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<font size=3>From GRANMA, Havana, March 15, 2004<br><br>
Trial of terrorists who attempted to kill Fidel Castro begins<br><br>
PANAMA, March 15 (PL)The trial of four terrorists who plotted to<br>
assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro here begins today at the
Maritime<br>
Court offices, protected by security that includes 100 police
officers,<br>
including anti-explosives experts.<br><br>
The hearing against Luis Posada Carriles and the other three terrorists
who<br>
attempted to kill the Cuban president is set to last until March 19,
as<br>
convened by Judge José A. Hoo Justiniano, the fifth Criminal Circuit
judge.<br>
A previous hearing against Posada and his accomplices Guillermo
Novo<br>
Sampol, Pedro Remón Rodríguez and Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo all of
Cuban<br>
origin, was suspended in November 2003, and then again last
January.<br><br>
The attempt on Fidel Castro was to take place during an event at
the<br>
University of Panama Paraninfo Amphitheater, where the Cuban
president<br>
spoke to some 2,000 students and guests in November 2000.<br><br>
The repeated postponement of the trial was the result of actions
aimed<br>
solely at getting the charges dropped, according to Dr. Julio Berríos,
one<br>
of the four prosecuting attorneys.<br><br>
The Court session includes evidence from Carlos Barés, head of the
National<br>
Police; his counterpart Alejandro Garúz of the Presidential Guard;
and<br>
chief of Panamanian Intelligence, Pablo Quintero Luna.<br><br>
Berríos, who is also an academic at the University of Panama, affirms
that<br>
"the court has the necessary elements," and that there could be
"no further<br>
delay maneuvers to avoid justice."<br><br>
"There are 43 volumes and thousands of pages on the trial
proceedings in<br>
the hands of justice," he said.<br><br>
Posadas lawyer, an ex-convict of Panamanian justice, Rogelio Cruz,
has<br>
called for the release of his client and accomplices on several
occasions<br>
without success.<br><br>
On Saturday, Cruz reported that the Organization of American States and
the<br>
Inter-American Human Rights Commission were monitoring the
case.<br><br>
The prosecution evidence also includes explosives seized by
Panamanian<br>
investigators, statements by other persons implicated, maps of the<br>
university in the possession of the accused, and a written declaration
to<br>
be issued along with a call for an uprising by the Cuban people upon
Fidel<br>
Castros death.<br><br>
There is also a document titled "David vs. Goliath" containing
the plot,<br>
operation and details to be carried out by the commando, Berríos
informed<br>
Prensa Latina.<br><br>
Other defendants include César Matamoros, also of Cuban origin, and<br>
Panamanian José Manuel Hurtado, who acted as driver for the
terrorist<br>
group. Hurtado confessed to having asked Matamoros what to do with
the<br>
suitcase packed with explosives after he heard on the radio that
Posada,<br>
Novo Sampol, Remón and Jiménez Escobedo had been arrested in a
Panama<br>
hotel.<br><br>
According to Hurtado, Matamoros told him to take it away and bury
it.<br><br>
Posada and the other defendants analyzed the Cuban presidents route
from<br>
Tocumen Airport to the Caesar Park Hotel, and they decided on the
Paraninfo<br>
as the location for the attempt, according to judicial sources.<br><br>
"The Public Ministrys opinion is that they should be
convicted," Berríos<br>
said. "There is sufficient material evidence and very valuable<br>
circumstantial evidence: they way they entered Panama with false
documents,<br>
the locating devices they used at the border and the explosives, which
were<br>
finally found in the Las Mañanitas district in the outskirts of the<br>
capital."<br><br>
Cuban authorities attribute a whole range of actions against the island
to<br>
Posada, Novo Sampol, Remón and Jiménez Escobedo, including the
mid-flight<br>
sabotage of a Cuban airliner in 1976 that killed all 73 persons on
board,<br>
and the murder of several Cuban diplomats.<br><br>
Relatives of the victims of some of those actions are to attend the
hearing<br>
as observers.<br><br>
The seized explosives include 45 kilograms* of C-4, and other
quantities<br>
of PETN and RTX explosives, all of them military supplies and
unavailable<br>
in Panama, which is part of the evidence.<br><br>
[45 kilograms is about 100 pounds, a lot of plastic explosive.]<br><br>
From: Jane Franklin, JBFranklins<br><br>
<br>
RE: WHO ARE THESE TERRORISTS ON TRIAL IN
PANAMA?<br><br>
When I wrote CUBA AND THE
UNITED STATES: A CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY,<br>
I could not possibly follow the terrorist careers of every one of
the<br>
hundreds of Cuban-American terrorists unleashed against Cuba from
the<br>
United States; so I chose several whose terrorism I pursued. Among
those<br>
are three of the four terrorists now on trial in Panama: Luis
Posada<br>
Carriles, Pedro Remon, and Guillermo Novo. To give a sense of the
kind of<br>
terrorists involved here, I'll offer a few examples of their
activities.<br>
Posada's murderous campaign alone could fill a book. It is
important to<br>
remember that Posada told New York Times reporters (see July 12-13,
1998,<br>
front-page articles) that leaders of the Cuban American National
Foundation<br>
(CANF) "discreetly financed his operations." He said that
CANF chairman<br>
Jorge Mas Canosa (who died in 1997) "personally supervised the flow
of<br>
money and logistical support."<br>
After the defeat at the Bay of
Pigs, Posada trained at Fort<br>
Benning, Georgia, along with Felix Rodriguez and Jorge Mas Canosa.
In 1976<br>
(when the first George Bush headed the CIA), Posada joined CORU, an<br>
umbrella group founded that year by Orlando Bosch and aimed at
terrorist<br>
actions against Cuba and against countries and individuals
considered<br>
friendly to Cuba. Along with Bosch, Posada has been charged
with<br>
masterminding the plot that blew up a Cubana Airlines passenger
jet,<br>
killing all 73 people aboard on October 6, 1976. After
escaping from the<br>
Venezuelan prison where he was held for years, he went to El Salvador
to<br>
work with Felix Rodriguez in covert operations against the
Sandinista<br>
government of Nicaragua. (Rodriguez reported directly to Oliver
North in<br>
the Reagan White House.) Posada boasted to the Times reporters that
he<br>
masterminded the 1997 bombing campaign in Havana that led to the death
of<br>
an Italian (whose father is attending the trial in Panama City along
with<br>
other relatives of these terrorists' victims). Posada has
reportedly been<br>
involved with several plots to assassinate President Fidel Castro.<br>
Pedro Remon was a member of
OMEGA 7, one of the most murderous<br>
Cuban-American groups based in the United States. He was the
triggerman in<br>
the murders of both Eulalio Jose Negrin, a Cuban-American who was active
in<br>
a promoting better relations with Cuba and therefore was gunned down
in<br>
front of his nine-year-old son in New Jersey in 1979, and Felix
Garcia<br>
Rodriguez, a UN diplomat shot through his car window as he waited at a
red<br>
light in Queens in 1980. His other terrorism includes an
attempt to kill<br>
Cuban UN Ambassador Raul Roa Kouri in 1980 and setting off a bomb at
Cuba's<br>
UN Mission. He served a few years in prison.<br>
Guillermo Novo was also a
member of OMEGA 7. Early in his<br>
terrorist career, he was part of the team that fired a bazooka at
the<br>
United Nations while Che Guevara was speaking to the General
Assembly. He<br>
was also involved with the 1976 assassinations of Orlando Letelier, who
had<br>
been part of Salvador Allende's administration in Chile, and Ronni
Moffitt,<br>
an aide, in Washington, DC. Novo served a short time in prison and
then<br>
was rewarded with a position in CANF's Information Commission.<br>
Gaspar Jimenez, the fourth
terrorist now being tried, murdered a<br>
Cuban official in Mexico and served six years. He was indicted for
the<br>
1976 car bombing that blew off the legs of Cuban-American Emilio
Milian,<br>
who had dared to criticize terrorism by rightwing Cubans in Florida,
but<br>
the charges were dropped. Posada told the Times reporters that
Jimenez was<br>
one of the Cubans who delivered cash from CANF supporters to
Posada.<br>
These four terrorists were
arrested in November 2000 because Cubans<br>
had gathered evidence of their plan to assassinate President Castro as
he<br>
spoke in an auditorium where hundreds of people would have been
blown up<br>
with the Cuban leader. Cuba presented the evidence to
Panamanian<br>
authorities. Without that evidence, there would have been horrible
deaths<br>
and casualties.<br>
For almost three-and-a-half
years Posada's supporters have tried to<br>
have the charges dropped. As it is, the charges have been
softened:<br>
possession of explosives (C-4 plastic and others); illegal association
in<br>
order to commit a crime; falsification of documents (passports,
etc.);<br>
danger to public safety.<br>
There are two major
considerations for us here. First, since U.S.<br>
authorities do nothing to stop this kind of terrorism, Cuba must
have<br>
agents who are able to discover these plots wherever they are being<br>
hatched; the Cuban Five, now imprisoned in far-flung cells of the
U.S.<br>
prison system, were trying to protect Cubans and other people from
rampant<br>
terrorism. Secondly, Cuba has been under siege since 1959 and
cannot<br>
afford the luxury of a Fifth Column financed and encouraged by the
very<br>
forces that are imposing the State of Siege.<br>
The following article about
the trial comes from Granma.<br>
Siempre,<br>
Jane Franklin<br>
<a href="http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jbfranklins" eudora="autourl">http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jbfranklins</a><br><br>
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