Venezuela Chavez Offers Aid for US Hurricane Victims

Caracas, Aug 31 (Prensa Latina) Venezuela has conveyed to the US authorities and people its deep consternation for the tragedy caused by hurricane Katrina and has offered to send humanitarian aid and oil so that those hardly hit can cope with the crisis.

A statement issued by Venezuelan Foreign Ministry underlines the most sincere condolences to the relatives of the victims of the hurricane and the loss of their properties.

The note reiterates President Hugo Chávez´ willingness to send fuel and humanitarian aid to help those damaged by the fierce storm.

Hundreds of people are feared dead in Mississippi, and the Louisiana city of New Orleans is badly flooded.

Emergency teams in the southern US are battling to reach survivors of Hurricane Katrina, the most destructive storm to hit the country in decades.

The Venezuelan statement comments that the fuel crisis worsens because of damages to oil facilities in the Gulf of Mexico and on US southern territory.

"Our government and all the Venezuelan people have closely followed the news on the hurricane and we are willing to offer our help to the US people through the Simon Bolivar Humanitarian Task Unit", the note stresses.

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Out of the Atlanta Frying Pan, Into the Human Rights Fire

By ie Webb-Pullman

Havana, Aug 17 (Prensa Latina).- With over two million prisoners in the United States, how many have been denied visits by their wives and children, asked US Defense Attorney Leonard Weinglass on 12 September 2003.

Unfortunately we know the answer - two - Gerardo Hernandez and Rene Gonzalez, two of the Five Cubans who on 12 September will have spent seven years imprisoned in the US for trumped-up "conspiracy to commit espionage" charges.

Despite their convictions being reversed over a week ago in a unanimous decision by the Atlanta Appeal Court, the human rights of Gerardo and Rene and their wives Adriana Perez and Olga Salanueva, as well as Rene and Olga’s daughter Ivette, continue to be breached.

This is as much due to the innocent Five’s continued detention, as to the curtain of silence which has fallen around the US administration following the appeal decision.

These men are now innocent before the law - is it not bad enough that they were deprived of contact with their families, in breach of their rights, for over five years whilst convicted?

This is no longer the case, and further deprivation of contact, either through continued imprisonment or further refusal of visas, is completely insupportable and unjustifiable, and an even more gross violation of their human rights.

Several instruments of international law uphold the right of all persons deprived of their liberty to humane treatment, which includes the maintenance of regular communication with their families.

They are the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the United Nations body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the Inter-American Convention.

Article 7 of the CRC specifically guarantees every child the right "…to know…his or her parents…".

This right has certainly been denied to Ivette, who at seven years of age has not seen her father since she was a toddler, and cannot by any stretch of the imagination be said to effectively "know" him.
Even family members of victims of US-backed military dictatorships in Latin America have fared better than the Five’s families.

The Human Rights Committee in 1983 identified the inability to communicate with family (Angel Estrella vs Uruguay) as circumstances in which they considered article 10 of the ICCPR to have been breached.

Another example is the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which indicated that ill-treatment or torture can occur through mental suffering, and in 2000 found the suffering of next of kin to constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, for example Bamaca Velasquez vs Guatemala.

Are the people of the United States comfortable with the knowledge that the treatment being meted out to these innocent families by their current administration is at least as bad, if not worse than that of some of the most notorious military dictatorships in Latin American history?

If not, they are beholden to demand of their government the immediate reunification of these families, whether through the immediate release of the Five or the immediate granting of visas to enable their families to visit them.

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Crimes of omission

By Max J. Castro
taken from Progreso Weekly
August 17, 2005

Today when we look at the outrages perpetrated by the Bush administration, its sins of commission – the disastrous Iraq war and the assault on the rule of law at home and abroad –come immediately to mind. For good reason: The mounting casualty count and continuing revelations about killings, torture and mistreatment of captives are daily reminders of the military and moral debacle into which George W. Bush has led this nation.

Yet, when the history of the period is written and the awful legacy of this presidency assessed, it may be that what the United States failed to do under Bush’s leadership that will loom as the larger disservice to this country and to the world.

The failure of this administration to act in cases in which it is in the power and in the interest of the United States to act is consistent and broad. Its indifference ranges across topics and areas of the world, and includes both urgent local crises and long-term global problems.

The administration’s halting, delayed reaction to last year’s tsunami – and the President’s lackadaisical response and miniscule initial offer of aid – are more characteristic of his administration’s true instincts in the face of incalculable and preventable human suffering than its belated actions after severe embarrassment and cajoling by the UN and the rest of the world.

The inertial scenario is now repeating itself with even more tragic consequences in Niger. Eight months ago, the international aid organizations, the United Nations and the government of Niger warned of an impending humanitarian catastrophe if aid was not forthcoming rapidly. Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world, is suffering from drought and locust infestation. The UN asked for $16 million to avert disaster. The world, including the United States, turned a deaf ear.

The result is that now 3.5 million people, including 800,000 children, are in danger of dying. Finally, some aid is flowing after CNN and other media have shown the horrid consequences of the famine – the emaciated bodies of dying children. But many who could have been saved by a timely response will not make it. And the cost now of saving the lives of sick and severely malnourished children and adults is much higher than it would have been six months ago, which explains why this weekend the United Nations appealed for another $80 million in aid.

To be sure, in the case of Niger there is plenty of blame to go around. The nations of Europe have a greater historical responsibility – a continent they colonized and looted – than does the United States. They failed to act; even Tony Blair neglected to sound the alarm at this summer’s G-8 meeting, which focused on aid to Africa.

The rich Arab countries could have helped their fellow Muslims in Niger as a matter of religious duty and human solidarity; $16 million or even $80 million would hardly put a dent in the net worth of many a Saudi potentate or Gulf state prince. But they did nothing.

Still, the United States, the sole superpower whose leaders unblushingly refer to this country as “the leader of the free world” and “the indispensable nation,” cannot shirk its responsibility. Not in a human catastrophe that could result in the deaths of 1,000 times more people than 9/11, one in which vigorous action by the United States could save hundreds of millions of people.

Power has its privileges, but indispensability has its responsibilities. When it comes to matters of war, this administration has hardly been reluctant to take the lead and even to try to drag others along. Not on Niger.

How hard would it be, even today, for George W. Bush to call his Cabinet together, to assign the Secretaries of State and Defense a simple mission: Save as many lives in Niger as humanly possible? What does $80 million represent to the United States, which soon will have spent $200 billion on the war in Iraq, in other words, $80 million 2,500 times, mainly to destroy rather than save lives?

It would be the right thing to do. For an administration that trumpets its moral clarity, what could show greater moral clarity than to strive to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of children? And, there is no doubt that U.S. leadership would make a great difference. Only the United States, in particular the U.S. military, has the kind of logistical and transport capabilities required at this late stage of the crisis.

It would be, moreover, a chance for this country to work hand-in-hand with the international community and to begin to repair its image in the world. What might be the impact in the Islamic world of watching as the United States spent its money and applied its energy in order to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Muslims? A trillion dollars of propaganda could not purchase so much good will. Yet, so far, President Bush has not ventured from the comfort of his ranch and stepped up to offer the solidarity and the assistance of the United States, notwithstanding devastating televised images of starving children.

[To make individual donations go to:

www.oxfam.org/eng/

www.savethechildren.org/news/releases/release_072205.asp?stationpub=ggnigercrisis]

The Niger crisis is a microcosm of this administration’s indifference to calamities it perceives –erroneously in this increasingly interconnected world – are happening to other people. Despite all the hype and spin, the Bush administration’s response to an even larger catastrophe happening on the African continent – AIDS – also has been a study in inadequacy. The funds so far donated by the United States to fight the scourge of HIV-AIDS are much less than its share would have to be, to save millions of lives. The United States under Bush – and under Clinton as well – has failed to lead on the problem of our times. And, on more than one occasion, the misguided moralism of the right-wingers in the Republican Party, who now control the White House and the Congress, has helped make matters worse.

If this administration has failed miserably to address AIDS, the holocaust of the early 21st century, the biggest sin of omission by the Bush administration, in the view of future generations, may turn out to be its recalcitrance, obstructionism and advocacy of inaction on the question of global warming.

In the face of an almost universal consensus among scientists and world leaders – not least among them Bush’s leading supporter, Tony Blair – that global warming is a critical threat to the environment that must be addressed now, this administration has done nothing but delay and dissemble. Or worse than nothing; it has attempted to systematically undermine any and all effective international agreements.

This country consumes one quarter of the world’s non-renewable resources and spews out 21 percent of the planet’s carbon dioxide emissions. Yet our government refuses to do anything to curb pollution of the atmosphere or to conserve scarce resources. Instead, we give big tax breaks to the owners of the least fuel-efficient vehicles and to the oil companies, opt out of international agreements to curb emissions, and work to water down the language of environmental resolutions coming out of multilateral meetings.

Why do they hate us? The resistance of the United States, specifically of this blood and oil-soaked administration, to effectively combat global warming harms the whole world and dooms international efforts to fight the problem of climate change to insignificance. Taking a pass on global warming is one more way in which George W. Bush has managed to generate global resentment against the United States and ultimately may prove to be this administration’s greatest crime against humanity.

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Terrorism then and now

By Saul Landau
Taken from Progreso Weekly
August 17, 2005

Official Washington has changed its criteria for evaluating terrorism. In October 1976, before suspected terrorists had Arab names and received indeterminate sentences without charges, lawyers or trials at the Guantanamo Gulag, Luis Posada and Orlando Bosch planted a bomb on a Cuban commercial airliner flying over Barbados. More than 70 people died. Three weeks earlier, on September 21, the Iowa-born Michael Townley, working for Chile’s secret police, planted a bomb under Orlando Letelier’s car in Washington, D.C.

In the early and mid 1970s and throughout the 1980s (except Jimmy Carter’s years 1977-81), the United States installed and backed murderous regimes throughout the third world. Indeed, National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger under Nixon and Ford preferred “authoritarian regimes,” the euphemism Reagan’s UN Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick subsequently used for pro-U.S. military dictatorships, because they caused fewer problems than elected governments.

Kissinger and Nixon had encouraged the 1973 coup in Chile, led by General Augusto Pinochet, against the elected government of Socialist President Salvador Allende. With U.S. approval, Pinochet then established DINA, a secret police-intelligence apparatus that over his 17 years of rule (ending in 1990) murdered more than 3,190 people and tortured tens of thousands more. In addition, he initiated Operation Condor in 1975, a network of intelligence-secret police agencies throughout Latin America, so that he and fellow military dictators could assassinate their “enemies” abroad.

DINA recruited brutes to torture and murder as well as “specialists.” Townley, who hadn’t fulfilled his business executive-father’s expectations, did teach himself (via manuals) electronics and explosives.

I first saw Townley in 1979, testifying in Washington’s Federal Court, against his fellow conspirators. He admitted to attaching a bomb to the I-beam of a Chevrolet belonging to Orlando Letelier, Allende’s defense minister. He had equipped the “device” with a two-stage remote control detonator that two anti-Castro Cubans activated on September 21, 1976, as Letelier’s car entered Washington’s Sheridan Circle.

The Embassy Row blast, less than a mile from the White House, severed Letelier’s legs and sent lethal shrapnel into 25-year-old Ronni Moffitt’s throat. She had been sitting next to Letelier. They had both worked together at the Institute for Policy Studies. Her husband, Michael, miraculously escaped with minor injuries.

Townley confessed that his superiors in DINA had ordered him to kill Letelier, and that he had recruited five anti-Castro Cuban exiles to help him with the task. Townley reached a plea bargain with the federal prosecutors and ratted out his fellow conspirators. The bargain included a clause requiring Townley to testify truthfully about other crimes in which he had taken part.

So, in February of this year, Chilean judge Alejandro Solis deposed Michael Townley – still protected of course by his plea bargain – and asked if he had assassinated another Pinochet enemy.

Townley readily admitted that he had assassinated the exiled Chilean General Carlos Prats and his wife in Buenos Aires, but that he was only “following orders” of his DINA bosses.

Although his story doesn’t have the trendy qualities of modern suicide bombings in Western cities, Townley’s words should nevertheless send chills down the spine of sensitive people. This terrorist, who has been living under the witness protection program in the United States for many of the last 20 years, described in cold and precise language how he made, then “installed and detonated, the bomb in General Prats’ car using two radios and pieces of a walkie talkie (Andrea Chaparro La Nacion, July 30).

“I made a call from one transmitter to the other and the electronic impulse activated the explosion,” he explained. Ironically, the fanatic Muslim killers used similar devices to set off their March 11, 2004, explosions in Madrid – using cell phones rather than the more primitive electronics of the 1970s.

Twenty five years earlier, Townley’s monotone voice brought silence to the courtroom as he told a jury about the problems he encountered and overcame in making and planting the Letelier car bomb. He had to crawl under Letelier’s car at 3 a.m. on a quiet residential street in Bethesda, Maryland, and tape the bomb to the car. At one point, a patrol car drove down the street and Townley described how sweat dripped from his face, and his heart pounded with fear that the cop would see him.

Letelier’s car carried the bomb for two days. On Sunday night, some 20 hours after Townley had installed the deadly device, Letelier and I rested our elbows on the car’s hood, parked safely in his driveway.

Similarly, Townley told Judge Solis of his vicissitudes in getting the bomb on Prats’ car. “One day I found Prats’ garage door open and went in, but I had to hide at a lower parking level for several hours because the concierge was really on the job. When I could finally go up to the level where he parked his car, I went under it and attached the bomb with a cord to a cross piece underneath the car’s engine.” Townley also had to wait anxiously for the opportunity to leave the garage unseen.

Prior to that, he had “spent several days trying to find the General until finally I caught up with him on the night of September 30, 1974. I saw him near the entrance to his garage. The detonator I inserted into the C-4 and TNT explosive had remained armed. So, I detonated it. I didn’t notice anyone else in the general’s car.” Did he not see Prats’ wife, Sofia Cuthbert, sitting next to him?

So poof! Parts of the Prats sailed as high as nine floors. Townley later told the FBI how he had perfected both his bomb making and detonating skills in the ensuing two years between killing Prats and Letelier. In Letelier’s case, he had shaped the charge to blow straight up, thus severing his legs and not spreading his parts all over the place.

In 1975, Townley also confessed to the FBI – with immunity from prosecution – that under DINA orders he had arranged the assassination of Bernardo Leighton, a Christian Democratic leader exiled in Rome. Townley contracted with Italian fascists to shoot Leighton and his wife in their heads. They both survived, but were effectively “neutralized.”

Townley also told of DINA plans to kill other exiled Chilean political leaders in Europe and Mexico. These lethal plots included using his then wife Mariana as part of the hit team. Fortunately, several of these plans went awry.

Now in his mid 60s and using a new name, but no longer in the Witness Protection Program, Townley told Judge Solis what he had already reported previously to FBI agents more than 25 years earlier. At a “friendly dinner” his DINA bosses explained why Prats needed killing.

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Violence and assassinations in the United States (1)

By Roberto Perez Betancourt
Taken from AIN
August 17, 2005

The writers of stories, novels and film scripts are used to designing their protagonists based in hypothetical criminal actions, because they know that the theme is attractive and sells.

If you search among the right-wing Cuban-American terrorists in the United States, mainly in southern Florida, the narrators would extract plenty material from real life that even fiction lacks.

One would find acts aggression, including assassinations, committed by humans with real names and real addresses. These people are inspired by their own economic interests and by hateful revenge; they also act out of rivalry between gangs or as paid mercenaries by US governmental institutions, directly or through organizations that serves as fronts.

Some examples are the attack on November 17, 1962 against Cuban representatives to the United Nations, particularly Roberto Santiesteban Casanova, or the assassination attempt against the Cuban ambassador in New York on October 24, 1968.

An even bloodier act was the death of Cuban-born counterrevolutionary Jose Elias de la Torriente Ajuria, head of the so-called Plan Torriente, on April 12, 1974. He was killed in an act of revenge carried out by the terrorist organization "Cero," which would later give way to a revealing investigation.

The plot would contribute to uncovering information about violence among terrorist groups today that are much more motivated by the multimillion budgets approved by the Bush administration and its publicly disclosed "Transition Plan"
against the Cuban Revolution.

On April 13, 1976 Cuban émigré Ramon Donestevez, a victim of numerous terrorist actions, was assassinated in his speedboat factory in Miami. Donestevez had been the editor of a magazine entitled "Verde Olivo" in the South Florida city. On the following day, the same thing occurred to another émigré, Hector Soto Arana.

Andres Purrinos, who was dedicated to recruiting right-wing Cubans to send them to the Congo as mercenaries, entered the morgue on May 20, 1976 after a visit from rival terrorists in Florida.

Two days later in Miami, the so-called Cuban National Liberation Front claimed responsibility for the death of emigrant Rene Marsella. This was followed on May 29 by the murder of the infamous Cuban gangster Jesus Gonzalez Cartas, alias "El Extrano," who became yet another victim on the list of those assassinated in the streets of Miami by the hands of their counterparts.

As we can see, in 1976 - the year in which Orlando Bosch Avila and Luis Posada Carriles headed a terrorist team that bombed a Cubana airliner in midair killing 73 innocent people on board - there was a rash of terrorist actions carried out by Cuban-born assassins, many of whom are today protected by the George W. Bush administration.

On September 21 of that year, the former Chilean foreign minister and ex-ambassador to the US under the Salvador Allende administration, Orlando Letelier, was killed in Washington.

In that bombing, American citizen Ronni Moffitt was also killed and her husband Michael wounded.

Terrorists from the Cuban Nationalist Movement in New York and New Jersey participated in the assassination of the Chilean diplomat; among them were Guillermo Novo Sampoll, Edwin Gonzalez Morera, Jose Dionisio Suarez Esquivel, Virgilio Paz Romero and Alvin Ros Diaz.

Exactly two years later, the terrorist organization "Hijos de la Estrella Solitaria" claimed responsibility for the disappearance of an executive plane over the Bahamas in which were four Americans travelling to Havana.

On April 28, 1979, the group "Omega 7" publicly claimed the responsibility for the assassination of Cuban-born Carlos Muniz Varela in San Juan, Puerto Rico; on November 25, Cuban émigré Eulalio Negrín was killed in the streets of New Jersey while the following year a Cuban diplomat to the UN, Felix Garcia Rodriguez was assassinated in Queens, New York.

Dozens of incidents can also be added to this list. We could mention the attacks to Cuban Americans Magda Montiel and Nilda Serret on January 21, 1997 in Miami.

Both had recently returned from Havana where they had participated in the "Nation and Emigration" conference in which participants condemned Washington's blockade of the island.

As we can see, from the bullet to the blackjack, to premeditated "hits," treachery, hate and lust - all of these are mixed together like ingredients in a potion to poison souls and undertake indiscriminate actions against people within the
United States itself.

We must reiterate the point that this is not fiction, but concrete acts committed by perpetrators inspired in real life.

Many of the assassins, ringleaders and henchmen are walking the streets of Florida, enjoying the protection of their godfather in the executive office of the most powerful and warmongering nation in the world.

This subject has not been exhausted. In the following article, we will touch on other events in this long chronicle where protagonists live to kill - spilling blood and forcing families into mourning. (To Be Continued.)

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Out of the Atlanta Frying Pan, Into the Human Rights Fire

by Julie Webb-Pullman

Havana, Aug 17 (Prensa Latina).- With over two million prisoners in the United States, how many have been denied visits by their wives and children, asked US Defense Attorney Leonard Weinglass on 12 September 2003.

Unfortunately we know the answer - two - Gerardo Hernandez and Rene Gonzalez, two of the Five Cubans who on 12 September will have spent seven years imprisoned in the US for trumped-up "conspiracy to commit espionage" charges.

Despite their convictions being reversed over a week ago in a unanimous decision by the Atlanta Appeal Court, the human rights of Gerardo and Rene and their wives Adriana Perez and Olga Salanueva, as well as Rene and Olga"s daughter Ivette, continue to be breached.

This is as much due to the innocent Five"s continued detention, as to the curtain of silence which has fallen around the US administration following the appeal decision.

These men are now innocent before the law - is it not bad enough that they were deprived of contact with their families, in breach of their rights, for over five years whilst convicted?

This is no longer the case, and further deprivation of contact, either through continued imprisonment or further refusal of visas, is completely insupportable and unjustifiable, and an even more gross violation of their human rights.

Several instruments of international law uphold the right of all persons deprived of their liberty to humane treatment, which includes the maintenance of regular communication with their families.

They are the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the United Nations body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the Inter-American Convention.

Article 7 of the CRC specifically guarantees every child the right "…to know…his or her parents…".

This right has certainly been denied to Ivette, who at seven years of age has not seen her father since she was a toddler, and cannot by any stretch of the imagination be said to effectively "know" him.

Even family members of victims of US-backed military dictatorships in Latin America have fared better than the Five´s families.

The Human Rights Committee in 1983 identified the inability to communicate with family (Angel Estrella vs Uruguay) as circumstances in which they considered article 10 of the ICCPR to have been breached.

Another example is the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which indicated that ill-treatment or torture can occur through mental suffering, and in 2000 found the suffering of next of kin to constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, for example Bamaca Velasquez vs Guatemala.

Are the people of the United States comfortable with the knowledge that the treatment being meted out to these innocent families by their current administration is at least as bad, if not worse than that of some of the most notorious military dictatorships in Latin American history?

If not, they are beholden to demand of their government the immediate reunification of these families, whether through the immediate release of the Five or the immediate granting of visas to enable their families to visit them.

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Cuban Five Convictions Reversed in Landmark Decision

by Julie Webb-Pullman

Havana, August 14 (Prensa Latina) The Cuban Five, anti-terrorist fighters jailed in the United States since 1998, had their convictions reversed on Tuesday Aug. 9th in a historic and unanimous decision by three judges of the US Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta.

Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, René González, and Fernando González were serving sentences ranging from 15 years to two life sentences plus 80 months in separate prisons around the US for various alleged spying offences, and one for conspiracy to commit murder.

The Appeal Court decision follows hot on the heels of a report by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the UN Commission on Human Rights, which concluded that the detention of the Five Cubans was both arbitrary and in breach of international law.

The Five were part of a larger group of 14 Cubans living in Miami in 1995 who infiltrated and monitored Miami-based terrorist groups, with the sole aim of warning of, and frustrating, their planned attacks, a principle considered legitimate by the US Administration to defend their country after the September 11 attacks.

In July 1998, the Cuban government submitted to the F.B.I a memorandum documenting the terrorist activities of the Miami-based groups, based on the information provided by the 14 Cubans.

Instead of arresting the Miami terrorists, on whom the FBI had their own extensive files, 10 of the 14 Cubans were arrested, five accepted plea bargains and were tried separately, and the remaining Five were subjected to a farcical politically motivated trial that has finally been judicially exposed for the travesty of justice it was.

The judges´ decision addressed only one of the eight or nine issues raised at the appeal hearing on 10 March 2004, that of change of venue.

The defendants´ lawyers argued that the pervasive community prejudice against Fidel Castro and the Cuban government and its agents, and the publicity surrounding the trial and other community events, combined to create a situation where they were unable to obtain a fair and impartial trial.

The judges agreed, unanimously reversing the convictions and overturning their sentences, and remanding them for a new trial on a date yet to be determined.

Legal history is made

Leonard Weinglass, appeals attorney for Antonio Guerrero, said at a press conference in the US on Aug. 10th that this landmark decision is probably the finest example of a judicial analysis of what is required for a fair trial in the United States, and will be cited frequently and used as a precedent throughout the United States, and into the future.

"Never before in the history of the United States has a Federal Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a trial court´s finding with respect to venue. This is a first. And in writing their opinion...the Court analyzed in great detail virtually every facet of the case of the community, of the publicity, the attitude of the jurors, the actions of the prosecutor, and the motions that were made during trial and after trial. It is as extensive and factual in detailed an analysis on the issue of venue that I have ever seen in a written opinion by any court anywhere." Can they also make humanitarian history?

Aside from making legal history, the successful appeal represents the first small shred of justice to surface in the sorry saga of US misadministration of due process that led to these convictions, and while welcoming the Appeal Court decision as an important step towards the Five´s freedom, there is still the matter of remand to be addressed, and possibly yet another trial to be endured by the defendants and their families.

Remand
In the US justice system, a person is considered innocent until proven guilty. The convictions of the Five have been reversed, rendering their guilt unproven. On 12 September these innocent men will have already spent seven years behind bars, during which time US prison authorities acknowledge they have all been model prisoners.

How long will the retrial process take to play out - another two, three, four, five years? Given the time already served by these innocent men, and their impeccable behaviour while incarcerated, is there any need to remand them to further periods of imprisonment pending the retrial?

As evidence from US military personnel at the first trial demonstrated, the Five posed no threat to US security, and these anti-terrorist fighters certainly pose no threat to the US public or to any peaceful citizen of the world, rather the opposite.
Do they pose a threat of flight? Hardly - they openly and voluntarily handed over all of the information on their activities to the FBI months before they were arrested, months during which they had plenty of time to leave the US, if that was their intention.

No, there is no justification to hold these five innocent men in prison for another moment, until and unless they are found guilty of a crime.

Human rights abuses
The miscarriage of justice identified by the Atlanta Appeals Court is compounded by abuses of human rights, the focus of considerable international concern by Nobel laureates such as Nadine Gordimer, organisations such as Amnesty International and the UN, and thousands of citizens from over a hundred countries throughout the world.

In addition to the arbitrary and unnecessary use of solitary confinement, they have expressed extreme concern that Gerardo Hernandez and Rene Gonzalez and their families have been subjected to cruel and inhumane punishment by the refusal of US immigration authorities to grant family members´ visas to enable them to visit them in prison.

Visas have been denied to Adriana Pérez Oconor, unable to visit Gerardo since his arrest in 1998, and Olga Salanueva, unable to visit René since 2000 when she was deported from the US.

Olga and Rene´s seven year old daughter Ivette last saw him when she was 4 months old, chained to a chair in a prison, surrounded by guards.

Now that the convictions have been quashed, should the US immigration authorities continue to refuse visas to Adriana Pérez Oconor and Olga Salanueva?

Should innocent Ivette and her innocent father continue to suffer the cruellest, most inhumane, and most unjustified punishment of all, the theft of the rest of Ivette"s childhood?

The answer to these questions can only be a resounding NO.

Free the Five

With the Appeal decision, the US justice system has shown that however belatedly, it is capable of reconciling truth with justice - now it must immediately reconcile the innocent families it has split asunder.

New Trial
The mountain of disallowed evidence presented at the first trial, and the equally copious evidence sealed and with-held from the defence, would render a new trial another miscarriage of justice should it proceed along similar lines.

However if the necessity defense evidence was allowed, and if all prosecution evidence was made available to the defence, it is highly unlikely a prosecution would succeed.

Given the guilty pleas to the lesser charges, which carry maximum sentences of five years, and the time already served, the only fair and just course of action is to discontinue charges against the Five, and release them immediately, and unconditionally.
Background to the Appeal Who are the "Cuban Five"?

The five Cubans are Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, René González, and Fernando González. From 1995 they lived in Miami, infiltrating and monitoring Miami-based terrorist groups responsible for numerous documented terrorist acts against Cuba and Cuban interests.

What did they do?

As the Five have always acknowledged, they infiltrated extreme right-wing anti-Cuban organisations with the sole aim of warning of, and frustrating, terrorist attacks on Cuba planned by Miami´s Cuban-American mafia.

Why?

Terrorist attacks by Miami Cuban-American groups against the Republic of Cuba are a matter of public knowledge. They have occurred repeatedly over the course of the last 43 years, and been extensively documented, including by the FBI.

These attacks have brought injury and death to thousands of Cuban and US citizens, as well as to the citizens of at least ten other Latin American and European countries.

Between 1990 and 2000 there were 108 such attacks, both in Cuba and against its diplomatic corps abroad. In 1997 alone there were ten bomb attacks in Havana, all at international tourism installations, one of which killed young Italian tourist Fabio Di Celmo.
These terrorist attacks, and other crimes, are recorded in official US documents, and have been reported in the press, on US radio, and on television.

They are also extensively documented in the Appeal Decision.

Their architects and perpetrators have frequently publicly claimed responsibility, including for acts such as the blowing up of a Cubana Airlines plane in flight causing the deaths of 73 people, and the perpetrators have made known their intention to continue with their violent acts, often in media interviews.

The US authorities continue to turn a blind eye to the Miami-based terrorists´ activities.

The Arrests of the Cuban Five

In July 1998, the Cuban government submitted to the FBI a memorandum documenting the terrorist activities of the Miami-based groups, based on the information provided by the 14 Cubans.

Despite having their own extensive files on the Miami terrorists, the FBI did not arrest them.

Instead, the 14 Cubans were accused by the United States Justice Department of "conspiracy to gather and deliver defense information to aid a foreign government, that is, the Republic Of Cuba", and of failing to register as agents of a foreign government.

Four of the 14 were never apprehended, and five accepted plea bargains and were tried separately.

The Five were arrested by the FBI on 12 September 1998, and Miami´s extreme right-wing Cuban-American groups immediately instigated a media campaign depicting the Five as dangerous enemies of American society.

The press and other media, largely under the control of this "Miami Mafia", readily responded with a barrage of wild accusations and vilification against the accused men.

The Five were isolated from the moment of their arrest, and held in solitary confinement under conditions of restricted communication with their families and court-appointed attorneys.

Their attorneys were refused access to the evidence brought against them, thus hindering their ability to mount the defence case.

Under US prison regulations, the punishment cells in which the Five were held (called "The Hole" by inmates) are for prisoners who have committed disciplinary offences within the prison population, and the maximum period of detention in these is 60 days.
The Five had no contact with the prison population at any stage, and despite none of them ever committing any offences against prison regulations, they remained in solitary confinement until their trial in 03 February 2000, that is, for 17 months.

The Charges

The initial indictment related to conspiracy, conspiracy to commit espionage, agent of a foreign power without disclosure, and false identity.

In May 1999, the prosecution brought in a second charge, that of conspiracy to commit murder, against Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo.

At this stage, the five accused had been in punishment cells for eight months, under conditions clearly hindering preparation of a defence.

The Trial Venue
Given the climate of hostility towards the accused in Miami, the court-appointed defence attorneys applied to have the trial switched to any other location in the US that offered the minimum guarantee of a fair, impartial trial without outside pressures.
Federal Judge Joan Lenard denied the numerous applications for a change of venue, without a word of explanation. Her only comment was: "This trial is going to be much more interesting than any TV programme."

Overt pressure was exerted on the jury, and was the cause of complaints lodged by the defence during the course of the trial.

For instance, the jurors themselves, at the time of their final deliberations, complained to the judge that the licence plates on their cars had been filmed by the media as they drove away from the courthouse.

Such intimidating incidents would ordinarily be sufficient cause for the judge to stop the trial, however Judge Lenard took no such action, on that or the many other irregularities that occurred during the trial.

She allowed the jury´s verdicts to stand, despite the absence of any evidence that the accused were guilty of the charges they had denied, and she rejected all of the defence arguments regarding sentencing, even those that were completely consistent with the opinions of the Court´s own pre-trial service officers.

More worrying, Judge Lenard ignored the guidelines set by US Federal law when passing sentence.

The Jury

The 12 jurors were selected from a total of 150 interviewees, utilising politically-slanted questions such as whether they agreed with the economic blockade of Cuba.

All potential jurors who expressed an opinion at odds with those of the Miami Cuban-American mafia were disqualified, or so scared of retaliation that they asked to be excused from jury duty.

For example, the 02 December 2000 edition of Nuevo Herald article reported: "Fears of a violent reaction by Cuban exiles against a jury that decides to acquit the five men accused of spying for Cuba has caused many potential jurors to ask the judge to excuse them from their civic duty."

"Sure, I"m afraid for my safety, if the verdict doesn´t suit the Cuban community here," they quoted a potential juror as saying.

At the end of the six month trial, the jury asked not a single question, and requested not a single clarification, despite the technical complexity of the various charges, and the grave consequences that would flow from their verdict.

Within a few hours, they found all defendants guilty of all charges.

The Sentences

Gerardo Hernandez received two life sentences plus 80 months.

Ramon Labanino received life imprisonment.

Rene Gonzalez received 15 years imprisonment.

Fernando Gonzalez received 19 years imprisonment.

Antonio Geurrero received life plus 5 years and 8 months imprisonment.

They were sent to five different prisons in five different states to serve out their sentences, presenting enormous obstacles for their defense teams, their friends and families to maintain contact, and causing significant unnecessary mental, psychological and emotional difficulties and anguish.

The Prosecution

From the earliest stages, the prosecution was openly consorting with Miami´s anti-Cuban mafia, who also control the Miami press.

Despite not a single document ever being produced to support their claims, the Miami media "classified" the trial as involving sensitive information, and having national security implications - claims which were even denied by the evidence of US military personnel.

Of particular concern must be the more than 1,400 pages of selected documents delivered by the prosecution to the Miami mafia in pursuit of this dis-information campaign.

Violations
The flagrant violations of due process during the trial include the threatening of witnesses by the prosecution, in the courtroom and before the judge.

They include the violation of the basic right to a fair and unbiased trial, and the violation of the sixth amendment to the US Constitution.

Next add the violation of the Act of State Doctrine, recognised by the US Supreme Court, which establishes the right of nations to defend their airspace and territorial waters.

Top it off with the violation of international and US law in the indictment of Gerardo Hernandez, who had no part in the Cuban state´s sovereign and legitimate defensive action regarding the shooting down of the aircraft in Cuban airspace in February 1996.

Reality Check

The evidence produced at the trial proved that the terrorist attacks launched against Cuba and Cuban interests for 40 years by Miami-based groups, causing death, injury and destruction in several countries including the US, created a necessity to defend Cuba and Cuban interests from these groups and their terrorist activities.

It proved that the defendants were no threat to American society, had not sought information relevant to US national security (essential to a charge of espionage), and had caused no damage to US civil or military installations.

That the Five had not been spying against the US was confirmed beyond doubt by evidence given by high-ranking officials of the FBI, the Southern Command, and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

These witnesses included General Charles Wilhelm, former Commander-in-Chief of Southern Command, Edward Atkeson, former deputy head of General Staff military intelligence, Admiral Eugene Carrol, former assistant deputy chief of Naval Operations, Colonel George Buckner, of the North American Air Defense System Command, and General James R Clapper, former DIA director, who was called as an expert witness by the prosecution.

The conviction of Gerardo Hernandez for conspiracy for murder has no legal precedent, being a conviction for an action in which he had no part, being an action of the Cuban government alone, in the legitimate defence under international law of national sovereignty.

Political Prisoners

The refusal of the US authorities to act on the information gathered by the Cuban Five and provided to them by the Cuban Government about the terrorist activities being planned, financed, and launched from US territory, and their bizarre response in arresting those who provided such information then convicting them for conspiracy to commit espionage, flies in the face of both rationality and justice.

The political nature of their arrest, trial, convictions, and sentences is undeniable.

The Five are totally innocent of all conspiracy and espionage charges, and were convicted, sentenced and condemned purely and simply for risking their lives to fight terrorism and death.

Human Rights Breaches

In addition to the abuse of solitary confinement, family members of the Five living in Cuba have repeatedly and continuously been denied visas to visit their relatives in prison.

Gerardo’s wife Adriana Pérez O’Connor has not seen her husband since 1998, as despite being granted an entry visa in 2002 she was detained in Houston en route to his prison in California.

Though her passport and visa were both in order, she was held at the airport for eleven hours and subjected to interrogations by the immigration service and the FBI, without consular or legal assistance or representation.

The FBI opened a file on her, took photographs, took her fingerprints, and put her on a plane back to Mexico City, without allowing her to enter US territory.

She has been requesting another visa ever since, without success.

Rene Gonzalez´ wife Olga, and their daughter Ivette, have received even worse treatment, although both Rene and Ivette are United States citizens.

Olga was deported to Cuba after Rene’s arrest, but US authorities refused to enable her to take her infant daughter with her - Olga was informed that Ivette’s travel was "an independent procedure".

The child had to be taken to Cuba by her grandmother, to be re-united with her mother.

Continued US refusal to grant Olga a visa means that neither Olga nor Ivette have been able to visit Rene in the intervening years, and the child has never known her father.

International Campaign
By 2003, there were Free the Five committees in 103 countries around the world fighting for the release of the five Cuban political prisoners.

Since then even more committees have been formed, conducting information and publicity campaigns, collecting signatures on petitions, lobbying governments and legal institutions, providing support to the legal defence teams, holding public meetings, publicising the case in the alternative media, and writing to the Five themselves in their prison cells.

Despite the mainstream media´s policy of silence, the efforts of these groups have resulted in a grassroots surge in awareness and concern around the world, particularly following the arbitrary confinement of the Five to the "hole" on 28 February 2003.

In an attempt to subvert the appeal process and whilst the world was "distracted" by the impending war on Iraq, the Five were held in solitary confinement for the month prior to the lodgement of their appeals, without access to their legal counsel.

Several high-profile people and organisations, such as Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer and the World Federation of Trade Unions, Amnesty International, and over 100 British MPs took up this cause, their solidarity efforts finally resulting in the Five being returned to the mainstream prison populations.

The Appeals

The motion for a new trial was refused, but appeals were lodged on 07 April, and in early May 2003.

Whilst some Amicus briefs were successfully filed, that of the Professor Erik Luna, from the College of Law of the University of Utah, was denied.

Professor Luna’s brief reviewed a series of terrorist actions carried out against Cuba over recent decades and supported the "state of need" defence, ie the circumstances which have forced Cuba to seek information to prevent constant aggression against the country, planned and carried out from US territory.

On November 17, 2003 the defence presented their response to the District Attorney’s arguments, and the files were then examined by a panel of three judges nominated by the US Court of Appeals 11th Circuit in Atlanta.

A public hearing took place on 10 March 2004, at which the defence attorneys had only 15 minutes to argue the 24 grounds for appeal for the Five defendants in 3 minutes each.

United Nations Commission on Human Rights

On May 27, 2005 the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the UN Commission on Human Rights concluded that the detention of the Five Cubans was arbitrary, and in breach of international law.

In Opinion No. 19/2005, they noted three aspects of the detention and arrest of the Five that made their detention arbitrary.

Firstly, the Five were held in solitary confinement for 17 months, weakening their ability to mount an adequate defense.

Secondly most of the evidence against them was withheld, undermining an equal balance between the prosecution and the defense.

Thirdly, the trial was held in Miami, where it was impossible to select an impartial jury in a case linked with Cuba.

The Working Group noted that the trial did not take place in the climate of objectivity and impartiality which is required in order to conclude on the observance of the standards of a fair trial as defined in Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States of America is a party.

They concluded that the three elements, combined together, "are of such gravity that they confer the deprivation of liberty of these five persons an arbitrary character."

Having issued this opinion, the Working Group requested the United States Government to adopt the necessary steps to remedy the situation, in conformity with the principles stated in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

In an article published by The Miami Herald on 20 July 2005 the US State Department said it would not accept the "ridiculous and perplexing decision".

Appeal Decision 09 August 2005.

U.S. COURT OF APPEALS ELEVENTH CIRCUIT, Atlanta No. 01-17176 District Court No. 98-00721-CR-JAL August 09, 2005 Before BIRCH, KRAVITCH, and OAKES , Circuit Judges.

CONCLUSION In light of the foregoing discussion, the defendants´ convictions are REVERSED and we REMAND for a new trial.

The full decision can be found at www.freethefive.org

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Who Will Take the Next Stand, or the Stand Next?

by Julie Webb-Pullman

Havana, 15 Aug (Prensa Latina) The case of the Cuban Five has not only identified several curiosities with regard to the Bush administration’s so-called war on terror, but seemingly also leaves the US wide open to charges of violating a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution.

Although there are many, one curiosity is the guilty findings with regard to the charges of conspiracy to commit espionage.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law (1996) defines espionage as "the practice of gathering, transmitting, or losing through gross negligence information relating to the defense of the US with the intent that or with reason to believe that the information will be used to the injury of the US or the advantage of a foreign nation."

Put simply, espionage is acting against the US national interest.

As the Miami and Atlanta Appeal Court transcripts demonstrate, both courts were very much aware that the Five were infiltrating and monitoring Miami-based terrorist groups with a documented history of attacks against Cuba and Cuban interests.

Given the Five’s convictions for conspiracy to commit espionage, or conspiring against US national interests, doesn’t that amount to a finding by the Miami court that fighting terrorism is against the US national interest?

I am sure there were more than Five sighs of relief when the convictions were reversed!

Even more curious was when Judge Joan Lenard handed down Rene Gonzalez´ 15 year prison sentence on 14 December 2001.

She implicitly admitted the existence of anti-Cuban terrorist groups in the US by prohibiting Gonzalez from "associating with or visiting specific places where terrorist individuals or groups can be found or that they are known to frequent" after serving his sentence.

Pardon me Judge Lenard, but as you clearly have sufficient knowledge of the existence of terrorist individuals in Florida to prohibit Rene Gonzalez from associating with or visiting them, isn´t there the small matter of UN Security Council Resolution 1373 of 28 September 2001?

This Resolution obliges member states not to allow any of their institutions or agencies to give active or passive support to terrorist groups, organisations or individuals.

This includes by turning a blind eye to the presence of such groups in their territory.

This probably also includes by prosecuting people trying to prevent the terrorist activities of such groups, not to mention prohibiting them from doing so.

Luckily, there is another obligation of UNSC Resolution 1373 - to bring to trial as quickly as possible anyone suspected of violating its provisions, and given the US commitment to international security, we can surely expect no less than their full compliance.

Will the Miami prosecutor’s office have any time to pursue a retrial of the Five in between answering the indictments of all of those involved in pursuing the case against the Five, including themselves, Judge Lenard, the FBI, and the Bush administration?
Or will they pursue the conspiracy charges regardless, thus openly acknowledging that fighting terrorism is against the US national interest and proving for once and for all the empty rhetoric of the administration’s self-serving war on terror.

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Bush’s shameless commitment with the terrorists

• An interview with Ricardo Alarcon, President of the Cuban Parliament

by Bernie Dwyer
Taken from CubaNow.net
August, 2005

Cubanow.- The following interview with Ricardo Alarcon, President of the Cuban Parliament, conducted on June 24 th , was broadcast by Radio Havana Cuba in two parts on June 27 th and 29 th , 2005:

Bernie Dwyer (BD): Can you point out some of the differences in the custodial treatment enjoyed by self-confessed terrorist Posada Carriles and the five Cuban men who are presently serving long prison sentences in the US for defending their people and country against precisely those actions undertaken by Posada?

Ricardo Alarcon (RA): The differences in the treatment of the Five and Posada are striking. For example, just recently, the administrative immigration judge was requested to give the defense lawyer one month's delay. He was asked if it was possible to postpone the hearing that was to take place on June 24th until July 25th. What was the argument of the defense lawyer? That he needed more time to go through the large amount of papers and documents that the US government has given them and the judge: the very foundation of the reasons why the government is against Posada this moment. It is a normal procedure in the US legal system -what they call: the discovery process- that the government is supposed to show the other side what they have against an accused person. The Five are still, after more than five years of being condemned and sentenced, waiting to have access to at least 80% of the documents that were taken from them. These documents were classified as secret materials by the government, thus making them unavailable to not only the accused but to their lawyers as well. This man, an accused terrorist, a person that was going through a foreign tribunal proceeding in Venezuela for the bombing of a civilian airplane -a classical terrorist act- is detained because he entered the US without a visa. That man is given the opportunity, through his lawyer, to read the same amount of papers that the government presented to this judge. While the five Cubans, including two of whom are US citizens and their five US lawyers were always prevented from having access to those papers. That's one thing. The other thing is the treatment in prison. Posada himself during the first interview he gave to a journalist from the Miami Herald, expressed his happiness and his satisfaction that he doesn't have any complaint. He has his own private water supply. He has special meals. He doesn't go to the regular areas where the other prisoners have their lunch and their dinners. He doesn't go to the backyard where the other prisoners go to exercise and get some sunshine and so on. No, he has his own private backyard. He has a private room or cell and private dining facilities. He described the menu and it was pretty good. His only complaint was a lack of "pastelitos Cubanos." That's a quote, unquote. The only things not available in that jail are Cuban pastries! He doesn't have limitations in the use of telephone. He doesn't have visiting limitations including members of the media. And he has access to all the evidence that the government is presenting against him. He is not in isolation. He was not handcuffed when he was being arrested. Yesterday, I saw an interview with Mr. Santiago Alvarez, his friend from Miami, and he reiterated that when he was asked how is his friend Posada feeling, he said that he had spoken to him by telephone that morning and he doesn't have any complaints, he is happy there. He is just waiting and is very confident that he will get what he wants.

BD: Much of what is being said about Posada Carriles is that he is in contact with people that are involved in drug trafficking and human trafficking. What is the basis of that kind of talk?

RA: Posada Carriles was involved in one of the most serious cases of drug trafficking into the US from Central America, which was very well documented in the 80's and 90's. Posada was in charge of the secret operation to supply the Nicaraguan Contras with weapons; something that was prohibited at that time by US Congress laws. The same airplanes that brought the weapons to Nicaragua were used to take back drugs to the US. Mr. Posada disappeared when the Contra scandal exploded. There was also a second "explosion" in Los Angeles (LA) when a local newspaper, the San Jose Mercury , disclosed that case about the introduction of drugs into the African-American community of South Central LA, where there was an explosion of drug addiction in the late 80's and early 90's. This was part of the US Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) effort to weaken the African-American movement in LA. That was admitted by the CIA later when the Agency's director had to go to LA and appeared before a large gathering of African-American community leaders and activists to apologize. Maxine Waters, the congress person for that area, made that denunciation in the US congress. She raised hell about what was going on in the CIA's secret operation and she got the CIA director to go there and present his apologies in front of the people in LA. But, let's return to Posada Carriles: The CIA recognizes and apologizes for what has happened in Los Angeles but who was the person sending the drugs from Central America? It was Luis Posada Carriles. At that moment, he had disappeared again. He was in hiding during the 1990's until he reappeared first in Panama and now in the US. The way he entered the US follows exactly the drug traffickers' route from Central America to the South East of the US. Following press reports in Mexico, he got the co-operation of some drug traffickers in the area who helped him when he entered into South East Mexico moving through Central America, using the same route, the same people. He even, according to his version in the press of how he entered the US, tried to hide the truth of having entered on the Santrina , the boat from Quintana Roo to Miami. But in exchange for that, he said that he entered through the Mexican border in the North but with the help of the smugglers. These people use those routes for both human beings and drugs. He is an old hand in drug trafficking in Central America and in the US.

BD: Posada Carriles' defense lawyer, Eduardo Soto, is trying to block the evidence contained in documents handed over by the Cuban government to the FBI at a meeting in Havana in June 1998. Some people even suggest that the Cuban 5 were arrested as a result of those very documents being handed over at that meeting. Are these documents publicly available?

RA: You can find those documents at the Cuban website: www.antiterrorist.cu . We put up the whole set of documents given to the FBI and we also gave them to the New York Times. I think it's clear that the US, instead of acting in accordance with international obligations and laws and acting against those organizing terrorist actions against Cuba from US soil, decided to kill the messenger, to act against those who were contributing to the knowledge that the government had about those activities. This is the substance of the case of the Cuban 5. The reason why it has been so difficult to get through the media with the real story of the Cuban 5 is precisely that. The story is very simple, that the US administration acted against those five Cubans in order to protect those that are very closely linked to the US Administration, that they are part and parcel of the anti-Cuba policy of the US. Now, when the entire world can witness how the US is protecting Posada Carriles and refusing to hand him over to Venezuela to be tried on a very heinous terrorist act, it's demonstrating what we knew already: that they are closely linked and very supportive of the worst terrorist in this hemisphere. That's why they tried to hide the case of the Cuban 5. But now when the world discovers the reality of the US government's very, very close connection with terrorism, everyone can understand why the Cuban 5 were arrested. And, it's not an exaggeration... they were arrested seven years ago because they oppose terrorism. For some Americans, it was very difficult to understand and admit that because their government is supposed to oppose terrorism. And, secondly, the best proof of the impossibility of having a fair trial for the five in Miami is demonstrated now…. Mr. Posada didn't show up in Boston, he showed up in Miami. He wanted to be admitted in Miami, to join Orlando Bosch, to join Novo Sampol and the whole Mafia of terrorists that move freely in that city. The idea of being able to have in that city a fair trial of five young people being accused precisely of opposing that Mafia is simply preposterous. It's simply contrary to any logic and any sense of justice.

BD: It appears that Posada Carriles tried to sneak into the US. However, there has been a public and media outcry worldwide. How do you think the US will deal with this problem?

RA: The US government simply doesn't know how to get rid of this problem. It's like another Iraq entanglement that they are facing with Posada. They probably would have wished him to disappear, to die or not to exist any more. Unfortunately for the Bush administration, Mr. Posada is there. Remember for nearly two months they simply refused to admit that man was there. Notwithstanding his public statements and his daily announcements from his house that he was there: notwithstanding his application for political asylum. He managed to fill in a number of papers and send them with photographs and the address of where he was staying. Notwithstanding all that, every day the spokesperson for the US government kept saying "we don't know where he is" and "it is not confirmed he is here" and blah, blah, blah. He had to come out publicly and give a press conference to have the US finally take him into custody and it was at that moment they showed their commitment to Posada and terrorism. He wasn't arrested for the purpose of considering his extradition back to Venezuela to face trial on terrorism. He was arrested on migratory grounds and to receive VIP treatment, not to be treated as a normal, undocumented alien, not to be expelled expeditiously but to be offered a protracted process that can take years before defining if he was or was not legally there. The last and only hope that the administration has now is to get people to forget this story: to cover it with tons of other stories, other news and so on and hope that with the passing of time people will forget and then ignore the presence of Mr. Posada in the US. We have to take every opportunity now not to permit the administration to simply ignore public opinion: assuming that people can be fooled and can be forced to ignore and forget. It is very important not to forget, to remember every day, that the US, with every passing day, the Bush administration is showing its shameless commitment with the terrorist, not against the terrorists but with the terrorists and in favor of terrorists.

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