Cuba takes protest to the United Nations
Cuban government denounces the recent acquittal of accused terrorist Luis Posada Carriles.
HAVANA, Cuba, Wednesday April 13, 2011 – The Cuban government has circulated a document to the United Nations denouncing the recent acquittal of accused terrorist Luis Posada Carriles in the United States as a “judicial farce”.
The document, which was sent to the secretary general of the New York-based organization Ban Ki-moon, decried the “laughable charges” that were the subject of the three-month Texas trial and given the “magnitude” of his suspected involvement in a terrorist attack on the Cubana airline that exploded off the west coast of Barbados in 1976, killing all 73 people on board.
However, Posada Carriles was on federal trial in Texas not for masterminding that bombing and a series of others in Havana over 20 years, but for lying to American officials about his involvement in them, and about how he entered the United States in 2005, and also for obstructing US investigations into the attacks.
However, after about three hours of deliberation, the El Paso jury found Posada Carriles not guilty and acquitted him of all charges.
This has incensed the Castro-led government, which stated in the missive to the UN that: “The acquittal of Posada Carriles is an insult to the children without parents, widows and mothers crying for the trail of death left by that terrorist.”
The document written by the Cuban mission at the UN accuses Washington of being aware of the Posada Carriles’ participation of in the terrorist attack against the Cubana airline and against hotel facilities in Havana.
Cuba’s sentiments have also been echoed by groups in Venezuela and Belarus.
The Venezuela Group of the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino) issued a statement in Caracas saying calling Posada Carriles’ exoneration “a mockery”.
Signed by Rodrigo Cabezas, the group’s president, the document adds that Washington had one last opportunity left to provide justice through extraditing Posada Carriles to Venezuela in response to request filed by Caracas in 2005, as established by a bilateral agreement signed in 1922.
Venezuelan authorities have been seeking Posada Carriles’ return since he escaped from a prison in there where he was going to be tried for the explosion of the Cubana airline.
The Parlatino’s denunciation follows one made by the Venezuelan foreign ministry and the Cuba-Venezuela Mutual Solidarity Movement.
In a meeting with Cuban ambassador, Alfredo Nieves Portuondo in Belarus, Lilliam Ananich, the European nation’s first deputy Information minister rejected the pardon and said imperial governments must stop making such flagrant violations of their obligations to fight terrorism.
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