogation.  And 
they have sent three witnesses to El Paso­another 
police investigator and a forensic doctor to 
present the autopsy of the murdered Italian to 
the jury­who have been waiting for over a week to testify.

If this unprecedented level of Cuban judicial 
support helps convict the 82-year old Posada and 
he spends the rest of his natural life behind 
bars, the United States and Cuba will have 
arrived at a new level of cooperation and 
collaboration on fighting terrorism.  More 
importantly, together Washington and Havana will 
have turned a page on the dark history of 
US-sponsored violence against the Cuban 
revolution and Washington can begin what 
President Obama refers to as “a new chapter” in US relations with Cuba.

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Source URL: 
<http://www.thenation.com/article/158439/posada-trial-takes-historic-turn>http://www.thenation.com/article/158439/posada-trial-takes-historic-turn




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