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Single Standard for Terrorists
Published: May 10, 2005
In the name of credibility,
consistency and justice for the 73 victims, Luis
Posada Carriles, the prime suspect in the 1976
bombing of a Cuban airliner, should not be granted
political asylum in the United States, which he is
thought to have entered illegally six weeks ago.
Instead, he should be arrested and extradited for
trial, not only for the airliner attack, but also
for other terrorist attacks that he has acknowledged
planning, including one in 1997 that killed an
Italian businessman visiting Havana.
Trying Mr. Posada in the
United States for those crimes would be difficult,
if not impossible, because they did not occur here
and the victims were not Americans. Unfortunately,
the Bush administration does not believe in the
International Criminal Court, which would otherwise
provide the ideal venue for his trial. That leaves
the unappealing option of honoring the extradition
request already made by Venezuela, Mr. Posada's main
base of operations during the period of the airliner
bombing. Since Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez,
is a close ally of Fidel Castro, that means Mr.
Posada could eventually end up on trial in Havana.
Mr. Bush has made a point of
his unwavering moral clarity on the issue of
harboring terrorists. But doing the morally clear
thing in this case risks retribution at the polls
from a ferociously anti-Castro Cuban-American
community that has helped swing Florida into the
Republican column in recent elections. One way out
may be to deport Mr. Posada to a European country
willing to try him or to send him on to the
International Criminal Court.
The one thing the Bush
administration cannot do is to shelter Mr. Posada by
granting him political asylum. Since 9/11, the
United States has become so zealous in its efforts
to exclude potential terrorists from American soil
that it has made it much harder for genuine refugees
fleeing deadly persecution in their home countries
to find sanctuary here. Washington would offend
American principles and set an extremely damaging
precedent by making a special exception for an
admitted terrorist.
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New York
Times states that Posada Carriles case is definitely
putting the U.S. to the test
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The arrogance
of the Bush government matches Posada’s |
