CUBA, 13 March, 2007.- Cuban Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon said Monday in Havana that the United States is the best place to try notorious terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, charged in January for merely lying to immigration authorities. Speaking at an international labor lawyers meeting underway in Havana, Alarcon said that the United States possesses the most evidence and declassified documents against Posada Carriles concerning the midair bombing of a civilian Cuban Airliner in 1976 that killed all 73 aboard. Alarcon pointed out that the deadline of the order issued by a federal immigration judge in El Paso that ordered the Department of Homeland Security to either certify Posada Carriles’ release or present reasons for keeping him behind bars has expired. He added that Posada Carriles will now be tried only for lying about how he entered the country rather than for acts of terrorism. He said that Washington’s rejection of Venezuela’s extradition request on Posada is an "unpardonable violation" of the Montreal Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Civil Aviation that went into effect in 1973. Posada escaped from a Venezuelan prison while awaiting trial on the case. Alarcon added that the safe haven being provided Posada by Washington confirms Cuba’s need to protect itself as was argued by the defense in the case against the Cuban Five, imprisoned in the US since 1998, for uncovering terrorist plots against the island being organized by ultra-rightwing groups based in Miami.( Cubaminrex-Granma)
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