Aplasta_Cipayos
2010-12-05 17:37:12 UTC
South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
Posada, accused bomber, to face perjury charges
Linked to Cuban terrorism case
By Jay Weaver, The Miami Herald
8:42 AM EST, December 5, 2010
The upcoming trial of Luis Posada Carriles will mark the first time
that evidence gathered by Cuban authorities and the FBI will be
presented in a U.S. courtroom to show the former CIA operative's
alleged role in a string of Havana bombings.
Also for the first time, a jury will hear controversial but key
evidence: Posada's taped interview with a New York Times freelance
journalist, who quoted him admitting that he masterminded the deadly
plot to attack the Havana hotels in 1997.
But serious questions have already surfaced about the recordings that
evoke comparisons to Richard Nixon's infamous Watergate tapes: They
have a four-minute, 20-second gap involving Posada's commentary about
a recruit convicted in Cuba of carrying out the mission, according to
court records.
The trial, set for Jan. 10 in El Paso, Texas, will be a spectacle of
sorts: Posada, 82 and living in Miami-Dade, has for decades been a
magnet for controversy during a career striving to topple Cuba's
leader, Fidel Castro.
The Cuban exile militant stands accused of lying under oath about his
leading part in the hotel bombing campaign that killed an Italian
tourist -- though he is not charged with causing the death.
Trained by the CIA in sabotage and explosives during the Cold War,
Posada has been embraced as a hero in South Florida's Cuban exile
community but vilified as a terrorist in Cuba and Venezuela and held
responsible for the hotel assaults as well as a 1976 Cuban airliner
bombing that killed 73, including the Cuban youth fencing team.
FOCUS ON PERJURY
In the Texas trial, the challenge for federal prosecutors will be
establishing Posada's involvement in the Havana attacks so they can
prove their accusation: That he committed perjury in 2005 when he told
U.S. immigration authorities that he wasn't involved in ``soliciting
others'' to carry out the bombings -- despite allegedly admitting he
did so in a 1998 New York Times article. In the story, freelance
journalist Ann Louise Bardach quoted Posada as saying that he directed
the bombing attacks to damage Cuba's tourism industry.
``We didn't want to hurt anybody,'' the story quoted Posada as saying.
``We just wanted to make a big scandal so that the tourists don't come
anymore.''
But years later, at his 2005 deportation hearing, Posada denied having
admitted to Bardach that he orchestrated the bombings. He said the
interview was in English and therefore he misunderstood questions and
misstated his answers because he had difficulty understanding the
language.
Posada's Miami lawyer, Arturo V. Hernandez, has insisted that his
client was not the mastermind and did not lie during his immigration
hearing to deport him from the United States.
Hernandez has sought unsuccessfully to throw out Bardach's 1998
interview, which she recorded in Aruba.
In court papers, the federal judge presiding over the case said the
unexplained gap on the recordings concerned her because it came as
Posada and Bardach were talking about his connection to a Salvadoran
man convicted of the bombing attacks.
Raúl Cruz León, imprisoned under a death sentence in Cuba since 1997,
has confessed that he placed several of the bombs in hotels,
restaurants and bars, killing the Italian tourist and wounding others.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone described the gap as an
``extended period of time'' and noted it was a ``matter of central
importance in the perjury counts'' against Posada, according to her
court order. The judge also found that in addition to the possible
``erasure,'' there were 15 other unexplained gaps on four recorded
tapes with Posada.
The judge said she decided to allow all five hours of the recordings
in as evidence because she found Bardach to be a ``credible witness''
when she testified in a closed Nov. 15 hearing about her interview and
her handling of the tapes with The New York Times. Bardach said she
did not know why there were gaps in the recordings, but ``allowed that
accidental erasures could have happened,'' according to the judge.
Cardone said she found ``no evidence of tampering by design.''
At trial, Justice Department lawyers also plan to introduce more than
3,500 pages of official Cuban and Guatemalan records related to the
bombing investigation that were turned over to Posada's lawyer in
November.
Hernandez said in court papers that they deliberately supplied the
police investigative reports in a ``belated'' manner. He has urged the
judge to throw them out.
The government lawyers said the investigative reports detail the
Havana bombings and their locations, planners and types of explosive
devices used. They also focus on arrests, suspects, witnesses and a
falsified Guatemalan passport allegedly used by Posada. The FBI
obtained one report summarizing the case during a visit to Cuba in
2006.
The lawyers also disclosed some of their legal strategy, including
plans to call two Cuban police officials as witnesses, as well as the
Cuban medical examiner who conducted the autopsy on the 32-year-old
Italian tourist, Fabio di Celmo. They also plan to call his best
friend, an Italian who was standing next to him during the 1997
explosion at the Copacabana Hotel.
But the Cuban government has denied the Justice Department's request
to allow two Salvadoran men charged or convicted in the bombings to
travel from the island to Texas to testify at Posada's trial,
according to federal prosecutors.
The two men are Otto René Rodríguez Llerena and Francisco Chávez
Abarca. Llerena is serving a 30-year sentence for the hotel bombings.
Abarca was extradited in October from Venezuela to Cuba, where he
faces trial for his role in the bombing plot.
``Both men implicate the defendant as an organizer of the campaign to
cripple tourism by the bombings, and their testimony would further
expose the defendant's lies under oath to immigration officials,''
attorneys in the Justice Department's counterterrorism section wrote
in court papers.
FBI EVIDENCE
Justice Department lawyers also plan to use FBI evidence reviewed by a
federal grand jury in New Jersey.
FBI agents collected records showing about $19,000 in wire transfers
from New Jersey to Posada in El Salvador and Guatemala between October
1996 and January 1998. The FBI believes the money was used to finance
the bombing.
The New Jersey panel was considering whether to charge Posada and
others with murder conspiracy in the Italian's death, but it never
returned an indictment.
Instead, the Justice Department charged Posada with lying during his
citizenship application about how he entered the United States in
March 2005. He said he arrived by bus through Texas, but authorities
said Cuban exiles transported him by boat from Mexico to South
Florida.
In May 2007, Judge Cardone threw out the perjury charges, accusing the
U.S. government of engaging in ``fraud, deceit and trickery.''
Cardone's dismissal was overturned by an appellate court, which led to
a new indictment in April 2009 charging Posada with lying about his
entry into the United States and his involvement in the Havana hotel
bombings.
Copyright © 2010, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Posada, accused bomber, to face perjury charges
Linked to Cuban terrorism case
By Jay Weaver, The Miami Herald
8:42 AM EST, December 5, 2010
The upcoming trial of Luis Posada Carriles will mark the first time
that evidence gathered by Cuban authorities and the FBI will be
presented in a U.S. courtroom to show the former CIA operative's
alleged role in a string of Havana bombings.
Also for the first time, a jury will hear controversial but key
evidence: Posada's taped interview with a New York Times freelance
journalist, who quoted him admitting that he masterminded the deadly
plot to attack the Havana hotels in 1997.
But serious questions have already surfaced about the recordings that
evoke comparisons to Richard Nixon's infamous Watergate tapes: They
have a four-minute, 20-second gap involving Posada's commentary about
a recruit convicted in Cuba of carrying out the mission, according to
court records.
The trial, set for Jan. 10 in El Paso, Texas, will be a spectacle of
sorts: Posada, 82 and living in Miami-Dade, has for decades been a
magnet for controversy during a career striving to topple Cuba's
leader, Fidel Castro.
The Cuban exile militant stands accused of lying under oath about his
leading part in the hotel bombing campaign that killed an Italian
tourist -- though he is not charged with causing the death.
Trained by the CIA in sabotage and explosives during the Cold War,
Posada has been embraced as a hero in South Florida's Cuban exile
community but vilified as a terrorist in Cuba and Venezuela and held
responsible for the hotel assaults as well as a 1976 Cuban airliner
bombing that killed 73, including the Cuban youth fencing team.
FOCUS ON PERJURY
In the Texas trial, the challenge for federal prosecutors will be
establishing Posada's involvement in the Havana attacks so they can
prove their accusation: That he committed perjury in 2005 when he told
U.S. immigration authorities that he wasn't involved in ``soliciting
others'' to carry out the bombings -- despite allegedly admitting he
did so in a 1998 New York Times article. In the story, freelance
journalist Ann Louise Bardach quoted Posada as saying that he directed
the bombing attacks to damage Cuba's tourism industry.
``We didn't want to hurt anybody,'' the story quoted Posada as saying.
``We just wanted to make a big scandal so that the tourists don't come
anymore.''
But years later, at his 2005 deportation hearing, Posada denied having
admitted to Bardach that he orchestrated the bombings. He said the
interview was in English and therefore he misunderstood questions and
misstated his answers because he had difficulty understanding the
language.
Posada's Miami lawyer, Arturo V. Hernandez, has insisted that his
client was not the mastermind and did not lie during his immigration
hearing to deport him from the United States.
Hernandez has sought unsuccessfully to throw out Bardach's 1998
interview, which she recorded in Aruba.
In court papers, the federal judge presiding over the case said the
unexplained gap on the recordings concerned her because it came as
Posada and Bardach were talking about his connection to a Salvadoran
man convicted of the bombing attacks.
Raúl Cruz León, imprisoned under a death sentence in Cuba since 1997,
has confessed that he placed several of the bombs in hotels,
restaurants and bars, killing the Italian tourist and wounding others.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone described the gap as an
``extended period of time'' and noted it was a ``matter of central
importance in the perjury counts'' against Posada, according to her
court order. The judge also found that in addition to the possible
``erasure,'' there were 15 other unexplained gaps on four recorded
tapes with Posada.
The judge said she decided to allow all five hours of the recordings
in as evidence because she found Bardach to be a ``credible witness''
when she testified in a closed Nov. 15 hearing about her interview and
her handling of the tapes with The New York Times. Bardach said she
did not know why there were gaps in the recordings, but ``allowed that
accidental erasures could have happened,'' according to the judge.
Cardone said she found ``no evidence of tampering by design.''
At trial, Justice Department lawyers also plan to introduce more than
3,500 pages of official Cuban and Guatemalan records related to the
bombing investigation that were turned over to Posada's lawyer in
November.
Hernandez said in court papers that they deliberately supplied the
police investigative reports in a ``belated'' manner. He has urged the
judge to throw them out.
The government lawyers said the investigative reports detail the
Havana bombings and their locations, planners and types of explosive
devices used. They also focus on arrests, suspects, witnesses and a
falsified Guatemalan passport allegedly used by Posada. The FBI
obtained one report summarizing the case during a visit to Cuba in
2006.
The lawyers also disclosed some of their legal strategy, including
plans to call two Cuban police officials as witnesses, as well as the
Cuban medical examiner who conducted the autopsy on the 32-year-old
Italian tourist, Fabio di Celmo. They also plan to call his best
friend, an Italian who was standing next to him during the 1997
explosion at the Copacabana Hotel.
But the Cuban government has denied the Justice Department's request
to allow two Salvadoran men charged or convicted in the bombings to
travel from the island to Texas to testify at Posada's trial,
according to federal prosecutors.
The two men are Otto René Rodríguez Llerena and Francisco Chávez
Abarca. Llerena is serving a 30-year sentence for the hotel bombings.
Abarca was extradited in October from Venezuela to Cuba, where he
faces trial for his role in the bombing plot.
``Both men implicate the defendant as an organizer of the campaign to
cripple tourism by the bombings, and their testimony would further
expose the defendant's lies under oath to immigration officials,''
attorneys in the Justice Department's counterterrorism section wrote
in court papers.
FBI EVIDENCE
Justice Department lawyers also plan to use FBI evidence reviewed by a
federal grand jury in New Jersey.
FBI agents collected records showing about $19,000 in wire transfers
from New Jersey to Posada in El Salvador and Guatemala between October
1996 and January 1998. The FBI believes the money was used to finance
the bombing.
The New Jersey panel was considering whether to charge Posada and
others with murder conspiracy in the Italian's death, but it never
returned an indictment.
Instead, the Justice Department charged Posada with lying during his
citizenship application about how he entered the United States in
March 2005. He said he arrived by bus through Texas, but authorities
said Cuban exiles transported him by boat from Mexico to South
Florida.
In May 2007, Judge Cardone threw out the perjury charges, accusing the
U.S. government of engaging in ``fraud, deceit and trickery.''
Cardone's dismissal was overturned by an appellate court, which led to
a new indictment in April 2009 charging Posada with lying about his
entry into the United States and his involvement in the Havana hotel
bombings.
Copyright © 2010, South Florida Sun-Sentinel