Vol. 75/No. 4      January 31, 2011

Federal prosecutors say that Posada lied to an immigration judge about how he entered the United States in March 2005 and his role in a series of bombings that took place in Havana in 1997.

In a 1998 New York Times interview, Posada bragged about his involvement in these bombings, including one that killed an Italian tourist, Fabio Di Celmo, at the Hotel Copacabana. “The CIA taught us everything—everything,” he told the paper. “They taught us explosives, how to kill, bomb, trained us in acts of sabotage.”

A mercenary in the failed 1961 U.S.-organized invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, Posada worked for the CIA from the early 1960s to June 1976.

In October 1976, CIA-trained counterrevolutionaries blew up a Cuban airliner over Barbados, killing all 73 people aboard, many of them teenage members of the Cuban fencing team. Posada, who at the time was working as chief of operations for the Venezuelan secret police, was among those implicated in this crime. A Venezuelan military court acquitted him of charges in the airline bombing, but the decision was later thrown out. He was allowed to escape from prison in 1985 before a civilian trial was completed.

He was also implicated in a November 2000 failed assassination attempt in Panama against Fidel Castro. After being incarcerated for four years and then pardoned by Panama’s president, he made his way to the United States, where he has been living for nearly six years.

Washington has refused repeated requests by the Cuban and Venezuelan governments to extradite Posada to stand trial for the 1976 airliner bombing.
 
 
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New U.S. gov’t measures designed to subvert Cuba  
 
 
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