Release for the four dangerous international terrorists?

By Jean-Guy Allard, Granma, 29 August 2003

ON Wednesday, September 3 in Panama, a preliminary hearing will determine the fate of four exceedingly dangerous international terrorists, including none other than Luis Posada Carriles, an individual whose bloody history dates back to dirty CIA covert operations in the 1960s, and whom various experts have linked with the assassination of former U.S. president, John F. Kennedy.

Posada shares with Orlando Bosch from Miami the title of most dangerous terrorist in the hemisphere, the words of the FBI itself.

Judge Enrique Paniza of the Fifth Penal Court will have the huge responsibility of deciding whether Posada, Remon, Jimenez and Novo remain behind bars or are let out on the streets to resume their terrorist activities, as they always have done.

A Panamanian court judge will have the responsibility of keeping away from their arsenals those notorious killers from Miami mafia organizations, whose victims in Cuba, the United States and elsewhere reach the thousands.

Posada Carriles, aged 74; Gaspar Jimenez Escobedo, 67; Guillermo Novo Sampoll, 62; and Pedro Remon, 58 were arrested in Panama City on November 17, 2000, shortly after Cuba revealed to the Panamanian authorities a conspiracy to kill President Fidel Castro in the middle of a mass meeting in the University of Panama auditorium, in what would have been a massacre averted at the last minute.

THE MOST DANGEROUS TERRORIST IN THE HEMISPHERE

With Orlando Bosch of Miami, Posada shares the title of most dangerous terrorist in the hemisphere, in the words of the FBI. And without exception, his accomplices have lengthy terrorist records. Among other crimes, Jimenez is the murderer of Cuban technician Artagon Diaz Diaz in Mexico; Remon killed Felix Garcia Rodriguez, Cuban diplomat to the UN; and Novo was involved in the assassination of the former Chilean foreign minister, Orlando Letelier.

On November 19, 2000 Panama's highest authorities confirmed that they had arrested various terrorists, including Posada, Jimenez, Novo and Remon, and additionally had uncovered proof of the terrible conspiracy, such as a large quantity of U.S. manufactured C-4 explosive and compromising documents.

However, in the following months, the seeming determination of the Panamanian legal apparatus to prosecute the four suspects dissolved in the face of interventions by the Miami mafia linked to powerful sectors of the Panamanian bourgeoisie, behind the scenes maneuvers, press campaigns and other stunts orchestrated by Rogelio Cruz. It should be noted how this former Panamanian attorney general, deposed due to his relations with the Colombian cartels, was selected by the Miami capos to get their proteges out of jail.

Conclusion: fully justified extradition applications for Posada Carriles on the part of Cuba and Venezuela were dismissed, as well as a request for DNA samples, and the latest discovery of those in charge of saving the four terrorists: the explosives detonator has evaporated into thin air, while the conspirators' driver, a sudden victim of amnesia, does not recall having seen the explosives.

Thus, next Wednesday, the killer quartet will end up confronting not a charge of attempted murder, as would be logical, but four lesser charges: possession of explosives, illicit association in order to commit a crime, and falsification of public documents.

FAR BEYOND THE AUDITORIUM CRIME But the case of Posada, Remon, Jimenez and Novo goes way beyond what took place in Panama on that November 17, 2000.

All of them have records of more than 40 years of consistent terrorist activity, leaving in their wake thousands of dead and wounded, families destroyed, children orphaned, principally in Cuba, but also in the United States, Latin America and various nations outside this continent.

Posada, Remon, Jimenez and Novo were, on many occasions, the founders of terrorist organizations that, with the protection of the U.S. intelligence agencies and the highest spheres of government, spilled the blood of innocent victims.

The case of Posada is even more dirty and at the same level as his most prized alter ego, Orlando Bosch, the killer pediatrician who now moves freely through the streets of Miami, benefiting from a presidential blessing.

Posada's history dates back to the CIA's Operation 40, through which dozens of saboteurs, assassins and terrorists were trained at Fort Benning to support the projected Bay of Pigs invasion. That force gave rise to some of the worst criminals known in the United States in following decades, including various drug traffickers who converted Miami into the continental drugs capital.

Various experts on the conspiracy to kill U.S. president John Kennedy affirmed that Posada was in Dealey Square from where the fatal shots were fired. Some even state that the Cuban-American was one of the snipers whose bullets hit the U.S. head of state.

Sources likewise indicate that Posada was one of the most perverse of the mercenaries in Viet Nam who directed the sinister Operation Phoenix, where thousands of sympathizers of the Vietnamese revolutionary forces were eliminated in extermination camps.

Posada turned up again in Venezuela where, as he recently boasted from his Panamanian cell, he carried out another dirty operation which, he claims, systematically eliminated partisans of the guerrilla struggle. In this sister country, he reached the highest leadership role in the DISIP, at the time penetrated by the CIA.

He joined the terrorist group CORU when it was founded by Orlando Bosch under the instructions of George Bush Senior, then head of the CIA. He coordinated a whole series of explosions in the United States, Spain, Jamaica, Barbados, Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago and Panama against Cuban and foreign diplomatic buildings and airlines, and various assassinations.

On October 6, 1976 in conjunction with Orlando Bosch, Posada masterminded the sabotage in full flight of a Cubana Aviation passenger plane off the coast of Barbados, killing all 73 persons on board.

Posada and Bosch were subsequently detained by the Venezuelan authorities, but continued directing CORU operations from prison, and in 1977 planned various acts of terrorism against Venezuelan interests and targets abroad, as a means of pressure.

Luis Posada Carriles' links with the drug trafficking world date back to those of Operation 40 but developed significantly in the 1980s, after he escaped from the Venezuelan penitentiary where he was being held.

His escape, ordered, financed and organized by the CIA and the Miami mafia cupola, resulted in his becoming the right-hand man of Felix Rodriguez, one of the most faithful 3Company2 scum in the Ilopango airbase in El Salvador, in a shady chapter of the ill-named Iran-Contra scandal. The leader of the gang maintained his links with the drug trafficking circles of Miami, the U.S. drugs capital.

In 1997, various Salvadoran and Guatemalan mercenaries were arrested in Cuba and revealed how terrorist Luis Posada Carriles had contracted them to place explosive devices in tourist installations in Havana, at the price of a few hundred dollars per explosion.

On November 15, 1997, The Miami Herald published the results of its investigation into the campaign of terror in the Cuban capital and affirmed that Posada Carriles was the brains behind the operation, for which he had collected $15,000 in Miami.

However, in articles in The New York Times, run on July 11, 12 and 13, 1998, Luis Posada Carriles himself confessed to his crime, stating that he had received $200,000 from the hands of Jorge Mas Canosa, president of the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), for funding the terrorist plot.

At the time of his arrest in Panama, Posada had just visited his partner Jose Valladares Acosta, a drug trafficker on the run from U.S. justice, who conveniently died on October 7, 2001 while awaiting trial as an accomplice of the sinister planned attack on Fidel. Valladares was associated with Cuban-American Orestes Cosio, deported on May 22, 2003 to the United States for drug trafficking and participation in three homicides, but his name still does not appear in the files of those held by the U.S. federal prison service.

PEDRO REMON, THE OMEGA 7 KILLER

According to a declassified FBI report, datelined October 1993 and published on the Internet, Pedro Crispin Remon Hernndez, the current spokesman for Posada and his buddies in their luxurious detention apartment in the Renacer 3model2 prison, was first linked to terrorist activities when he was arrested on the borders of Canada and the United States in December 1980, a few hours after the explosion of a bomb in the Cuban Consulate in Montreal. He was accompanied by Ramon Sazl Snchez Riso, now a well-known figure in the Miami mafia, and another one to have forgotten his murky past.

While cooperating with the FBI a few months later, Eduardo Arocena, chief of Omega-7, identified Remon as the killer in the murders of Eulalio Jose Negrin, a Cuban emigre involved in a political dialogue with Havana, and diplomat Felix Garcia Rodriguez. The latter was intercepted alone in his car at a stoplight, and cowardly killed in a submachine gun attack, on September 11, 1980.

Negrin was killed in front of his 12-year-old son on November 25, 1979. (Orlando Bosch bragged about ordering the crime in prison in Venezuela).

Both victims were killed with the same weapon, a MAC 10 submachine gun.

Arrested in 1986 and brought before a grand jury, Pedro Remon refused to cooperate and was saved^J benefiting from a 10-year prison terms and a $20,000 fine.

Once released, this dangerous individual didn't hesitate to involve himself in new acts of terrorism.

Arocena, the former chief of Omega-7, always believed he had been denounced to the FBI in 1979, by another terrorist, presently also detained with Posada Carriles: Guillermo Novo Sampoll, one of the authors of the double homicide of the former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier and human rights worker Ronnie Moffit, on September 21, 1976.

Five suspects of Cuban origin were arrested by the FBI, including brothers Guillermo and Ignacio Novo, two capos from the CORU of Bosch and Posada.

The brother terrorists were not unknown to the FBI. In 1961, on the orders of the Nationalist Cuban Movement (MNC) they had joined in preparations for the Bay of Pigs invasion but their group did not land. Afterwards they linked up with Julio Perez Perez' group and publicly admitted to having placed bombs on behalf of Comando Cero. In 1962, they attacked the Cuban vessel Maria Teresa in the port of Montreal, Canada. They were detained in 1964, and charged with attacking the UN building with a bazooka when Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara was speaking before the General Assembly. In 1965, they were again arrested for the illegal possession of arms and explosives.

In 1979 the Novo brothers were finally tried and sentenced to eight years' imprisonment, a term that was revoked in 1980. Their defense used various subterfuges to discount the prosecution's key evidence. Yet another trick, no doubt inspired by the CIA to save its collaborators.

Shortly after their release, Ignacio and Guillermo Novo were contracted by the CANF and its head, Jorge Mas Canosa, to direct the group's Information Committee. They also pursued their terrorist career from the terrorist 3protectorate2 of South Florida.

JIMENEZ, ANOTHER CORU KILLER

This terrorist's name appears in an FBI report on anti-Cuban activities in the United States, entitled Survey of Anti-Castro Cuban Terrorist Activities in the United States, where he is noted as one of the central Miami terrorist figures.

In fact, Jimenez is yet another CIA baby who, under the orders of Orlando Bosch, executed a whole series of criminal acts, including a number of murders.

On July 23, 1976, Jimenez cold-bloodedly killed Artagon Diaz Diaz, a fishing industry professional, in Merida, Mexico.

The Miami killer opened fire three times against Diaz in the middle of the street. One of the bullets hit the Cuban official full in the face and the other two reached vital organs.

Jimenez subsequently ordered the torture and execution in Buenos Aires of two Cuban officials—Crecencio Galaoena Hernndez and Jeszs Cejas Arias - whose bodies were thrown into the foundations of a building under construction.

He later confessed to Cuban agent Pedro Escalona , infiltrated into the Miami mafia, that he had been involved in the organization of the above-mentioned Cubana Aviation sabotage.

Sentenced for the homicide of Artagon Diaz Diaz, Jimenez was imprisoned in Chetumal, Qunitana Roo, but the Miami mafia managed to buy his release. In May 1983, barely 27 months after his detention, Gaspar Jimenez Escobedo was set free, and resumed his criminal activities.

He then resurfaced on the board of the CANF under the protection of Alberto Hernndez, one of the capos who attend to terrorist actions. There he was in constant contact with Luis Posada Carriles, Pedro Crispin Remon and Guillermo Novo Sampoll with whom he mounted terrorist operations on various occasions.

THE FORMIDABLE TASK OF JUDGE PANIZA

When the trial of terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and his accomplices resumes, Judge Enrique Paniza of the Fifth Penal Court will bear the huge responsibility of deciding if Posada, Remon, Jimenez and Novo remain behind bars or return to the streets to renew their terrorist activities, as they always have done.

He will have facing him a whole troupe of Miami terrorists who will impunely arrive to try and influence the course of his decision by any means—including violence, blackmail or bribery.

Each one of the charged killers has a history whose pages are soaked in the blood of dozens of victims.

According to specialists, if it had gone ahead as planned, the Panama crime would have provoked more victims than the attack on the Twin Towers. Julio Berrios, representing the Panamanian trade unions, affirmed there were a few thousand people present that night.

Will the Panamanian judge allow these four notorious terrorists to commit even more crimes? Will the decisions needed to keep these patent recidivists of international terrorism off the streets?

On Wednesday, September 3, the world will have its sights on Panama where the fate of those individuals, who to date have never paid the price of their crimes, will be decided.