Interview with José Pertierra "Free the Cuban Five, Prosecute Posada"

Interview with José Pertierra

"Free the Cuban Five, Prosecute Posada"

by Gloria La Riva
Apr. 2, 2007

Q: José, what is your role in the case of Luis Posada Carriles?

A: I am the attorney for the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela with
respect to its petition for the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles
from the United States to Caracas.

Q: There is a hearing in El Paso tomorrow about Posada. Can you tell
us what it is regarding?

A: Posada Carriles is charged by the federal government for lying,
not for terrorism. The U.S. government is accusing Posada of
immigration fraud.

On Tuesday, there is a bond hearing to determine if Posada Carriles
will await his trial—to take place in May—in the streets of Miami or
in a New Mexico jail where he is currently. There is a woman who has
put up a commercial property which she has in Miami, with a value of
two million dollars. The judge will determine whether Posada, 1.) is
a person who would try to flee, and 2.) whether Posada is a danger to
the community.

That is the only thing that will be decided Tuesday, Apr. 3. The
trial on whether he lied or not in his naturalization petition, will
take place in May.

But it is obvious throughout all of Posada Carriles' history, that he
is a person who has a propensity to escape or flee. He is already a
fugitive from justice. He escaped from a prison in Venezuela while
facing 73 homicide charges against him. There is now an order for his
arrest in Venezuela, for those 73 murder charges and he is a fugitive
from justice.

In spite of the extradition petition that the Venezuelan government
presented in June 2005, almost two years ago, in spite of the fact
that he is a fugitive in Venezuela after escaping from a Venezuelan
prison in 1985—with the help of his accomplices in Miami, in spite of
the 73 counts of first-degree murder for the 73 people who were on
board the Cubana Airlines passenger plane, despite all this, the
United States:

First, refused to charge Luis Posada Carriles with being a terrorist.

Second, it has not attended to the extradition petition that
Venezuela has presented.

Third, the government issued a simple immigration violation charge
against him, accusing him of having entered the country illegally
through the border with Mexico.

And upon the conclusion of that immigration violation procedure, they
have charged him with lying. It is a felony to lie to a U.S.
official, and Posada Carriles did it when he alleged that he was a
U.S. citizen and lied about how he entered. He said that he had
entered without documentation through the border when in reality he
entered Miami in 2005 on a boat named Santrina.

This is an individual who has a history of violence against
defenseless civilians. He is accused of bombing a plane with 73
passengers. He is accused of murdering dozens of political prisoners
in cold blood in Venezuela in the 1970s, when he was head of special
operations in the intelligence services of Venezuela, called the
DISIP. He is a person who collaborated with the bloodiest forces in
Central America, specifically the paramilitaries in El Salvador,
Guatemala and Honduras.

This man was key in the operation, the scandal later called Iran-
Contra, which gave arms and technical assistance to the Nicaraguan
contras, who committed so many human rights violations.

Posada was convicted in a trial in Panama for conspiring to bomb an
auditorium with C-4 explosives in the University of Panama, which
would have been full of Panamanian students listening to a speech
that the Cuban President Fidel Castro was going to give.

This is an individual with a long history of terrorism. He is known
as the Osama Bin Laden of Latin America. I cannot imagine that a U.S.
judge would determine that he is not a danger to the community and
release him.

But everything is possible in the United States. There is that
danger.

Q: Why do you think the government is not extraditing or trying
Posada Carriles for the plane bombing? The Homeland Security
prosecutors did not even mention that crime of Posada when the
immigration hearings for Posada were held in June and August 2005 in
El Paso, Texas.

A: During the whole immigration proceedings against Posada, it was
obvious that the United States had an interest in appearing to do
something with respect to Posada while in reality doing the minimum
possible.

I believe there is an understanding, not written, but an
understanding between the government and Posada, that he will be
treated well by the United States while he is in U.S. territory, in
exchange for Posada not saying all that he could about the U.S.
intelligence services. Keep in mind that Posada, by his own
admission, is an individual who worked with the CIA since at least
1962.

He was sent by the CIA to Venezuela in the 1970s to lead an anti-
subversive operation there, and to capture and torture individuals
who were seeking social change in Venezuela in the 1970s. He is a man
who has worked closely with the U.S. intelligence services since he
began his career.

Therefore, it does not surprise me that the United States is doing
the minimum to maintain Posada in prison, because it is not
politically wise for them to free him, but they will not extradite
nor try him for murder.

That is why, you see, they first initiate immigration charges, and
later they begin a criminal process, but they limit the accusation as
to whether Posada lied, not whether he is a terrorist.

He has a great deal of information that would be a very delicate
matter for the United States if he were to talk.

Q: Can you tell us something about Posada's attacks against Cuba,
carried out by mercenaries in the 1990s, and the current
investigation being carried out in New Jersey over those crimes?

A: In the 1990s, Cuba experienced a very difficult economic
situation, that was the special period when the socialist camp
collapsed and the countries that traded with Cuba underwent drastic
political changes. They stopped trade relations, and the Cuban people
endured hardship because they had no resources. There was no oil, no
fuel, and many times no food.

Cuba opened up to tourism as never before since the triumph of the
Cuban revolution on Jan. 1, 1959. They opened up hotels and tourists
began to come to Havana and other cities in Cuba.

At the same time this was happening, various groups of Cuban origin
in the United States decided to unleash a wave of violence against
the tourist sector in Cuba. Terrorism is always against defenseless
civilians but it has a political goal. The political goal in this
case was to terrorize the tourists who wanted to travel to Cuba.

At that time, in 1997, Posada was in Central America, Guatemala,
Honduras and El Salvador. He moved from one country to another with
false passports. Posada was the mastermind behind that wave of terror.

Interestingly, it has been discovered that the organizations of Cuban
origin in the United States, specifically in New Jersey and Miami,
sent money to Posada by cable while he was in Guatemala.

With that money, Posada hired Guatemalan and Salvadoran mercenaries
to take explosives to Cuba, where they were detonated in the best and
most luxurious hotels and Cuban cabarets.

If you follow the money, you see that those New Jersey and Miami
organizations send money to Posada, Posada hires those people from
Central America, they go to Cuba and explode bombs.

After all those bombings, it seems that Posada wanted them to send
him more money for the successful campaign he was carrying out. He
was very upset about this and gave an interview in 1998 to two New
York Times journalists, Larry Rohter and Ann Louise Bardach. He told
him he was the mastermind of that wave of terror. He also told them
he was receiving money from certain organizations in the United
States.

The New York Times published the story. Now the FBI along with a New
Jersey prosecutor, have opened a grand jury investigation to examine
the evidence that exists, which could possibly result in prosecutions
of Posada and others, for that wave of terrorist attacks that killed
an Italian in Cuba, named Fabio Di Celmo. The grand jury still has
not concluded. We don't know if they will indict or not.

The United States is full of contradictions. Although I believe the
White House is trying to help its favorite terrorist, Luis Posada
Carriles, at the same time I am convinced that there are honest
prosecutors who work in the Department of Justice and who take
seriously the fact that that department is named Justice. I believe
there are those who want to carry out an investigation of this type.

However, the final decision as to what will happen will be made in
the White House, as well as in the immigration case. The Homeland
Security prosecutors were not able to act on their own, they had to
follow specific instructions from the White House.

The murder of Fabio Di Celmo was a horrifying crime. He was a man who
was having a drink in a hotel bar. He was on vacation when the bomb
exploded that killed him. That crime cannot go unpunished. Posada
Carriles must be tried not only for the plane bombing but also for
the murder of Fabio Di Celmo. I would be very pleased if he were
tried for that crime as well.

Q: The terrorist Santiago Alvarez brought Posada into Miami secretly
on his boat Santrina in March 2005. Afterwards, Alvarez was arrested
for an arms cache that he had in Miami. What is your opinion of the
government's treatment of Santiago Alvarez? In spite of being an
accomplice of Posada, now the government is reducing his already
light sentence for illegal possession of weapons.

It is strange. Santiago Alvarez was the financial backer of Posada
Carriles, the man who paid for his trips and sent him money. This is
an individual who has been indicted and convicted for having an
illegal weapons cache in a house in southern Florida.

He is in prison now but he has not been charged for bringing Posada
illegally into the United States. What you say is true. They are
charging Posada for immigration fraud, alleging that he came on the
Santrina, with Santiago Alvarez and Mitat.

So then, why are they not charging Santiago Alvarez and Osvaldo Mitat
for bringing Posada to the United States? The law prohibits anyone
from helping another person enter the country illegally. It is a
serious crime, a felony. But if the person you are helping is not
simply an undocumented person who comes to the United States to be
with his family or to harvest artichokes in California, but instead
is a terrorist, the sanctions are more severe and Alvarez could be
imprisoned for decades.

But for that kind of a trial to happen Posada would have to be
declared a terrorist. I am sure that if Luis Posada Carriles' name
were Mohammed, Alvarez would be facing much more serious charges than
he is now.

Another thing that occurs to me is the huge armament that Santiago
Alvarez had in southern Florida, machine guns, rocket launchers,
grenades. Why is no one asking what they were going to do with all
those weapons? Was there a terrorist operation being planned in the
United States? Against the United States, Cuba or Venezuela? It seems
to me that it is something that should be investigated and the press
should ask the U.S. authorities if they have investigated this.

It is too much of a coincidence that Posada arrived in the United
States at a time when the person who brought him has an enormous
arsenal hidden in a Miami warehouse. Miami is a city where they just
accused a group of individuals of being terrorists, because they
supposedly planned to blow up a building in Chicago. These
individuals didn't even have a fake pistol. They had not one weapon
or bullet and they are accused of terrorism.

But here we have a man with a long history of terrorism, who is aided
by other individuals, friends and accomplices who are also involved
in terrorism, and nobody asks what actions these terrorists were
going to carry out.

Q: It is evident, with all that is happening in Miami, how the Miami
terrorists operate with total impunity, while the Cuban Five anti-
terrorists have been unjustly imprisoned for over eight years in
United States prisons. They are effectively kidnapped by Washington
for having struggled against Miami terrorism.

A: The case of the Five is one of the most unjust cases in the
history of United States jurisprudence. The Five did not come to the
United States, as the prosecutor on three different occasions stated
in the trial, "to destroy the United States." There is not any
evidence showing that.

Quite the contrary. The evidence shows that those individuals came to
this country to penetrate organizations of Cuban origin that carry
out terrorist actions against the island of Cuba, from U.S. territory.

The Five had to come to the United States, because the U.S.
government, instead of investigating, arresting and prosecuting the
terrorists who were carrying out hostile actions against Cuban
civilians for decades, instead of doing that, the U.S. organized the
terrorists, trained them, encouraged and supported them during all
these decades.

Therefore, facing this situation, in order to defend their civilian
population—a civilian population that has suffered more than 3,000
murders since the Cuban revolution began in 1959—Cuba sent these
individuals to obtain information, not information of the United
States, not classified U.S. government information, but information
on the Miami terrorist organizations who were carrying out this wave
of terrorist acts.

After obtaining much of this necessary information, Cuba sent a
messenger to President Clinton about the information obtained by
these five anti-terrorists and delivered to him a hand-written letter
by President Fidel Castro. The letter was given to President Clinton
by an unusual messenger, Gabriel García Márquez, Nobel Laureate in
Literature.

García Márquez has related how he felt carrying this letter, because
he didn't want to leave the Hotel Washington for fear that someone
might rob the letter. García Márquez gave the letter to Clinton's
assistant, Max McCarty, who commented to the Colombian writer the
following: "The United States and Cuba have a common enemy and that
enemy is terrorism. We can fight together against terrorism."

Cuba handed over documentation and waited and waited and waited for
the FBI to act and capture those terrorists. But instead of capturing
the terrorists, the FBI, through its Miami director, Héctor Pesquera,
arrested the men who had infiltrated those organizations. In other
words, the FBI instead of using the information that Cuba gave it to
arrest the terrorists, it used that information to investigate and
find out who those individuals were that Cuba had penetrated into the
organizations.

After the FBI found out, it arrested the Five individuals, who were
convicted and received prison sentences of four life terms and many
years.

They were convicted without one single classified document in their
possession, with no evidence whatsoever that they had participated in
violence, much less homicide. And they were tried in Miami, in an
atmosphere highly contaminated by the hatred in Miami against Cuba.
Miami is a city where the very U.S. government has not wanted to see
its Cuba-related cases to be tried in Miami, knowing that such a
trial could not be fair in Miami.

But that is precisely where these courageous five men were tried.
They were tried in Miami and, of course, convicted, as would be
expected. This injustice cannot be tolerated. The Cuban Five must be
freed and it is Posada and the other terrorists living freely in the
United States who should be prosecuted.

Q: You were in Venezuela recently. Can you tell us if the government
is doing anything to back up its extradition petition?

A: Venezuela presented to the United States in June 2005, two volumes
totaling almost 2,000 pages of documents in support of its
extradition petition. There are more than enough documents for the
United States to extradite Posada or to try him in the United States.
The United States government has plenty of documentation, including
the documents declassified by the U.S. government itself and cited by
the CIA. These are not only in U.S. possession, they are easily
available on the Internet. The National Security Archives, a non-
governmental organization run by the George Washington University,
has published dozens of documents declassified by the U.S.
government, very telling about the terrorist activities of Luis
Posada Carriles and his participation in the plane bombing.

There are other documents in Venezuela about Posada's terrorist
history. Posada did not become a terrorist with the plane bombing of
Oct. 6, 1976. He has been a terrorist since he left Cuba. He has a
long history in the Venezuelan archives. There is documentation about
Posada Carriles when he was head of special operations in DISIP. He
was in charge of anti-subversive operations in Venezuela. Just in
Caracas alone, he captured several prominent individuals who were
part of the Venezuelan social movement, whom he interrogated,
tortured and murdered. They were very meticulous about documenting
their crimes. Whoever reads "The Path of the Warrior," Posada's
autobiography, will be able to verify some of those crimes.

Q: In June 2006 during the first hearing for Posada in El Paso,
Posada's attorney Eduardo Soto told the press that Posada had been a
CIA agent until the mid-1990s. Does this statement hold any
significance?

A: I have never seen any proof that Posada has renounced his work
with the CIA.

The people who collaborate with the CIA are not necessarily employees
of the CIA. Working with the CIA is not like working in a factory,
where you punch your timecard in at 8:00 am and when you leave at
5:00 pm you punch out to prove you worked the whole day.

There are undoubtedly workers who work in Langley on a daily basis,
who receive their salary in checks that carry the CIA label. But the
majority of individuals who work with the CIA on a clandestine basis
are not conventional salaried employees. What they do is provide
information or they carry out operations that are directed or
inspired by the CIA. I do not think there is any evidence that Posada
has renounced these activities.

What's more, if we talk about 1976 and the plane bombing, for
example, Posada sent his right-hand man—a Venezuelan named Hernán
Ricardo who was his subordinate in the DISIP—to plant the bomb.
Ricardo recruited his associate, Freddy Lugo, also Venezuelan. These
two men were the direct perpetrators of the bombing. When they were
captured in Trinidad, they confessed to the police chief, Dennis
Ramdwar, a police commissioner, that: 1.) They were from DISIP, and
2.) they were CIA, that their explosives-training was done by the CIA
and that they received CIA training on how to plant the bombs.

Ricardo said, "my boss is Luis Posada Carriles." There is an
expression in Spanish, to describe something very obvious: "It didn't
fall far from the tree." I think that type of confession shows that
Posada Carriles and Hernán Ricardo are individuals who in 1976 were
trained in the use of explosives and were inspired by the CIA to
carry out terrorist acts . There is absolutely no doubt of that.

Another curious thing. In Venezuela where I was recently, I saw the
little phone and address directory that Ricardo had when he was
captured in Trinidad after having placed the bomb.

In the first page of that book is the first and last name of the U.S.
diplomat at the U.S. embassy in Caracas, Joseph Leo. Now, I am not
saying that Joseph Leo is a CIA, but nobody can deny that that man
was a functionary of the U.S. embassy.

I ask myself, what is a terrorist—who just finished placing a bomb,
killing 73 passengers—doing with a phone directory that has the name
and telephone number of a U.S. diplomat based in the embassy in
Venezuela?

Q: By international law, the U.S. authorities still have an
obligation to try Posada. What can be done to win justice?

A: Venezuela's extradition request is based on three different legal
instruments. The first, of course, is the extradition treaty between
Venezuela and the United States, signed in 1922. We also rely on
another legal instrument, the Convention for the Suppression of
Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Civilian Aviation, ratified in
Montreal in 1971. And the third, the International Convention for the
Repression of Terrorist Attacks Committed with Bombs, ratified in
2001, which is retroactive.

Article 7 of the Montreal Convention says, "The Contracting State in
the territory of which the alleged offender is found" —in other
words, the United States— "shall, if it does not extradite him, be
obliged, without exception whatsoever and whether or not the offence
was committed in its territory, to submit the case to its competent
authorities for the purpose of prosecution."

Now, what does that mean? It means if Posada is in the United States
and if he committed a crime in Venezuela or elsewhere, and if the
United States does not want to extradite him to Venezuela, he has to
be tried in the United States, no exceptions.

Article 8 of the International Convention for the Repression of
Terrorist Acts Committed with Bombs says the same.

If he is not extradited to Venezuela, the United States has a legal
obligation to try Luis Posada Carriles in the United States, for the
plane bombing, for the 73 cases of homicide. This includes the little
girl Harry Paul, one of the few bodies that were recovered in the
sea. Anyone who would see the photos of that child and what the
bombing did to her, would not hesitate to demand justice from the
White House. That poor child, seated in a seat next to her
grandmother and mother, was very close to where the first bomb
exploded. Her corpse had no brain, only pieces of her abdomen
remained, with no intestines, no heart, nothing.

Q: Many activists were in front of the court during the immigration
hearings for Posada last year. We mounted a wall in front of the
court to show Posada's victims, which received a lot of press
coverage. We reached the public through television to tell the truth
about Posada's crimes, something that the prosecutor did not do
inside the Court. What would you suggest we do to continue this
struggle?

A: Continue with those types of actions. The people have to protest,
their voices should be heard. It is important to write letters to the
editors, to pressure the media. The news bewilders people with such
unimportant stories—whether Britney Spears really shaved her head or
if an astronaut put on diapers in order to kill a woman who allegedly
took her boyfriend. They treat the people of the U.S. like idiots, in
order to avoid covering the true scandals, the real scandal of the
U.S. government keeping five anti-terrorist fighters in prison while
sheltering the Osama Bin Laden of Latin America for decades.

Q: Thank you so much.

Gloria La Riva is the coordinator of the National Committee to Free
the Cuban Five.

For more information: www.freethefive.org