Posada Has to Go, says US Legal Expert in Cuba
http://www.ahora.cu/english/SECTIONS.../02-06-05f.htm
Ahora.cu / 02-06-2005
The president of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), Michael Avery, said the US government has a moral and legal obligation to extradite Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela.
Avery, who is also law professor at the University of Suffolk, Boston, Massachusetts, is taking part in the International Meeting against Terrorism underway in Havana through Saturday June 4.
In statements to Havana's Juventud Rebelde newspaper, Avery said his organization urges the US president to observe the law, which leaves him no choice but to send the international terrorist to the South American nation where he escaped from prison in 1985.
In a statement released in April the National Lawyers Guild recognized that "Posada was a CIA agent in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and possibly to the present." It further notes, "He was trained in explosives and sabotage at the notorious School of the Americas and was part of the CIA's "Operation 40" for the Bay of Pigs invasion. He was also an accomplice with Orlando Bosch in the bombing of Cubana Airlines flight 455 on October 6, 1976 that killed 73 people.
The NLG also recalls, "Posada, told the New York Times in July 1998 that he directed the 1997 bombings of Havana hotels. A 32-year-old Italian tourist, Fabio Di Celmo, was killed at the Copacabana hotel. While in Venezuela in the 1970s, Posada oversaw the killing of Venezuelan leftists as head of the Intelligence and Prevention Services Division (DISIP) of the national police. In the 1980s Posada commanded the supply of munitions to the Nicaraguan contras from the CIA's Ilopango airbase in El Salvador."
The NLG president pointed out that the Bush administration wants Posada to only face charges of illegal entry as a way of avoiding more serious terrorism accusations. Such an argument would be an inadmissible subterfuge of the law, said Avery.
The information collected by Cuba and Venezuela regarding the terrorist actions perpetrated by Posada, along with recently declassified CIA and FBI's documents, constitute ample evidence of his criminal record, said Avery. He should not be allowed to remain in the US and much less be granted political asylum, he stressed.
The National Lawyers Guild was founded in 1937 and its web site informs that it has "over 6,000 members and activists in the service of the people." The NLG national office is in New York and it has chapters in nearly every US state, as well as at over 100 law schools.
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