Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

CUBA: Families of Terrorism Victims to Attend Trial of Cuban Exiles

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Mar 12 2004 (IPS) - Relatives of victims of terrorist attacks plan to attend the trial that opens next Monday in Panama of Luis Posada Carriles and three other Cuban exiles, accused by President Fidel Castro of planning an attempt on his life.

”We are not driven by a spirit of revenge, we are only demanding that justice be done,” Cuban citizens Carlos Cremata, Lissette Díaz, Domingo García and Félix Negrín, and Italian national Justino di Celmo, wrote in an ‘open letter to the Panamanian people’.

All of them lost loved ones in attacks blamed on Posada Carriles or one of the three other anti-Castro Cuban exiles – Gaspar Jiménez, Guillermo Novo and Pedro Remón – to go on trial next week in Panama.

”We are a group of relatives of victims of the criminal acts of these four known international terrorists,” they stated in the open letter, which was made public shortly before they flew to Panama.

Posada Carriles, Jiménez, Novo and Remón were arrested on Nov. 17, 2000 in that Central American country, after Castro publicly denounced that they were plotting to kill him.

Almost immediately after his arrival to the Panamanian capital, where he took part in the 10th Ibero-American Summit, Castro reported that the group planned to place potent plastic explosives in the central hall of the University of Panama, where the Cuban president was to meet with students.

Castro’s warning ”arrived on time to prevent Panamanian families from joining us in our pain,” Cremata, di Celmo, Díaz, García and Negrín said in a press conference Thursday.

However, the charge of attempted murder of a president was thrown out, and the Cuban exiles will only be tried for conspiracy, possession of explosives and endangering public safety.

The trial has been postponed several times. According to the Cuban government, that was due to legal manuevers and delaying tactics by the defence aimed at gaining provisional liberty for the accused.

The Panamanian government also rejected extradition requests from the Cuban government, which had pledged not to consider the option of capital punishment if the four men were tried in Cuba, in line with the fact that Panama has no death penalty.

In their open letter, the relatives of victims of terrorist attacks stated that Posada Carriles ”planned and carried out” the Oct. 6, 1976 bombing of a Cubana de Aviacion airliner off the coast of Barbados, in which 73 people were killed.

Posada Carriles, a nationalised Venezuelan citizen, was convicted in Caracas of being ”directly responsible” for the bombing and sentenced to 27 years in prison. But he escaped from jail in 1985, disguised as a priest.

At the time, Cuba’s socialist government alleged that Posada Carriles had escaped with assistance and financing from the U.S.-based Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), one of the Cuban exile community’s most influential and vociferous anti-Castro organisations.

”The idea that I’m going to see this murderer in person gives me a shiver,” Cremata, a theatre director whose father was killed in the bombing of the Cubana airliner, told IPS. ”He has even boasted of his terrorist activities, and continues to enjoy impunity. Justice must be done in this trial.”

In his view, the impunity enjoyed by those guilty of crimes like the one in which his father died helps contribute to the increase in terrorist activities around the world. ”If justice were imparted at once, these things wouldn’t happen,” he said.

The family members taking part in the news briefing also said Remón was accused of killing, in the United States, Cuban citizens Eulalio José Negrín in 1979 and Félix García in 1980 – family members of Félix Negrín and Domingo García, two of the relatives who travelled to Panama.

Lissette Díaz said her father, Artaignan Díaz, was murdered in Mexico in 1976 by Jiménez Escobedo, who also avoided serving his time – he received a 12-year sentence – by escaping from prison.

”The aim of our trip to Panama is to demand that justice be imparted in these pending cases,” she said.

Di Celmo pointed out that in a 1998 interview with the New York Times, Posada Carriles admitted that he was responsible for the 1997 bomb explosion in the Copacabana Hotel in Havana in which his son Fabio di Celmo, a 32-year-old Italian businessman, was killed.