New York Times states that
Posada Carriles case is definitely putting the U.S. to the test

By TIM WEINER

Published: New York Times, May 9, 2005

MIAMI, May 5 - From the United States through Latin America and the Caribbean, Luis Posada Carriles has spent 45 years fighting a violent, losing battle to overthrow Fidel Castro. Now he may have nowhere to hide but here.

Mr. Posada, a Cuban exile, has long been a symbol for the armed anti-Castro movement in the United States.

He remains a prime suspect in the bombing of a Cuban commercial airliner that killed 73 people in 1976. He has admitted to plotting attacks that damaged tourist spots in Havana and killed an Italian visitor there in 1997. He was convicted in Panama in a 2000 bomb plot against Mr. Castro. He is no longer welcome in his old Latin America haunts.

Mr. Posada, 77, sneaked back into Florida six weeks ago in an effort to seek political asylum for having served as a cold war soldier on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1960's, his lawyer, Eduardo Soto, said at a news conference last month.

But the government of Venezuela wants to extradite and retry him for the Cuban airline bombing. Mr. Posada was involved "up to his eyeballs" in planning the attack, said Carter Cornick, a retired counterterrorism specialist for the Federal Bureau of Investigation who investigated Mr. Posada's role in that case.

A newly declassified 1976 F.B.I. document places Mr. Posada, who had been a senior Venezuelan intelligence officer, at two meetings where the bombing was planned.

As "the author or accomplice of homicide," Venezuela's Supreme Court said Tuesday, "he must be extradited and judged."

The United States government has no plan yet in place for handling the

extradition request, according to spokesmen for several agencies. Roger F.

Noriega, the top State Department official for Western Hemisphere affairs, said he did not even know whether Mr. Posada was in the country. In fact, Mr. Posada has not been seen in public, and his lawyer did not return repeated telephone calls seeking to confirm his presence.

Mr. Posada's case could create tension between the politics of the global war on terrorism and the ghosts of the cold war on communism. If Mr. Posada has indeed illegally entered the United States, the Bush administration has three choices: granting him asylum; jailing him for illegal entry; or granting Venezuela's request for extradition.

A grant of asylum could invite charges that the Bush administration is

compromising its principle that no nation should harbor suspected terrorists.

But to turn Mr. Posada away could provoke political wrath in the conservative Cuban-American communities of South Florida, deep sources of support and campaign money for President Bush and his brother Jeb, the state's governor.

To jail Mr. Posada would be a political bonanza for Mr. Castro, who has railed against him in recent speeches, calling him the worst terrorist in the Western Hemisphere.

To allow his extradition would hand a victory to President Hugo Chávez of

Venezuela, Mr. Castro's closest ally in Latin America and no friend to President Bush.

"As a Cuban, as a freedom fighter myself, I believe he should be granted

asylum," said Marcelino Miyares, a veteran of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and president of the Christian Democratic Party of Cuba, which is based in Miami.

"But it's a no-win situation for the United States government."

Orlando Bosch, the most prominent face of the violent anti-Castro wing in

Florida, said in an interview broadcast on Tuesday in Miami that he had spoken by telephone with Mr. Posada, who, "as everybody knows, is here."

Mr. Bosch, a longtime ally of Mr. Posada's, presented a similar problem for the United States in 1989, when the Justice Department moved to deport him despite resistance from Miami's Cuban-Americans.

The Justice Department called Mr. Bosch "a terrorist, unfettered by laws or

human decency, threatening and inflicting violence without regard to the

identity of his victims," in the words of Joe D. Whitley, then an associate

United States attorney general. Mr. Whitley added: "The United States cannot tolerate the inherent inhumanity of terrorism as a way of settling disputes.

Appeasement of those who would use force will only breed more terrorists. We must look on terrorism as a universal evil, even if it is directed toward those with whom we have no political sympathy."

Jose Goitia/Associated Press In Panama in 2000, Fidel Castro displayed a photograph of Luis Posada Carriles.

He calls Mr. Posada the worst terrorist in the hemisphere.

Teresita Chavarria/Agence France-Presse--Getty Images Luis Posada Carriles in prison in Panama in May 2003.