Cuba condemns the shameless decision to release terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and singles out the US Government as the only one responsible for this ruthless and infamous act seeking to buy the silence of the terrorist on his crimes at the service of the CIA, particularly when Bush Sr. was its Director-General.

With this decision, the US Government has ignored the clamor that has arisen all around the world, even within the United States, against the impunity and the political manipulation entailed by this action.

This decision is an outrage to the Cuban people and to the nations that lost 73 of its sons and daughters in the heinous 1976 attack that blew up a civilian Cubana de Aviación aircraft off the coast of Barbados.

This decision is an outrage to the people of the United States and an emphatic denial to the alleged "war on terror" declared by the Government of President George W. Bush.

For the Government of the United States it would have sufficed to certify the terrorist nature of Luis Posada Carriles in order to prevent his release, and in conformity with Section 412 of the Patriot Act of the United States, it could have acknowledged that "his release will threaten the national security of the United States or the safety of the community or any person."

The Government of the United States would have also been able to enforce those regulations allowing the Immigration and Naturalization Service to retain a non-admissible alien in US territory that is subject to deportation. For that, it would have sufficed if the US authorities had concluded that Posada Carriles is a risk to the community or that releasing him would entail risk of flight.

Why did the Government of the United States allow the terrorist to enter US soil freely despite the warnings expressed by President Fidel Castro?

Why did the US Government protect him during the months that he stayed in its territory illegally?

Why, if it had all the elements to that end, did it restrict itself, last 11 January, to charge him with misdemeanor and other strictly migration-oriented issues and not with what he is really all about: murder?

Why is he released when judge Kathleen Cardone herself, in her ruling of 6 April that ordered the release of the terrorist, recognized that he is accused "…of being involved in or associated with some of the most infamous events of the twentieth century (…) Some of these acts include the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Iran-Contra scandal, the mid-air explosion of Cubana de Aviación flight 455, the 1997 bombs planted in tourist resorts in Havana and, according to some conspiracy theoreticians, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy"?

Why is the Immigration and Naturalization Service of the Homeland Security Department of the United States not using now the mechanisms that it has available to hold the terrorist in prison, with the unquestionable argument, already used by the US Attorney-General’s Office on a date as recent as 19 March, that if released there is risk of flight?

Why has the Government of the United States disregarded the request for extradition submitted, with all the rigueur requirements, by the Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela?

How come is the most notorious terrorist on this hemisphere now released while five Cuban youths are still ruthlessly imprisoned for the sole crime of fighting terrorism?

For Cuba, there is a clear answer. The terrorist’s release has been concocted by the White House as compensation for Posada Carriles not to reveal what he knows, not to talk about the countless secrets he keeps on his protracted period as an agent of the US special services, when he was involved in Operation Condor, in the dirty war against Cuba, against Nicaragua and against other peoples of the world.

Full responsibility for the release of the terrorist and for the consequences stemming from it would be directly attributed to the US Government and, particularly, to the President of that country.

Even now, after his release, the US Government has all the information and the legal mechanisms to apprehend him again. It just takes the political will to wage a serious fight on terror and recall that, according to President Bush, "…if you provide haven for a terrorist, if you support a terrorist, if you feed a terrorist, you will be as guilty as the terrorists."