From Tucson to El Paso on the Same Rail: Terrorism

On Monday, the eve of the judgment against Luis Posada Carriles in El Paso, Texas, a terrorist in Tucson, Arizona shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in the head. She is between life and death. The assassin, Jared Loughner, fired an automatic weapon. As I write these lines, the count is six dead, among those a young girl who was born on September 11, 2001, and 12 injured persons.

Tucson is 319 miles from El Paso. By car it is a 4.5-hour trip along a path that gets dramatically more tense regarding these common issues: hate and terrorism. Only now, Tucson is in mourning, while in El Paso a criminal has this total confidence in the laws of the United States: They have not been made for him. The United States district attorney’s office protects him, prosecuting him like a simple liar, not taking any notice of the memory of the dozens of persons that he has killed.

Terrorism is a social cancer that threatens us all equally. The 2,752 people assassinated in Torres Gemelas should hurt us as much as the memory of the 3,478 Cubans who died at the hands of terrorists from Miami during the last five decades of action against the island. However, in the view of the United States, victims belong to different classes of importance, just as there are both good and bad terrorists.

But in any case, wherever it may be, those who cultivate hate harvest terrorism. When they asked the congresswoman’s father if his 40-year-old daughter had any enemies, Spencer Giffords said, “Yes, the whole tea party.” Last summer, Gabrielle Giffords’ opponent, an ex-Marine named Jesse Kelly who ran for office on the tea party platform, convened a propaganda rally for his campaign with the following message: “Get on target for victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.”

Of lesser importance is if Jared Loughner, the suspected assassin in Arizona, was working for the tea party or if Sarah Palin recruited him to try to assassinate Congresswoman Giffords. What is important is that the tea party, along with Sarah Palin (with premeditation), cultivated a fierce hate against representatives who supported the health care reform pushed by President Obama, and that blossomed in the perverse mind of Loughner until it made him an assassin.

For more than 50 years, that same spring of hatred has been utilized by the U.S. against Cuba, the U.S. being a country that has encouraged, trained and protected terrorists who kept the island subject to permanent aggression. The prodigal son of this hostility has been and still is Luis Posada Carriles. Declassified documents show that the CIA trained him how to use explosives. They trained him to torture and kill. According to his own lawyer, everything that Posada Carriles has done in Latin America has been “in Washington’s name.”

Posada is the brain behind one of the most horrendous crimes in the history of international terrorism. On Oct. 6, 1976, he exploded two bombs with C-4 — at that time acting in the power of the CIA — that brought down an airplane in mid-flight over the coast of Barbados. There were no survivors among its 73 passengers.

In the same way as Jared Loughner did in Tuscon on Saturday, Posada killed a little nine-year-old girl. Sabrina Paul was aboard the plane with her family. The explosion destroyed Sabrina’s chest and head. The trials of those responsible for the planning and carrying out of the crime were overwhelming, and thanks to her, Venezuela immediately arrested Posada Carriles and pressed charges of first-degree homicide against him. However, Posada escaped in 1985 with the assistance of his American friends. He appeared a few days later with a job, a home and food. The CIA found him employment in El Salvador as one of the main directors of their Iran-Contra Operation. His function was to facilitate the movement of illegal weapons to the Contras in Nicaragua. Then, in 1997, he directed the bombing campaign against tourist facilities in Havana that cost the life of young Fabio di Celmo. He hired mercenaries who are now prisoners on the island and have identified Posada Carriles as the man that the “service” paid.

Washington kept protecting him during his bloody tour in Central America. He was condemned in Panama in 2000 for trying to flee an auditorium full of university students during a speech by President Fidel Castro, but his friends bribed the then-president of Panama, Mireya Moscoso, and in 2004 he pardoned Posada Carriles, illegally according to the Supreme Court of Panama.

Posada arrived in Miami in March of 2005. Venezuela immediately asked for his extradition so that Washington could return him to Caracas to pay for the 73 people that he killed on the commercial Cuban plane. Instead of starting to process the request for extradition, the Bush administration pressed charges against him, calling him a liar. These are the charges that Obama’s district attorneys are cleaning up today in El Paso.

The United States insists on accusing Posada Carriles of only having lied to immigration officials. They have not presented homicide or terrorism charges against him and have not started the extradition process to Caracas. They are protecting him. Why might that be?

Successive governments of the United States, especially legislators, have cultivated a visceral hatred for the Cuban revolution for more than 50 years. — a hatred that has been converted into spiritual and material support for terrorism. It is true to such an extent that Sen. Marco Rubio and Representatives David Rivera and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen are among the legal donors to pay for the defense of Luis Posada Carriles in El Paso.

But terrorism is not fought a la carte. Some things work, others do not. Last Friday, referring to the prisoners who are being held at Guantánamo, President Obama said, “The prosecution of terrorists in federal court is a powerful tool in our efforts to protect the nation and must be among the options available to us.” So, why not use that tool to prosecute Luis Posada Carriles for terrorism?

Posada knows very well that if he is condemned in El Paso just for lying, he is not going to be imprisoned. The judge has already told him this. They will count as punishment the year and a half that he has been behind bars when his immigration status was being settled, and they will let him go free. He is calm, without any remorse for his crimes. In fact, he told The New York Times in 1998, “I sleep like a baby…. That Italian (Fabio di Celmo) was sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time.” What would happen if Loughner thought about saying something like that? Would there be impunity?

*Translator’s Note: José Pertierra is lawyer. His office is in Washington. He represents the Venezuelan government in the case of the request for Luis Posada Carriles’ extradition.