POLITICS-CUBA: Gov’t Suggests International Tribunal for Posada Carriles

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Nov 28 2000 (IPS) - Cuba would like to see the creation of an international tribunal to try Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban exile arrested in Panama for an alleged plot to assassinate Fidel Castro.

“If Panama decides to extradite the terrorist group, Cuba should have top priority, as a victim of the extreme violence of these criminals,” said Cuban parliamentarian Lázaro Barredo in statements to the press.

But the Cuban government’s suggestion to set up an international tribunal must also be taken into account, because such a tribunal could “serve as a lesson in the future for the fight against terrorism,” said Barredo.

The lawmaker did not go into detail on the possible make-up of the tribunal, but he did insist that it must not merely try Posada Carriles but “the system of state terrorism” as a whole.

Posada Carriles, 72, was arrested by the police in Panama on Nov 17, three hours after Castro — who had just arrived there to attend the 10th Ibero-American summit — accused the Cuban exile of planning an attempt on his life.

Posada Carriles as well as the other three Cuban exiles arrested in the same police operation — Pedro Remón, Manuel Díaz and Guillermo Nomo — will remain in custody until Havana’s extradition request is processed.

Posada Carriles’ actions have caused material damages or injuries and deaths in at least 23 countries, including the United States, Venezuela, Panama, Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Guyana, North Korea, Italy, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Chile, Spain, Peru, Canada, Argentina, Japan, Russia, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago, said Barredo.

The Cuban exile is implicated in a wide range of illegal activities, from arms-running and drug trafficking to high-profile terrorist actions like the October 1976 bombing of a Cubana de Aviación airplane in which all 73 people aboard were killed as the plane took off from Barbados.

He has openly admitted that he was behind a spate of attacks on Cuba’s tourism industry carried out in 1997, which claimed the life of Italian businessman Fabio Di Celmo.

Posada Carriles, who took part in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba carried out by Cuban exiles based in the United States, is wanted by Havana’s intelligence services since he escaped from a Venezuelan prison in 1985 dressed as a priest, while serving a 27- year sentence for the bombing of the Cuban airplane.

The Cuban government maintains that Posada Carriles escaped thanks to the support of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and prison officials.

“It is hard to believe that the Ibero-American presidents ignored the gravity of this case,” said Barredo, who pointed out that the amount of explosives found in possession of the accused was sufficient “to blow up everything within the radius of one kilometre.”

At last weekend’s summit in Panama, Castro proposed the creation of an international tribunal to process the case with “absolute and total impartiality.” But the idea did not awaken an echo among the leaders from Latin America, Spain and Portugal.

In an uncharacteristically brief speech, Castro pointed out to his Ibero-American counterparts Saturday that they were safer since the “the fearsome terrorist who put all of us at risk with his plans” had been arrested “thanks to Cuba’s denunciation.”

In his address, Castro referred to the controversy involving Salvadoran President Francisco Flores, who sponsored a resolution to condemn the Basque separatist organisation ETA.

The resolution was approved without Cuba’s vote, because Castro insisted that it should also include a condemnation of the terrorism suffered by his country for the past 40 years.

Flores’ “hypocritical speech on terrorism was previously cooked up with the government of Spain, an emerging European economic power in Latin America that is at times useful in the fight against the voracity of the North, but whose political leadership has a clear tendency to take a domineering stance,” said Castro.

The president’s tongue-lashing even touched on Mexico, the only Latin American country that maintained diplomatic ties with Cuba after the Caribbean island nation was expelled from the Organisation of American States (OAS) in the 1960s.

The resolution was “immediately seconded by the president [Ernesto Zedillo] of a different Mexico, one which is governed today by the interests, principles and commitments imposed by the North American Free Trade Agreement” (NAFTA) linking that country with Canada and the United States, said Castro.

The Cuban leader said that not only was Flores’ condemnation of terrorism incomplete, but it was presented by the president of a country that had served as the United States’ base for waging counter-revolution in Central America, and as “a refuge for the worst terrorist known in the hemisphere” — Posada Carriles.

The Salvadoran president retaliated by calling off a meeting with Castro scheduled for this Friday in Mexico on the occasion of the inauguration of Mexican president-elect Vicente Fox. The meeting had been designed to “smooth things out.”

“I see no objective or reason to meet with him,” said Flores, who added that he blamed Castro for the deaths of thousands of Salvadorans who died in the Central American country’s 1980-92 civil war.

The Zedillo administration, meanwhile, declined to comment on the remarks referring to Mexico “out of courtesy, and because the president of Cuba will soon visit Mexico on the occasion of the change of government.”

Castro did not confirm his plans to travel to Mexico, although he did say that he had “a lot of work,” such as preventing people arrested in Panama “from evading justice with the support of their friends in the North.”