| From: | "Karen Lee Wald" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] |
| Subject: | WATCH THIS: Laying the groundwork for releasing the Cuban exile terrorists |
| Date: | Tue, 2 Apr 2002 08:40:47 -0800 |
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All emphasis in bold and italics is MH, emphasis added. Bold inside brackets indicates my comments. Please let me know if non-HTML raders have difficulty reading the text marked this way. kw
The Miami Herald
Posted on Tue, Apr. 02, 2002
Exiles see a Cuban trap in alleged plot to kill Castro
BY JUAN O. TAMAYO
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
PANAMA CITY, Panama - After languishing in jail for 16 months, four Cuban exiles accused of plotting to assassinate Fidel Castro now believe they were caught in an elaborate Cuban intelligence trap designed to divert attention from Castro's own connections to terrorism. [A less sympathetic reporter would have used the word "claim", not "believe". They don't "believe" any such thing. They know perfectly well what they were doing in Panama. Look at their pasts. And dangling the phrase "Castro's own connections to terrorism" without specifying any makes the writer simply a mouthpiece for his particular brand of terrorists, the kind he approves of.]
The discovery of a crucial piece of evidence -- the C-4 explosives that were to be used in the alleged plot -- in a gym bag bearing the logos of the Florida Marlins and The Miami Herald is considered by them a telltale sign that Castro was trying to point the finger at Miami exiles. [Their fingerprints were on the bag. Did Castro arrange that, too?]
The exiles' most detailed version yet of the events that landed them in a Panama jail is contained in a 400-page manuscript in which a man now portrayed as a Castro agent confided in mid-2000 that Cuba's top spy planned to defect when Castro visited Panama later that year.
''He will do this only if you pick him up in person,'' the man allegedly told one of the men arrested, Luis Posada Carriles, because the spy chief knew that other Miami exile groups were ''under a high grade of infiltration'' by Cuba's intelligence services.
Posada, 73, Gaspar Jim�nez, 65, Guillermo Novo, 61, and Pedro Rem�n, 56, were detained here Nov. 17, 2000, hours after Castro arrived for a summit and notified Panamanian authorities of a plot to assassinate him.
''It was a trap,'' Rem�n acknowledged in an unpublished book he wrote in prison under the title of ''The Real Terrorist'' -- referring to Castro's support for foreign subversive and terrorist groups. [But if the FBI had laid a similar "trap", it would have been called a "sting operation" -- and the perpetrators would have gone to prison anyway, since they showed their willingness to engage in the illegal conduct proposed to them. Look at the poor Miami Cuban INS official now serving prison time for just talking to Cuban officials about his hopes to eventually do business there, and then falling into a US government sting operation that didn't involve killing or hurting anyone, but just repeating planted information to a business partner.]
TALE OF INTRIGUE
Rem�n's book denies any murder plot but tells a twisted tale of intrigue that begins in 1999, with Posada allegedly making covert contacts with unidentified Cuban military and security officers on the island who were tired of Castro's rule.
According to Rem�n, on June 24, 2000, an envoy who called himself Emilio flew from Havana to El Salvador, where Posada lived in hiding since 1985, and called him on a cellular telephone whose number was known only to the ''cells'' on the island.
After giving the code words -- ''without country but without lord,'' a Cuban exile motto from a Jos� Mart� poem -- the messenger met Posada the next day over coffee and doughnuts at San Salvador's Cafeteria Biggest, according to Rem�n.
The messenger reported that Intelligence Directorate Chief Gen. Eduardo Delgado would defect -- but only to Posada -- while accompanying Castro to Panama for an Ibero-American Summit and reveal all the names of Havana's infiltrators in Miami.
Jim�nez counseled Posada not to go to Panama alone. Jim�nez, Novo and Rem�n, all U.S. citizens living in Miami, agreed to join Posada in Panama to help protect him and spirit Delgado to a safe place, according to Rem�n. [If Posada was innocent of planning any wrong-doing, he certainly chose strange bedfellows to accompany him -- all men with slimy pasts involving terrorist bombing, maiming and killing.]
''Havana manufactured the scheme, and Luis carried it out,'' said a longtime Posada friend aware of many of his activities.
The friend said he had heard rumors that unknown exiles urged Posada weeks before the summit to try to kill Castro. Posada agreed to explore the possibilities and asked for $100,000 in operational funds, but never intended to carry out the attack, the friend said. [So what is his "friend" telling us, that Posada rips off his friends in the Cuban exile community by accepting their money for killings he does not intend to commit? Looks like he's not a very good business investment for them.]
PLAN CANCELED
That version coincides with a Herald report last year that Posada had told a Panamanian official in a ''private'' prison chat that he had canceled a plan to kill Castro with a car bomb to avoid killing innocent civilians.
Posted on Tue, Apr. 02, 2002
Exiles see a Cuban trap in alleged plot to kill Castro
BY JUAN O. TAMAYO
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
PANAMA CITY, Panama - After languishing in jail for 16 months, four Cuban exiles accused of plotting to assassinate Fidel Castro now believe they were caught in an elaborate Cuban intelligence trap designed to divert attention from Castro's own connections to terrorism. [A less sympathetic reporter would have used the word "claim", not "believe". They don't "believe" any such thing. They know perfectly well what they were doing in Panama. Look at their pasts. And dangling the phrase "Castro's own connections to terrorism" without specifying any makes the writer simply a mouthpiece for his particular brand of terrorists, the kind he approves of.]
The discovery of a crucial piece of evidence -- the C-4 explosives that were to be used in the alleged plot -- in a gym bag bearing the logos of the Florida Marlins and The Miami Herald is considered by them a telltale sign that Castro was trying to point the finger at Miami exiles. [Their fingerprints were on the bag. Did Castro arrange that, too?]
The exiles' most detailed version yet of the events that landed them in a Panama jail is contained in a 400-page manuscript in which a man now portrayed as a Castro agent confided in mid-2000 that Cuba's top spy planned to defect when Castro visited Panama later that year.
''He will do this only if you pick him up in person,'' the man allegedly told one of the men arrested, Luis Posada Carriles, because the spy chief knew that other Miami exile groups were ''under a high grade of infiltration'' by Cuba's intelligence services.
Posada, 73, Gaspar Jim�nez, 65, Guillermo Novo, 61, and Pedro Rem�n, 56, were detained here Nov. 17, 2000, hours after Castro arrived for a summit and notified Panamanian authorities of a plot to assassinate him.
''It was a trap,'' Rem�n acknowledged in an unpublished book he wrote in prison under the title of ''The Real Terrorist'' -- referring to Castro's support for foreign subversive and terrorist groups. [But if the FBI had laid a similar "trap", it would have been called a "sting operation" -- and the perpetrators would have gone to prison anyway, since they showed their willingness to engage in the illegal conduct proposed to them. Look at the poor Miami Cuban INS official now serving prison time for just talking to Cuban officials about his hopes to eventually do business there, and then falling into a US government sting operation that didn't involve killing or hurting anyone, but just repeating planted information to a business partner.]
TALE OF INTRIGUE
Rem�n's book denies any murder plot but tells a twisted tale of intrigue that begins in 1999, with Posada allegedly making covert contacts with unidentified Cuban military and security officers on the island who were tired of Castro's rule.
According to Rem�n, on June 24, 2000, an envoy who called himself Emilio flew from Havana to El Salvador, where Posada lived in hiding since 1985, and called him on a cellular telephone whose number was known only to the ''cells'' on the island.
After giving the code words -- ''without country but without lord,'' a Cuban exile motto from a Jos� Mart� poem -- the messenger met Posada the next day over coffee and doughnuts at San Salvador's Cafeteria Biggest, according to Rem�n.
The messenger reported that Intelligence Directorate Chief Gen. Eduardo Delgado would defect -- but only to Posada -- while accompanying Castro to Panama for an Ibero-American Summit and reveal all the names of Havana's infiltrators in Miami.
Jim�nez counseled Posada not to go to Panama alone. Jim�nez, Novo and Rem�n, all U.S. citizens living in Miami, agreed to join Posada in Panama to help protect him and spirit Delgado to a safe place, according to Rem�n. [If Posada was innocent of planning any wrong-doing, he certainly chose strange bedfellows to accompany him -- all men with slimy pasts involving terrorist bombing, maiming and killing.]
''Havana manufactured the scheme, and Luis carried it out,'' said a longtime Posada friend aware of many of his activities.
The friend said he had heard rumors that unknown exiles urged Posada weeks before the summit to try to kill Castro. Posada agreed to explore the possibilities and asked for $100,000 in operational funds, but never intended to carry out the attack, the friend said. [So what is his "friend" telling us, that Posada rips off his friends in the Cuban exile community by accepting their money for killings he does not intend to commit? Looks like he's not a very good business investment for them.]
PLAN CANCELED
That version coincides with a Herald report last year that Posada had told a Panamanian official in a ''private'' prison chat that he had canceled a plan to kill Castro with a car bomb to avoid killing innocent civilians.
[The Herald's attempt to whitewash these murderers is really despicable. Posada has never shrunk at "killing innocent victims". Leaving aside the passengers of the Cubana airliner --including the 19 young members of the junior fencing team returning from a tournament -- which Posada served prison time for but never admitted, he did boast of having organized the spate of bombings in Cuban hotels, restaurants and other tourist spots which killed an Italian-Canadian visitor a few years ago and left a number of others injured. Trial testimony showed that in several instances it was only luck or quick thinking that prevented scores of children from being killed or maimed. Posada justified these bombings in a NY Times interview in which he took credit for them.]
Rem�n wrote that Posada arrived in Panama Nov. 5, using a false Salvadoran passport. The three others arrived Nov. 16 by land from Costa Rica, and they all met later that day in Room 310 at the Royal Suite hotel in the capital's El Cangrejo neighborhood.
Cuban officials later gave Panamanian prosecutors covertly snapped photographs of the three men crossing the Costa Rican border, and a video of Posada, Jim�nez and Novo outside their hotel the evening the arrived. [Testimony and films shown at the Cuban trial of one of the hotel bombers hired by Posada and captured in Havana demonstrated that Cuban intelligence discretely monitors and films Posada from a distance all the time. So being aware of his movements is not the same as setting up a trap, although it could be. The fact remains that the men DID enter Panama with false passports and enough dynamite to wipe out the 2000 students and others who would fill the University auditorium when Fidel spoke there. To ignore this is willful complicity in their plot.]
That afternoon, according to Rem�n, Posada received a call on his cellular phone from a man who told him to meet him at the Hotel Las Vegas the next morning, but did not use the right code word. Posada was suspicious and talked about moving out of the hotel later that night, but in the end decided to stay, still hoping that Delgado would contact him.
Castro warned Panamanian authorities of the alleged plot shortly after his arrival at 10 a.m. on Nov. 17, then told a press conference at 3 p.m. that Posada was on his trail. He made no mention of the other men.
Posada and Jim�nez were napping when police burst into their room.
Rem�n and Novo were returning from buying cold drinks at a nearby store when they were detained, Rem�n reported. None of the exiles was armed. [Trying to project an air of innocence: men napping and buying cold drinks couldn't possibly be planning to kill someone...]
Two days later, Jos� Manuel Hurtado, a Panamanian chauffeur whom the men had hired, led police to 17.6 pounds of C-4 plastic explosives stuffed in a teal and black gym bag with the Herald and Florida Marlins logos.
DIFFERENT VERSIONS
Hurtado initially told police he found the bag in the exiles' rented car after their arrest and tried to hide it, but later gave two other versions. Rem�n claimed the explosives were planted by Cuban agents -- with the logos intended to point to Miami exiles.
Rem�n argues that if Castro really believed the exiles were bent on killing him, the notoriously security-conscious president would not have risked going to Panama without first tipping off local authorities. [Cuban security did tip off Panamanian authorities as soon as they got there; and if Fidel stayed away from every place where rightwing terrorists wanted to kill him, he would never leave the island....]
''Its clear, then, that there was a propaganda intention,'' Rem�n wrote, not only to overshadow Castro's refusal to sign a condemnation of terrorism adopted at the summit but to smear the four exiles.[Fidel refused to sign a resolution condemning only BASQUE terrorism, arguing that ALL terrorism -- such as the kind these four practiced -- should be included. Ironically, if Sept. 11, 2001 events had already occurred, the other countries would probably have been glad to broaden the wording of their resolution. And it is hard to do anything to "smear" men who have carried out the acts they are known to have committed in the past, and sometimes boasted of.]
Cuba has accused Posada, a CIA-trained explosives expert, in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people; Posada denies responsibility. Venezuela has also asked for Posada's extradition for escaping from a prison there in 1985.
Rem�n was convicted in 1986 of trying to kill a Cuban diplomat and bomb a Cuban office in New York. Jim�nez was arrested in Mexico in the 1970s on charges of killing a Cuban official but escaped and returned to Miami. Novo was convicted of perjury for denying that he knew details of the 1976 murder in Washington of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier.
Rem�n wrote that Posada arrived in Panama Nov. 5, using a false Salvadoran passport. The three others arrived Nov. 16 by land from Costa Rica, and they all met later that day in Room 310 at the Royal Suite hotel in the capital's El Cangrejo neighborhood.
Cuban officials later gave Panamanian prosecutors covertly snapped photographs of the three men crossing the Costa Rican border, and a video of Posada, Jim�nez and Novo outside their hotel the evening the arrived. [Testimony and films shown at the Cuban trial of one of the hotel bombers hired by Posada and captured in Havana demonstrated that Cuban intelligence discretely monitors and films Posada from a distance all the time. So being aware of his movements is not the same as setting up a trap, although it could be. The fact remains that the men DID enter Panama with false passports and enough dynamite to wipe out the 2000 students and others who would fill the University auditorium when Fidel spoke there. To ignore this is willful complicity in their plot.]
That afternoon, according to Rem�n, Posada received a call on his cellular phone from a man who told him to meet him at the Hotel Las Vegas the next morning, but did not use the right code word. Posada was suspicious and talked about moving out of the hotel later that night, but in the end decided to stay, still hoping that Delgado would contact him.
Castro warned Panamanian authorities of the alleged plot shortly after his arrival at 10 a.m. on Nov. 17, then told a press conference at 3 p.m. that Posada was on his trail. He made no mention of the other men.
Posada and Jim�nez were napping when police burst into their room.
Rem�n and Novo were returning from buying cold drinks at a nearby store when they were detained, Rem�n reported. None of the exiles was armed. [Trying to project an air of innocence: men napping and buying cold drinks couldn't possibly be planning to kill someone...]
Two days later, Jos� Manuel Hurtado, a Panamanian chauffeur whom the men had hired, led police to 17.6 pounds of C-4 plastic explosives stuffed in a teal and black gym bag with the Herald and Florida Marlins logos.
DIFFERENT VERSIONS
Hurtado initially told police he found the bag in the exiles' rented car after their arrest and tried to hide it, but later gave two other versions. Rem�n claimed the explosives were planted by Cuban agents -- with the logos intended to point to Miami exiles.
Rem�n argues that if Castro really believed the exiles were bent on killing him, the notoriously security-conscious president would not have risked going to Panama without first tipping off local authorities. [Cuban security did tip off Panamanian authorities as soon as they got there; and if Fidel stayed away from every place where rightwing terrorists wanted to kill him, he would never leave the island....]
''Its clear, then, that there was a propaganda intention,'' Rem�n wrote, not only to overshadow Castro's refusal to sign a condemnation of terrorism adopted at the summit but to smear the four exiles.[Fidel refused to sign a resolution condemning only BASQUE terrorism, arguing that ALL terrorism -- such as the kind these four practiced -- should be included. Ironically, if Sept. 11, 2001 events had already occurred, the other countries would probably have been glad to broaden the wording of their resolution. And it is hard to do anything to "smear" men who have carried out the acts they are known to have committed in the past, and sometimes boasted of.]
Cuba has accused Posada, a CIA-trained explosives expert, in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people; Posada denies responsibility. Venezuela has also asked for Posada's extradition for escaping from a prison there in 1985.
Rem�n was convicted in 1986 of trying to kill a Cuban diplomat and bomb a Cuban office in New York. Jim�nez was arrested in Mexico in the 1970s on charges of killing a Cuban official but escaped and returned to Miami. Novo was convicted of perjury for denying that he knew details of the 1976 murder in Washington of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier.
[The Herald knows the murderous past of these four terrorists, yet presents only the mildest version of them, and more than 3/4 of the way into the article. All of them have been convicted some time, somewhere, for using bombs to kill and maim people. Yet they freely walk the streets of Miami and Central America, and the Miami Herald doesn't bat an eyelash? Why is no one demanding that Jimenez be sent back to Mexico, for instance, if he escaped prison where he was serving a murder sentence there? Both Novo and his brother have a string of other crimes they are known or suspected to have committed, including the car-bombing of Letelier and Ronni Moffitt. Remon's hit-list included Miami radio announcer Emilio Milian, for the offense of suggesting that violence was not the best way to get rid of Castro....While trying to "rehabilitate" the image of these murderous thugs, shouldn't the MH at least have reminded its readers who these men were in the first paragraphs of this article?]
PRESSURING PANAMA
Since the arrests, the Cuban government has kept up a steady drumbeat of pressures on Panama to extradite Posada -- the request was denied last year -- and all but threatened Panama if the courts do not convict the four. [Implying that Cuba is going to invade Panama or bomb it, the way the US would????!! Since when does saying you expect terrorists to be convicted amount to a threat?]
''Cuba expects these terrorists will be convicted, and the government of Panama will assume a great international responsibility if it allows those people to evade justice,'' Foreign Minister Felipe P�rez Roque of Cuba said last month.
But the evidence is so weak that prosecutors recently recommended dropping the attempted murder charge and trying the four only for possession of explosives and conspiracy to commit a crime. [I've read accounts saying the fingerprints of the four were on the explosives. That doesn't sound like "weak" testimony and apparently they can't get out of the explosives charges. Does the Miami Herald really want us to believe that Posada was about to take up truck farming and needed the dynamite to blow up stumps in his fields? And in that case, why have the dynamite in Panama, not in El Salvador, where Posada lived? And why a false passport? Bending over backwards to exonerate four long-time, well known, terrorist assassins is very unbecoming to the Miami Herald.]
Posada and Jim�nez also could face charges of entering the country with false passports.
Defense lawyer Mart�n Cruz said a trial expected in four to six months will probably either clear them or convict only on the lesser charges, whose maximum jail terms they will have already served. [Meaning they would be released at the end of their "trial". So much for the "war on terrorism".Panama is under pressure from the US State Dept. and must certainly remember the bloody invasion that occurred when they displeased Washington. What's the Miami Herald's excuse for this fawning all over these known terrorists?]
� 2001 miamiherald and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miami.com
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Courtesy of:
The Law Office of Jose Pertierra
1010 Vermont Avenue, NW #620
Washington, DC 20005
202 783 6666
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Karen Lee Wald
2175 Aborn Road, apt. 164
San Jose, CA 95121
telephone 408-532-6147
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Karen Lee Wald
2175 Aborn Road, apt. 164
San Jose, CA 95121
telephone 408-532-6147
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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