ANALYSIS: Posada Carriles trial: New chance for US-Cuba relations?

By Silvia Ayuso and Vicente Poveda Jan 10, 2011, 17:59 GMT

Washington/Havana - When anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles appears in court Monday in El Paso, Texas, he will not be answering the numerous terrorism accusations that Cuba and Venezuela have leveled against him.

Posada Carriles, 82, will only stand trial for immigration fraud, after allegedly having illegally entered the United States in April 2005. Allegations including the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner, in which 73 people died, will not be heard.

He entered US territory in a fishing boat, just months after Mireya Moscoso pardoned him at the end of her term as Panamanian president. Posada Carriles had been jailed in Panama for having planned to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro during an international summit.

Holding Venezuelan citizenship, the Cuban-born Posada Carriles, who has admitted to having planned a series of bombings carried out against tourist facilities in the late 1990s in Havana and the Cuban resort of Varadero, in which an Italian tourist was killed.

Cuba regards him as a key figure in efforts by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Miami-based Cuban exiles to topple the communist government led by Fidel and Raul Castro. Havana accuses the United States of protecting Posada Carriles, exercising double standards in the fight against terrorism.

Soon after President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, the US government added three counts of perjury against Posada Carriles, in connection with attacks against Cuban hotels in 1997-98.

For several US experts, this is the first - albeit indirect - move by Washington to acknowledge that Posada Carriles engaged in illegal activities with US support in the past.

Before the trial, US agents travelled to Havana to gather evidence, and even the judge in charge, Kathleen Cardone, accepted evidence that had been sent to her by Cuba. Some Cuba experts even note that the case may become a turning point in relations between Havana and Washington.

'In a sense we are finally, symbolically and on a big stage officially repudiating the Frankenstein that we unleashed against Cuba in the '60s,' says Peter Kornbluh, director of the National Security Archive's Cuba Documentation Project.

The perjury charges rest on allegations that Posada Carriles lied in questioning after he entered the United States illegally. The suspect denied having asked several people to transport explosives within Cuba, and even knowing Salvadoran citizen Ernesto Cruz Leon, currently in prison in Cuba for his involvement in the bombings of the 1990s.

Posada Carriles also said he did not understand the nature of an interview with The New York Times in 1998, in which he admitted to having engaged in terrorist acts.

'Those three charges present the opportunity for the US government to, for the first time in his lenghy career of terrorism, oficially charge him and prosecute him for anything related to terrorism,' Kornbluh said.

For victims of the attacks, this is not enough.

'Too little, too late,' said Livio Di Celmo, brother of tourist Fabio Di Celmo, who died in a 1997 bombing at the Hotel Copacabana. 'It's better than nothing, but still doesn't do anything for the credibility of this country fighting terrorism.'

Sarah Stephens, director of the Centre for Democracy in the Americas, noted that trying Posada Carriles for immigration fraud is 'like charging Al Capone with tax evasion,' but she still acknowledged it as a good sign.

'After years of delay and apparent denial, it marks the first time the US government will present formal evidence of Posada's involvement in terrorism directed at Cuban targets. Accountability here is long overdue, especially for a resolute and unrepentant advocate of terror such as Luis Posada Carriles,' she said.

Anti-Castro activists remain influential in the United States, and Republican Congress members of Cuban origin hold important posts in the new Congress. For this reason, notes Julia Sweig, an expert on Cuban issues at the Council on Foreign Relations, the significance of the move to include perjury charges should not be underestimated.

Barely two weeks ago, a Cuban court sentenced Salvadoran Francisco Chavez Abarca to 30 years in prison on terrorism charges for his involvement in the attacks of the 1990s. Abarca has admitted to taking orders from Posada Carriles.

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