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Venezuela to insist on Posada’s
extradition if the U.S. deports him to another
country
CARACAS—Venezuela is to insist on its extradition
application for terrorist Luis Posada Carriles,
sought for his participation in the sabotage of a
Cuban airliner, if the United States refuses to hand
him over and deports him to another country.
If the U.S. government deports him to a third
country, Venezuela will ask that country’s
government for his extradition, Vice President José
Vicente Rangel said on Friday, September 30.
A
U.S. immigration judge decided on September 26 not
to deport Posada Carriles, 77, to Venezuela.
Venezuela is seeking Posada, who was born in Cuba
and holds Venezuelan citizenship, and is a old
collaborator of the CIA, to legally try him for the
crimes of homicide and treason, for having planned
in Caracas the mid-flight explosion of a Cubana
Airlines passenger plane in 1976 that killed all 73
people aboard.
“Posada participated in terrorist activities in
various countries in the region, in Central America
and other places, with the support of the U.S.
government,” Rangel said.
“The Bush administration is guilty of double talk
on terrorism,” he added.
President Hugo Chávez said on Friday during a
meeting of South American leaders that Posada
Carriles is “the Osama bin Laden of Latin America,”
and that Washington is “a government that protects
terrorists.”
Rangel spoke at the launching of a new edition of
the book Pusimos la bomba... íy qué?' (We
placed the bomb...so what?) by Venezuelan journalist
Alicia Herrera, who interviewed the two men who
spent 20 years in prison for their participation in
that action.
The book is based on interviews in the late 1970s
with Hernán Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, former
employees of Posada Carriles’ private security firm
in Caracas.
Ricardo admits in the book to having placed an
explosive device in a bathroom on the plane, and
Lugo specifies that both of them worked for Posada.
Herrera, 62, affirmed during the launch of her book
that previous Venezuelan governments concealed
evidence linking Posasa Carriles with the explosion
and initially tried to prohibit its circulation.
“The pressure was immense, and eventually I had to
move to another country because the information I
was able to collect showed that the Carlos Andrés
Pérez government was involved, and was trying to
protect Posada,” Herrera affirms.
The author emphasized that she moved to Mexico and
then to the United States, and is now planning to
return to Venezuela.
A
Venezuelan military court found Posada Carriles
guilty of the plane sabotage, but then the decision
was overturned. The prisoner escaped from a
Venezuelan jail in 1985 before a civil trial was
completed. (AP)
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