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Mireya Moscoso’s shameful and repugnant action
BY ELSON CONCEPCION
PEREZ—Granma daily staff writer—
ONE of the most treacherous acts
in the history of relations between Cuba and Panama
was consumed today. A betrayal not only of the Cuban
people but also the very Panamanian people, affirmed
Ambassador Carlos Zamora during yesterday’s
Roundtable program, which discussed the shameful
pardon granted by the president of Panama, Mireya
Moscoso, to the four terrorists of Cuban origin
detained in her country.
Zamora highlighted the
demonstrations of solidarity, backing and support
for Cuba expressed by many sectors of Panamanian
society in recent years during the battles for
justice and to ensure a due sentence for those
terrorists.
The Panamanian people share with
Cuba the indignation at this prearranged action by
President Moscoso, he said.
The decree of pardon, signed at
night and announced at 7:00 in la Gaceta,
confirms a premeditated act.
And it is more fully confirmed by
the fact that in the same early hours of the morning
two private aircraft arrived in Panama to collect
the terrorists.
It is a vile act to gratify the
Miami mafia, to satisfy certain needs of the U.S.
government at this stage of the elections, in which
the state of Florida is extremely important in terms
of George W. Bush’s election aspirations.
Finally, Zamora noted that these
facts confirm something else: the incapacity of the
Panamanian state to stand up in this matter. The
pardon has prostituted respect for the law. It is a
monstrous action that flies in the face of the
popular will and international law. It is about
pardoning foreign terrorists who went to Panama to
kill Panamanians as well as President Fidel Castro.
After reading the Statement from
the Revolutionary Government, Randy Alonso, the
Roundtable moderator, spoke of various displays of
condemnation of the decision taken by Mireya Moscoso
and expressions of solidarity with Cuba in Panama in
the form of protests by trade union and student
organizations, and positions such as that of the
provincial governor of Colón, who announced his
resignation when he heard of the president’s
decision.
The Panamanian press is likewise
attacking Mireya Moscoso for this disgraceful pardon
that came before the legal proceedings had been
completed, given the appeal filed by the prosecution
lawyers.
On the phone from Panama,
prosecution lawyer Julio Berrios qualified the
pardon as a totally wrong action and against
international law.
He affirmed that President Mireya
Moscoso’s determination is a move to help Bush in
the upcoming elections in Florida, as requested by
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell during a visit
to that country.
Likewise in a phone
communication, Gabriel Pascual, vice president of
the Panamanian Solidarity with Cuba Secretariat,
stated that the student movement was on the streets
at dawn in response to the president’s action, is on
the alert and protesting, which it will continue
to do.
WHERE IS POSADA CARRILES?
Randy Alonso, journalists Bárbara
Betancourt and Reinaldo Taladrid spoke on the
departure – under the cover of night – of the four
pardoned terrorists for Miami, via a stopover in a
Central American country where Luis Posada Carriles
stayed behind.
It was recalled that this
terrorist has had his lair in El Salvador for years
and although the current president of that nation,
Elías Antonio Sacca, confirmed this Thursday that
Posada Carriles “has not entered and will not enter”
his country, it can be assumed that it was his
destination.
The other three killers, Gaspar
Jiménez Escobedo, Pedro Remón and Guillermo Novo
Sampoll, were welcomed in Miami by the
Cuban-American mafia, whose capos immediately
declared that it was a victory for democracy.
These are individuals who are
entering U.S. territory with bloodstained hands. An
immune entry of terrorists into the capital of
terrorism, Randy Alonso stated.
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