US frees convicted bomber wanted by Cuba, Venezuela
EL PASO, United States (AFP) - Former CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles, wanted by Cuba and Venezuela for the deadly downing of a Cuban jet, has been freed on bond in Texas, police said Thursday.
"He was out of here this morning," Jerry Payan, a police officer in charge of inmates said, after Posada paid 350,000 dollars to be released pending trial May 11 for immigration fraud and other charges.
Earlier this month a US judge here said the Cuban-born Venezuelan national could be released on bail on condition that he remain confined to his Miami home and submit to "electronic monitoring," according to the text of the order by the federal court in El Paso.
Posada Carriles, a fierce opponent of communist Cuban President Fidel Castro, was convicted of masterminding the downing of a Cuban jet off Barbados in 1976 in which 73 people were killed.
He was detained in Venezuela in 1976 and convicted in the case, but fled prison in 1985.
He was also sentenced to eight years' jail in Panama in a bomb plot to assassinate Castro during an Ibero-American summit there in 2000, but was pardoned by outgoing president Mireya Moscoso.
Posada Carriles was detained by US immigration officials in May 2005 for entering the United States illegally.
US officials have refused to release Posada Carriles to Venezuela or Cuba, claiming he might be tortured. But they had also refused to free him, calling him a threat to national security.
Havana and Caracas accuse Washington of harboring a known terrorist.
US immigration authorities criticized the judge's release order, and said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials would arrest Posada Carriles.
Declassified US documents show that Posada Carriles worked for the CIA from 1965 to June 1976. He reportedly helped the US government ferry supplies to the Contra rebels that waged a bloody campaign to topple the socialist Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the 1980s.
Original article posted here.
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2 comments:
He's a terrr'rist...but he's our terrr'rist!
You're exactly right. Too bad the world is able to see our hypocrisy, a far cry from the 70's when South America was still pretty much ignored and our backyard for coups, torture and economic exploitation.
Today those little brown people have a voice. And people are listening.
Maybe the Miami Cuban lunatics will give him a hero's welcome. But many people south of the border are disgusted. And some in Venezuela are concerned that the old bastard is planning a coup attempt with his buddies in the CIA.
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