Written by Casey Gane-McCalla
Now that Bin Laden has been killed, there is still a major terrorist on the loose. A terrorist mastermind who is wanted in several countries for blowing up a plane, bombing tourist locations and trying to assassinate a prime minister.
The terrorist mastermind is Luis Posada Carrilles, a Cuban born former aide to the dictator Batista who Castro overthrew. Posada would leave Cuba after the Cuban revolution and be a major planner in the failed Bay Of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
Posada would be trained by the CIA in America in explosives in sabotage in the USA and served as the CIA’s principal agent for Cuba.
While he was serving as an agent for the CIA, the agency began to suspect he was tied to Latin American gangsters and was involved in cocaine trafficking. Posada would embark on a plan to overthrow the leftist government in Guatemala through terrorist bombings.
In 1976, a Cuban plane flying from Barbados to Jamaica exploded mid air as a result of bombs placed on the plane. 73 people were killed including the whole Cuban fencing team, women and children. The bombs were traced to two employees of Posada’s in Venezuela.
Both of Posada’s employees confessed to the bombing and implicated Posada as the mastermind. Posada was on trial in Venezuela for the crime when he escaped from prison.
Records show that the CIA was fully aware of Posada’s plot to blow up the airplane, but did nothing to stop it or alert Cuban authorities.
Rather than disowning Posada after the plane bomging, the CIA continued to used him as an asset in El Salvador where he became a principal agent in the Iran Contra scandal, which involved trading weapons to Iran to support the Contra rebels in El Salvador who were fighting against the communist government.
After the scandal, Posada moved to Honduras, where the FBI said he was responsible for 41 bombings across the country.
In 1997, Posada was implicated in a series of bombing of Cuban tourist locations, that wounded eleven people, and killed a Canadian citizen. Posada would tell the New York Times that he planned the attack.
In 2000, Posada was caught with 200 pounds of explosives and arrested for plotting an assassination attempt on Fidel Castro. He was convicted but later pardoned by the Panamanian President in 2004, allegedly at the request of the U.S.A.
Posada would eventually return to the U.S.A. where he would eventually be charged with perjury, obstruction of justice and immigration fraud for entering the country under false pretenses. The jury acquitted Posada and the U.S. refused to extradite him to any of the countries he is wanted for terrorism.
Today, Posada is a free man living in Miami, despite the fact that he is wanted for mass murder in Venezuela and Cuba. Posada employed the same tactics as Bin Laden and is also responsible for the deaths of countless civilians. If the U.S. can invade Pakistan to kill an arch terrorist, what can stop Cuba or Venezuela from using special forces to invade Miami and kill Posada.
The U.S.A. has claimed that they don’t want to extradite Posada to Cuba or Venezuela for fear that he may be tortured, despite the fact the the U.S.A. has tortured their own terrorist suspects in Cuba themselves.
If the killing of Bin Laden was “justice,” the U.S.A. must allow Posada to be brought to justice. If not the war on terror will be marred by hypocrisy. Anybody who kills innocent people for a political cause is a terrorist, even if they worked with the U.S.A.
The U.S. can not longer harbor Posada if they want to have any sort of moral authority in the world. Like Bin Laden, Posada was trained by the CIA, and like Bin Laden Posada has been implicated in plots against the U.S.A. The CIA believed that Posada was involved in assassination plot against Henry Kissinger.
Now that Bin Laden is dead, it is time to bring the “Bin Laden of the western hemisphere” to justice. We cannot condemn terrorism against us while condoning terrorism against country;s who’s policies we disagree with.
