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<h1><font size=4><b>The Posada Trial Takes a Historic
Turn</b></font></h1><font size=3>Peter Kornbluh | February 9,
2011<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.”<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br>
<hr>
<b>Source URL:</b>
<a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/158439/posada-trial-takes-historic-turn">
http://www.thenation.com/article/158439/posada-trial-takes-historic-turn</a>
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