A Questão do Terrorismo e o atentado ao Charlie Hebdo by Lejeune Mirhan *

A Questão do Terrorismo e o atentado ao Charlie Hebdo

Lejeune Mirhan *

As palavras “terrorismo” e “terrorista” vem sendo fartamente utilizadas pelos meios de comunicação de massa, particularmente depois das ações ocorridas no dia 11 de setembro de 2001. O atentado mais recente, do assassinato de 12 pessoas, entre cartunistas e funcionários do jornal francês Charlie Hebdo ocorrido no último dia 7 de janeiro, chocou o mundo. 

Pretendemos com este artigo, discorrer um pouco sobre esse conceito de “terror”, abordando a questão do terrorismo de estado e comentando o movimento de ser ou não ser Charlie, bem como os limites da liberdade de expressão. Comentaremos um tema novo, chamado de “falsa bandeira”, quando um atentado é cometido por pessoas de uma corrente de opinião, geralmente opostas às que são injustamente acusadas. Ao final, apresentaremos algumas conclusões. 

Introdução 

Pode-se classificar, grosso modo, em quatro tipos as ações que se dizem “terroristas” e diversos são os exemplos com o passar da história: o terror religioso e fundamentalista (no caso de muçulmanos, cristãos e judeus extremistas que muitas vezes fazem de seu corpo uma arma de guerra); os do tipo mercenário (aqueles que se movem por dinheiro), que são pessoas que abraçam essas concepções e até editam uma revista em plano mundial denominada Soldiers of Fortune e agiram muito em território africano nas décadas de 1960 e 1970 do século passado. Um terceiro tipo seriam os nacionalistas (como o exército Republicano Irlandês – IRA na Irlanda) e por fim os ideológicos sejam eles de esquerda ou de direita (o caso das milícias americanas das quais era membro Timothy McVeigh, na ação em Oklahoma) (1).

A palavra passa a ser mais largamente empregada na história a partir de 1793, na França de Robespierre. Até o inventor da guilhotina, um cidadão francês de sobrenome Guilhotan, teve sua cabeça ceifada por esse instrumento no período que se denominou chamar de “terror”. O caso que repercutiu muito no final do século XIX foi o assassinato do Czar da Rússia Alexandre II, em 1891, por uma organização revolucionária da qual o irmão de Wladimir Lênin participava, que se autodenominava de “Vontade do Povo”. Os livros de História Geral dão como certo que o início e o estopim da I Guerra Mundial foi o assassinato do Arquiduque Francisco Ferdinando e sua esposa, perpetrado pelo estudante Gavrilo Prinzip, integrante do grupo que se intitulava “Mão Negra”, de origem sérvia.

Durante a resistência ao nazismo e ao fascismo na Europa durante a 2ª Guerra Mundial, atos de “terror” foram adotados, mas a terminologia mais correta deveria ser sabotagem, pois os atentados organizados pela resistência eram mais contra ferrovias, estações, prédios públicos, no sentido de desgastar o governo direitista da Alemanha e da Itália. Nunca os objetivos eram civis, pessoas comuns.

O mito do terrorismo islâmico

Os impérios na história também sempre se esforçaram para criar certos mitos, difundir certas ideias e conceitos e mesmo dar certas dimensões para fatos e episódios que nem sempre correspondem à realidade. Isso sem falar na distorção de informações, que são feitas cotidianamente pela grande imprensa. São muitos os casos. Lembremos do incêndio no Reichtag – prédio do parlamento alemão – ao qual o governo de Hitler divulgou como tendo sido praticado por um comunista. Um camarada do Partido Comunista Alemão chegou a ser preso e torturado no sentido de que admitisse esse ato criminoso, que, muito mais tarde, ficou provado que tal incêndio criminoso fora feito por agentes do Partido Nazista.

Osama Bin Laden, assassinado a mando de Barak Obama em 2011, já foi considerado pela mídia ocidental como sendo um “guerreiro da liberdade”. Era assim que ele era chamado, quando lutava contra o exército soviético na guerra pela ocupação do Afeganistão pela antiga URSS a partir de 1979. Nessa época, os guerrilheiros islâmicos de Osama receberam armas, milhões de dólares e até mesmo treinamento por parte das agências de inteligência dos EUA. Ou seja, um terrorista criado e apoiado pelos EUA. 

Um debate e duas visões

A questão central que se coloca neste debate, em especial após os ocorridos em Paris no dia 7 de janeiro passado, é a seguinte: qual é a causa, a raiz de atentados desse tipo? De um lado, temos os que afirmam que o terrorismo é gerado simplesmente pela fome e a pobreza existente no mundo. De outro lado, existem os que afirmam que o terrorismo é gerado exatamente pelas ações dos países imperialistas com relação aos povos oprimidos como uma reação.

A primeira versão do debate, de que a fome e a miséria podem gerar terrorismo não encontra guarida na história. No caso da Índia, da África e em certos períodos da própria China, presenciamos grandes surtos de fome e miséria, sem que se tenha visto ações terroristas. Na verdade, por trás dessa análise, tem uma certa tentativa de fazer um mea culpa pelos países ricos de sua omissão para ajudar os mais pobres e a forma como exploram essas nações. 

Nós nos alinhamos à segunda corrente de análise sobre as causas e as raízes do chamado terrorismo. Elas se encontram na forma pelos quais os povos dos países explorados e ocupados militarmente pelas potências centrais são agredidos. Enquanto os Estados Unidos e seus aliados como a Inglaterra e a França, não desocuparem o Iraque, o Afeganistão, não desmontarem suas bases militares em todo o mundo, não revirem suas formas de tratar os árabes e os muçulmanos em todos os países, ações terroristas vão continuar e são até inevitáveis, por mais que se ampliem os esquemas de segurança. 

A questão que se levanta no momento, depois do ataque ao Charlie Hebdo – e que não vão parar – é se a política externa americana de combate ao terrorismo vem dando certo ou não. As pessoas em todos os países se indagam se o mundo esta mais seguro depois da invasão do Iraque em março de 2003. A resposta vem sendo um contundente não, na medida que a insegurança hoje ronda qualquer cidadão em qualquer parte do mundo. Pessoas hoje em Tóquio e Roma já esperam a qualquer momento por um ataque. Isso vai colocar cada vez mais em xeque a política externa americana e seu unilateralismo. Após o fim da chamada Guerra Fria, os conflitos regionais ou “guerra por procuração” como se diz, aumentaram exponencialmente. 

Liberdade de imprensa e hipocrisia

Todos assistimos às barbaridades cometidos pelos terroristas mascarados no dia 7 de janeiro. Portando armamentos modernos, profissionais bem treinados militarmente invadiram a redação do jornal satírico Charlie Hebdo e assassinaram friamente cinco cartunistas, vários funcionários e dois policiais. Disseram “vingar” o profeta Mohammad (Maomé, no Ocidente). Falaram em voz alta para que todos ouvissem que “eram da Al Qaeda”. 

O jornal francês vinha se caracterizando, há tempos, como um incitador ao racismo e em especial à islamofobia. Na França vivem hoje mais de seis milhões de muçulmanos, boa parte filhos e netos de imigrantes da Argélia, sua colônia de 1830 até 1962. 

A questão que se coloca é a seguinte: há limites para a liberdade de imprensa e de expressão? O filósofo francês Jean Jacques Rousseau é defensor das teorias dos limites da liberdade, ou seja a minha começa onde termina a do meu próximo. De fato, só é verdadeiramente livre uma sociedade de iguais (3).

A liberdade de expressão nunca significou e nem nunca significará dizer qualquer coisa e de qualquer forma. “Não por outra razão, todo racista hoje em dia clama por liberdade de expressão, pelo seu direito de ‘expressar sua opinião’. Mas, racismo e preconceito não são opiniões. São crimes” (4).

Não nos esqueçamos, que mesmo sendo crescente o número de muçulmanos na França, a imensa e esmagadora maioria não apoia qualquer ato de terrorismo, procura viver em harmonia com os franceses. O policial Ahmet Merabet assassinado na calçada do jornal, que enfrentou até a morte os terroristas era muçulmano e seus familiares acusaram os terroristas como falsos muçulmanos, pois em nenhuma passagem do Corão há algo que incentive o terrorismo. Aliás, nem a blasfêmia é condenada. A Bíblia o faz em Levítico (24:16) (5).

Há um debate posto, que vem desde os atentados de 2001, qual seja, a chamada indignação seletiva ou indignação desigual. Seja a opinião do professor de Ciência Política da UCLA, Magid Shihade, seja a filósofa estadunidense Judith Butler. Ambos tratam desse assunto. “Assassinos treinados pelos EUA contra cidadãos inocentes no Afeganistão e Iraque são ‘acidentes colaterais’ e não têm repercussão alguma”, diz Magid (6). E Judith completa “a indignação com os três mil mortos das Torres Gêmeas em 2001 é seguida de completa indiferença com os milhares de mortos das guerras feitas pelos EUA” (7). Nunca é demais lembrar que exatamente no dia seguinte desse massacre em Paris, na Nigéria os terroristas assassinaram duas mil pessoas inocentes e ninguém se indignou. 

No domingo, 11 de janeiro, quatro dias depois do massacre ao jornal, uma Marcha contra o Terrorismo foi realizada em Paris. Convocada inicialmente pela esquerda francesa, ela foi apropriada pelo reacionário presidente francês, François Hollande, cuja popularidade estava em baixa, sendo hoje considerado o pior presidente da história da França.

A fotos publicada nos jornais, com vários chefes de estado e de governo, da Europa e fora dela, é a verdadeira imagem da hipocrisia. Em alguns dos países cujos líderes estavam na linha de frente da passeata, a palavra “liberdade” é banida do dicionário. Só para rememorar, a própria França, em julho de 2014 proibiu qualquer manifestação contra Israel, que bombardeava impiedosamente os palestinos na Faixa de Gaza, matando mais de duas mil pessoas.

Dois líderes árabes, como Abdullah da Jordânia e Al Nahyan dos Emirados não são exemplos de democratas nem seus países possuem amplas liberdades de expressão. Mas, o maior escândalo foi a presença do maior terrorista vivo hoje no mundo: Benjamin Netanyahu. Nem sequer havia sido convidado, mas apareceu, cercado de mais de cem agentes do Mossad (polícia secreta de Israel). Esse primeiro ministro de Israel, que enfrentará novas eleições em março próximo, estava mesmo é tentando tirar proveito da situação, com base na hipocrisia, para facilitar a sua reeleição. Um terrorista participando de uma marcha contra o terrorismo. 

Boa parte dos chefes de estado presentes eram financiadores de atividades militares de terroristas que combatem contra países como a Síria, Iraque, Afeganistão, Líbia entre outros. O chamado Estado Islâmico (ISIS na sigla em inglês), é totalmente apoiado pela França, UK, Turquia e EUA. 

Apenas nos EUA, entre os seus chamados “liberais”, o direito à liberdade de manifestação do pensamento é considerado um direito absoluto. Em nenhum outro país isso é assim. Há leis que regulamentam os limites dessas liberdades. A concepção por trás dos insultos publicados na forma de charges, que alguns não veem como insultos, mostra claramente que existe uma cultura – a dos EUA – que se apresenta como superior a todas as outras. Não nos esqueçamos jamais: esse mesmo Estado francês que hoje vive o seu 11/09, foi o quem armou, treinou, apoiou de todas as formas os ataques contra vários países, em especial árabes, sob os mesmos pretextos de defesa da democracia e “liberdade”. Os ataques dos fundamentalistas em cidades como Trípoli, capital da Líbia, e Allepo, a segunda cidade síria, são sempre saudados no Ocidente como heroicos (8). 

A França não só é membro da OTAN, a organização terrorista de maior poder bélico em atuação hoje no planeta, como financia, arma e treina terroristas que agem hoje na Síria e no Iraque e formam o chamado Estado Islâmico, em especial seu braço armado denominado Al Qaeda e suas filiais. Ainda que os terroristas que atacaram o jornal se proclamem membros da Al Qaeda, eles são produtos de uma rede de terrorismo criado e alimentado pelo Ocidente, para “manter uma guerra contra seus próprios cidadãos” (9).

Posições progressistas do Papa Francisco

Não é de hoje que o Cardeal argentino Jorge Mário Bergóglio, chamado de Papa Francisco, vem surpreendendo o mundo com seus posicionamentos. Especificamente em algumas declarações que trataram do conceito de “terrorismo de estado”, amplamente condenado pelas esquerdas, mas quase nunca aceito pelas potências ou países que o praticam. Alguns o chamam hoje de “estadista solitário”.

Em recente encontro que manteve com o corpo diplomático creditado no Vaticano, em 12 de janeiro, dia seguinte à chamada Marcha contra o Terrorismo em Paris, Francisco declarou em audiência: “há uma tendência à rejeição ... que induz a olhar o próximo não como um irmão a acolher, mas como alguém deixado fora de nosso horizonte de vida pessoal, transformando-o antes que em um concorrente, mas em um súdito a dominar” (10).

Na sua homilia do dia 8, quando celebrou missa na Casa de Santa Marta, onde reside no Vaticano, Francisco declarou: “esse ato de crueldade nos faz pensar tanto em terrorismo isolado, quanto no terrorismo de estado”. Talvez essa tenha sido a sua declaração mais direta contra esse tipo de terrorismo que a mídia jamais menciona. 

No entanto, houve um momento no ano passado, quando Francisco faz uma condenação explícita ao terrorismo de estado, quando, em 25 de novembro, em uma conversa informal com jornalistas no avião papal ele declarou: “é verdade, existe a ameaça desses terroristas. Mas, existe também outra ameaça. É o terrorismo de estado, quando há uma escalada de violência e cada estado por sua conta acha que tem o direito de massacrar os terroristas e, com eles, caem muitos inocentes”, em uma clara e direta alusão à Israel e aos EUA.

Tais posicionamentos ajudam os que lutam hoje no mundo pela paz e contra o imperialismo. 

O crescimento da islamofobia e as falsas bandeiras

Muito já se falou da nova ordem mundial construída pelos EUA após a sua vitória contra o Iraque em janeiro de 1991 e com o fim da URSS no final desse ano quando o mundo passa a ser unipolar. No entanto, fica fácil perceber que a indústria bélica estadunidense e os neoliberais em todo o mundo precisam fazer mais guerras. Contra os povos do mundo para controlar as suas riquezas, ou para derrubar seus governantes que lhes contestam. Foi assim com Saddam Hussein, no Iraque e com Muammar Khadaffi na Líbia, que foram brutalmente assassinados. Tentaram e seguem tentando de tudo para fazer o mesmo com o presidente da Síria, Dr. Bashar Al Assad. Mas, têm sido fragorosamente derrotados até aqui.

Particularmente após os atentados às torres gêmeas de setembro de 2001 a ocupação do Iraque, em março de 2003, um inimigo começou a ser forjado: o Islã como religião e os muçulmanos em geral, que são hoje mais de 1,6 bilhões em todo o mundo em 47 países de população majoritária de seguidores dessa fé religiosa.

O fato é que “os anglo-sionistas nutriram, organizaram, financiaram, treinaram, equiparam, armaram cuidadosamente, dedicadamente, ao longo de décadas os takfiris terroristas que hoje se voltam contra eles e seus países” (11).

Neste caso, há uma clara responsabilidade por tudo que ocorreu, do próprio governo francês e de seu presidente sionista François Hollande. Em recente visita oficial à Israel, em que pese tudo que os sionistas fazem contra os palestinos, o presidente francês declarou em alto e bom som: “serei sempre amigo de Israel” (sic). 

Aqui fica sempre a pergunta que devemos nos fazer: quem ganhou com esses atentados abomináveis? Em primeiro lugar, ganha o próprio presidente francês cuja popularidade estava lá embaixo. Em segundo, todos os chefes de estado e de governo, que apoiam a aliança mundial liderada pela OTAN que lutam contra os povos de todo o mundo que clamam por sua independência e soberania nacional. Por fim, ganham os partidos de direita, os fascistas, os que defendem na Europa restrições às imigrações e ao crescimento do Islã como religião. Com a ajuda providencial e imediata da mídia, vão tentar extrair as maiores vantagens esses atentados.

Aqui vale a pena introduzir um conceito que vem sendo aos poucos publicado nas mídias alternativas. A chamada “falsa bandeira”, ou seja, faz-se um atentado para se jogar a culpa em correntes ou grupos sociais que pensam oposto ao que foi realizado. Dois exemplos me vêm à mente neste momento.

Em 2005, ocorreu em Beirute o atentado terrorista que resultou a morte de Rafik Hariri, ex-primeiro Ministro do Líbano. Imediatamente, os dedos acusadores se voltaram contra o presidente da Síria, Dr. Bashar Al Assad. Ora, este era o último que teria interesse em cometer um crime dessa natureza, até pelas consequências que isso acarretaria em seguida, completamente previsíveis. Na Argentina, um promotor de nome Alberto Nisman morreu de forma ainda não esclarecida. Imediatamente, os dedos apontam para a presidente Cristina Kishner, seu desafeto. Um crime como esse coloca boa parte da população contra seu governo, que é odiado pelos meios de comunicação e pelos EUA.

O caso mais rumoroso de “falsa bandeira” ocorreu em 2 de agosto de 1980, quando um ataque terrorista à estação de trens de Bolonha matou 85 pessoas e feriu outras 250. Imediatamente, a mídia acusou a esquerda. Tempos depois, apurou-se que os criminosos eram membros de uma célula fascista radical. Estava em curso na Europa a chamada Operação Gladio, que consistia em armar guerrilheiros para combater uma possível e hipotética invasão da URSS à Europa. Armas foram enterradas em diversas partes da Europa (12).

Conclusões finais

De nossa parte, os atentados cometidos contra o jornal Charlie Hebdo devem ser condenados com a maior veemência e merecem nosso total repúdio. Ao mesmo tempo que devemos prestar a todas as famílias das vítimas a nossa irrestrita solidariedade. Nem por isso, deve ser automático o apoio à linha editorial de um jornal que ajudou a criar na França um clima islamofóbico e racista. 

Imediatamente após os atentados, criou-se o movimento Eu Sou Charlie e outro que se dizia Eu Não Sou Charlie. Uma falsa dicotomia. Condenar os atentados não significa condenar o jornal e a liberdade de expressão. Nem tampouco apoiá-lo acriticamente. Um falso dilema, uma falsa dicotomia. Devemos ser contra quem incita o ódio e o racismo, que fomenta o terrorismo, quem o financia, que são os Estados Unidos e seus aliados árabes no Golfo, a Turquia, Israel e países clientes da Europa. Devemos pregar sempre a união do povo contra um inimigo comum.

Nosso ódio e o centro de nossa ação política deve ser contra o imperialismo, contra os Estados Unidos e seus aliados neoliberais. Devemos pregar contra toda e qualquer intervenção militar em qualquer país, seja sob qual argumento for, “levar democracia”, direitos humanos etc. Devemos defender o fim de toda e qualquer lei racista, que discrimine pessoas seja pela cor da sua pele, seja pela sua confissão religiosa.

A defesa de um estado laico neste momento, democrático deve ser a nossa bandeira. Não devemos dividir as pessoas, mas unir o povo na luta comum contra o maior inimigo da humanidade, o capitalismo e o rentismo, sob o comando dos EUA. 

Devemos propugnar pelo desenvolvimento econômico e social. Devemos respeitar todas as religiões e defender a liberdade de culto e de consciência. Queremos a solidariedade entre os povos e nações e a soberania e independência nacional. 

Sabemos bem que a luta pela paz, por um mundo justo e com igualdade, tem hoje um caráter claramente anti-imperialista. 

Bibliografia Consultada

(1) ARBEX JR, José, Terrorismo: um legado da história, 9 de outubro de 2001, 3 páginas, que circulou na Internet em língua espanhola, sem maiores referências.

(2) Aos que queiram conferir essa passagem bíblica, podem fazê-lo em Juízes capítulo 16, versículo de 23 a 31, página 323 da Bíblia de tradução de Almeida, Editora Vida, 1981.

(3) Editorial da Revista Carta Capital, edição 833 de 21/1/2015, pág. 14-18, escrito por Mino Carta;

(4) Vladimir Safatle, Carta Capital, edição citada, pág. 27;

(5) Wálter Fanganiello Maierovitch, Carta Capital, edição citada, pág. 19;

(6) Gianni Carta, em “Morre por mim, França”, Carta Capital, edição citada, pág. 20-23;

(7) Said Bouamama, em https://bouamamas.wordpress.com/2015/01/11/lattentat-contre-charlie-hebdo-loccultation-politique-et-mediatique-des-causes-des-consequences-et-des-enjeux/ de 25/01/2015;

(8) Blog Moon of Alabama de 7 de janeiro de 2015 http://www.moonofalabama.org/2015/01/charlie-hebdo-the-chickens-come-home-to-roost.html#comments;

(9) Artigo de Tony Cartalucci, publicado em http://landdestroyer.blogspot.ca/2015/01/france-armed-terrorists-that-struck.html do dia 12 de janeiro de 2015;

(10) Artigo de Cláudio Bernabucci, intitulado A palavra do estadista solitário, Carta Capital, edição citada, pág. 24-26;

(11) Artigo publicado em 8 de janeiro de 2015 em http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com.br/2015/01/i-am-not-charlie.html; 

(12) Artigo de Wayne Madson, obtido em http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/01/11/curtain-rises-another-act-continual-global-war-terror-play.html publicado no dia 21 de janeiro de 2015.

* Sociólogo, professor de Sociologia e de Ciência Política da Unimep (1986 a 2006). Foi sociólogo da Fundação Unesp (1995 a 2005). É colunista do Portal Vermelho onde escreve desde 2002 sobre a temática Oriente Médio. Colabora com a Revista Sociologia da Editora Escala. Possui oito livros publicados. Atualmente é diretor do Sindicato dos Sociólogos do Estado de SP. 

And when will Miami’s terrorist nest be cleared out?

JEAN-GUY ALLARD

• DESPITE being denounced and calls from Venezuela for his extradition, Luis Posada Carriles, the most dangerous terrorist in the hemisphere, is still conspiring to murder with his accomplices without any intervention from the U.S. legal authorities.

Miami continues to have a strong nucleus of right extremists from various Latin American countries, who consider this city and the United States as a sanctuary for their activities, given that hundreds of fugitives, presidents and henchmen of dictatorial regimes have found a safe refuge there over the years.

Since his arrival in the United States and his arrest by officials reluctant to bother him, Luis Posada Carriles has received the treatment of the feared member of the brotherhood of killers whose seal as untouchables dates back more than half a century.

Freed by a judge (an accomplice to the intelligence apparatus) in El Paso after delay tactics orchestrated by corrupt district attorneys from the Bush era, Posada has met – many times publicly – with terrorist elements during the last few months and Latin American newspapers have reported the reactivation of his Central American network.

Once again at liberty, the old conspirator has reconstituted, most notably in El Salvador, the network that he bragged about years ago in his book The Way of the Warrior, the true confession of a psychopath paid by the yanki government. In this pamphlet promoting terror, he confides that "he can count on a private army."

Cuban researcher José Luis Méndez Méndez commented on this subject, "He is a man highly trained in the use of explosives, in the use of arms; in capacity and techniques for killing, disappearing, kidnapping, which is recorded at great length as he narrates how he organized and structured the services he directed, besides bragging about his successes."

ALWAYS SURROUNDED BY KNOWN KILLERS

The height of this self-confessed CIA hit man’s arrogance came when he recently appeared in the Alpha 66 offices surrounded by known terrorists with past police and even FBI files.

In April, Posada Carriles participated in an assembly of known terrorists organized by Angel De Fana Serrano and covered by the press. Serrano took part in the 1997 plot masterminded by Posada to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro during an Ibero-American Summit on Margarita Island, Venezuela.

At the end of February, also at the initiative of Posada and De Fana, Miami terrorists and Cuban American mafiosi met with Venezuelan coup plotters headed by traitorous military officers, without any interference from U.S. authorities.

On the front line of that conspiracy was Patricia Poleo, a fugitive from Venezuelan justice in the case of the assassination of district attorney Danilo Anderson. Qualified as a star agent by the CIA for her actions against Venezuela, which she directed from the United States, the daughter of millionaire editor Rafael Poleo also has links to Cuban terrorists, the Colombian right and her Venezuelan coup-supporting family. She is behind a number of operations against the Bolivarian Revolution from the U.S. embassy in Caracas.

The Venezuelan conspirators participating in that meeting included none other than Army Colonel Gustavo Díaz, Pedro Carmona’s aide-de-camp during the coup against President Chávez in 2002. Also present was the traitor Captain Javier Nieto Quintero of the National Guard, linked to a 2004 case involving Colombian paramilitaries, and Lieutenant José Antonio Colina Pulido, responsible for bomb attacks on Spanish and Colombian diplomatic offices in Caracas in 2003.

To illustrate the level of conspiracy more fully, in January 2008, Cuban-American De Fana was invited to speak to the press at an Miami event organized by Petr "Peter" Kolar, the Czech ambassador, together with Congressman Lincoln Díaz-Balart; Caleb McCarry, at that time head of the Bush Plan for the annexation of Cuba; Orlando Gutiérrez Boronat, millionaire member of the Cuban Democratic Directorate; and Mauricio Claver Carone, director of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, the Miami lobby group in Washington.

Despite all the denunciations and with the complicity of the press, since his release Posada has been making regular appearances before those nostalgic for the Batista dictatorship. In Miami’s Big Five Club, he shared an exhibition with another killer, José Dionisio "Pool of Blood" Suárez Esquivel, sentenced for the assassination of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and pardoned by George W. Bush a few days before 9-11.

The U.S. magazine Salon also revealed that he took part, with terrorists Pedro Remón and Reinol Rodríguez (two of his most servile killers) in a public Alpha 66 activity in the Miami Havana Restaurant in Westchester. "Pool of Blood," Pedro Remón and Reinol Rodríguez are members of the operatives circle closest to Posada.

TORTURER AND KILLER LOPEZ SISCO IN THE FRONT LINE

From Miami, Posada and his gang of killers have achieved – without interference and with the inertia or help of the authorities – the reactivation of his infernal operations with the complicity of several of his old buddies, all well known to the U.S. intelligence agencies.

According to a number of sources, former Venezuelan Captain Henry López Sisco has also been pointed to as one of Posada’s accomplices in the San Salvador plot. He has just been condemned in Venezuela as responsible for the massacres that occurred in that country in the 1970s and 80s.

Henry López Sisco was chief of operations at the Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services (DISIP) and one of the most repugnant figures in Posada’s circle of friends in Venezuela.

A Secret police torturer and killer under Carlos Andrés Pérez, López Sisco is tied to a long succession of murders, disappearances and abuses unleashed in the 1970s to eliminate groups of young rebels. He headed the meetings between representatives from Carlos Andrés Pérez’ government and the head of Pinochet’s DINA in August of 1975, and organized an attack on the Cuban Embassy on April 12, 2002, during the failed coup against Chávez.

López Sisco belongs to the same Cuban-American network as Francisco Pimentel, an accomplice in the 1997 Havana attacks; Nelis Rojas, a terrorist who took refuge in Miami; and Hermes Rojas, who tortured people with Posada in El Salvador.

Other suspects include Peña Exclusa, the Venezuelan fascist leader who has been in El Salvador for some months as an aide to the presidential campaign of ARENA – the party responsible for the assassination of Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero. Peña has also been designated as a conspirator in the recent assassination attempt on Bolivian President Evo Morales by the gang of neo-Nazis that dominate the city of Santa Cruz.

Another name pointed to in the San Salvador conspiracy is Venezuelan Vice Admiral Molina Tamayo, one of the plotters of the coup that took place on April 11, 2002. He is currently in Central America, along with several other traitors to the Bolivarian Revolution.

ALL THE CONSPIRACIES LEAD TO THE NORTH

In the last few weeks, a number of events reveal renewed activity in terrorist circuits in contact with U.S. intelligence mechanisms.

Among others, Bolivian authorities have identified a phony NGO, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), based in the New York Empire State Building, as a key player in the conspiracy to assassinate President Evo Morales. The plot was thwarted on April 16 in Santa Cruz.

The HRF is directed by Cuban-American Armando Valladares, who served time in a Cuban prison for placing explosive devices in stores and movie theatres in 1960. He began to work again with the CIA after he left the island.

The Bolivian District Attorney’s Office has identified Hugo Achá Melgar, the representative of HRF in Bolivia, as the financer of the terrorist gang of Hungarian and Croat neo-Nazis.

Hugo Achá and his accomplice Alejandro Melgar are still at large in the United States with the complicity of immigration authorities.

Valladares is an old Cuban-American mafiosi whose ties of friendship with the Bush-Reagan clan are praised by terrorist capos in Miami.

Not only have U.S. anti-terrorist agencies ignored the exposure of those acts, but HRF representatives traveled to Honduras to participate as an accredited NGO at the OAS Summit, in company with other CIA front agencies implicated in interference operations in Latin America, among them Vivanco’s biased Human Rights Watch.

MIAMI FBI: WHO’S GIVING ORDERS TO TOLERATE THIS?

The mafia apparatus in Miami is so well protected that Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen attended a public meeting on April 6, 2008 at which Posada was present, organized by a terrorist association linked to the CIA.

The federal government and the state of Florida spend millions of dollars annually on multiple-crime operations under the leadership of various state "commandos" of specialists in the war on terrorism in the Florida peninsula.

However, this enormous anti-terrorist apparatus has never shown any interest in the Miami gangs launching terrorist campaigns against Cuba and Venezuela.

The Miami FBI is scandalously associated with the impunity awarded to the terrorist network represented by Posada. Luis Posada Carriles’ file was even spirited away from the archives of this agency in 2003, while the international criminal was in prison in Panama.

Months after the administration change in Washington, nothing seems to have changed in the banana republic where the monstrous Orlando Bosch, the pediatrician killer, sleeps peacefully in his bed.

Composed of individuals known for their links with anti-Cuban mechanisms in the U.S. intelligence services, the Posada network is a product of the old mechanism created in Miami over the last few decades – beginning with the gigantic CIA JM-WAVE station – that nobody dares to touch.

More than ever before, Miami continues to be the great continental trash can for all the defeated oligarchies. •

Questions for Hillary Clinton

Questions for Hillary Clinton

ON April 22, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a number of statements in which she included the issue of the downing — in a Cuban government decision in defense of national sovereignty — of two airplanes belonging to the terrorist organization Brothers to the Rescue, in 1996. These statements were made to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs. Among other things, she said:

"I well remember when those two small, unarmed planes doing nothing more than dropping pamphlets were shot down by the Castro regime."

The following are questions that attorney Leonard Weinglass proposes for Clinton in relation to her comments on the downing of the Brothers to the Rescue planes.

What would the United States do if the following were true?

1. If the lead aircraft of the three airplanes involved (two were shot down) was piloted by a man who had previously committed acts of treachery and violence against the United States and had been trained by a hostile foreign government.

2. If that same pilot, according to U.S. intelligence, had recently been trained in dropping on a field not printed sheets, but handmade explosive devices, to test their effectiveness.

3. If he had publicly declared two days earlier on a radio station in his country that the flight of the three planes on that day was "on a mission" to destabilize the U.S. government.

4. If the aircraft flown that day had the same characteristics as a military aircraft used during the Vietnam War to drop small bombs on an opposing country, later remodeled and currently a Navy surplus plane recently used for that same purpose.

5. If, right before the downing, the U.S. FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) had spoken with the leader pilot by radio and warned him that he was entering a militarily protected zone and should retreat, but the warning was ignored, given that the plane continued on a course toward the U.S. capital.

6. If the three aircraft then flew over a designated open water area that the United States had closed due to army exercises and, in line with international rules and regulations, had warned all aircraft not to enter.

7. If the three pilots concerned belonged to a group of former U.S. residents who had publicly called for the overthrow by force of the U.S. government.

8. If the pamphlets previously dropped by this group of pilots had called on the U.S. people to rise up against their government.

9. If, after 25 Washington flyovers by this group of pilots during the previous 20 months, all of which were protested by the United States to the country that provided them with a base, and if, before arming its interceptor aircraft, Washington had called a high-ranking military officer to warn him that, from that moment it intended to protect its air space militarily if necessary, urged him to return home and urged the appropriate agencies to stop those flights

10. If the United States simply did all of that, but despite all its warnings, the planes continued until they were shot down.

Under such circumstances, would the United States be justified in downing the two aircraft?

Bolivia terror plot: The Neo-Nazi UJC connection

Bolivia terror plot: The UJC connection

Just a bunch of fine young Cruceñista boyz, out cruising for chicks in a majorly pimped ride. Think these punks got lucky?

Well, kiddies, we knew THIS was coming, did we not? Now ABI confirms it: the Santa Cruz chapter of the Hitlerjugend was also involved in the plot to try to kill Evo, Alvaro and several other leading Bolivian politicians.

On Tuesday, police apprehended an advisor to the ultra-right-wing Santa Cruz Youth Union (UJC), Juan Carlos Gueber Bruno, suspected of having ties to the foreign mercenary cell broken up last month in the City of Santa Cruz.

Gueber Bruno, also known as "Comandante Bruno" in UJC circles, was arrested near his home in Villa Cotoca on suspicions of having supplied weapons to the group led by Eduardo Rózsa Flores.

[...]

Gueber Bruno, 49, acted in 2008 as an activist of the Comité Pro Santa Cruz.

Translation mine.

Well, well. Not only does he have ties to the UJC, but to Branko Marinkovic's band of not-so-young hooligans, too. This just keeps getting more and more interesting, no? It just keeps circling around and around Branko. Do you suppose this is who the "wealthy financier" of the group was, the one that was alluded to in the previous post?

Portrait of the Hungarian/Romanian would-be assassin Terrorist (in Bolivia ) as a Young Gun Nut

Portrait of the Terrorist as a Young Gun Nut

Elöd Tóasó, Hungarian/Romanian would-be assassin, posing with a sniper rifle last December at the Hotel Buganvillas, Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Too bad it didn't have a magnifying mirror instead of a high-res telescopic sight, so he could take a peek in and realize how stupid he looked.

Strap yourselves in and fold up your tray tables, folks. It's time for another bumpy ride on Air Terrorcell!

Elöd Tóasó, the 29-year-old Hungarian-Romanian apprehended in an antiterror operation on April 16 in Santa Cruz, was the "communications link" of the international mercenary terror cell dismantled by the police, and was tasked with spying and telephone tapping.

In reality, far from being a "young adventurer" in search of a daily living, as described with paternal innocence by the Hungarian ambassador in La Paz, Matyas Józsa, Tóasó received military training in Bucharest, along with the Irishman, Michael Dwyer, who was killed in a hotel in Santa Cruz in a firefight with Bolivian police two weeks ago.

Tóasó, who appears in a photo published by the independent Cochabamba newspaper Opinión holding a sniper rifle with a high-precision telescopic sight, became a mercenary under the influence of Michael Dwyer and also that of the Hungaro-Croatian Bolivian Eduardo Rózsa Flores, leader of the mercenary cell.

The picture was taken in the middle of last December in the Hotel Buganvillas, one of the most exclusive in Santa Cruz, where the armed group stayed for more than two months at cost to a third party, currently unknown, whom Rózsa Flores described in an interview in Budapest last September as "the Bolivian financiers" and providers of the weapons.

According to the management of the five-star hotel, the terrorist group booked in the Buganvillas under false identities.

Tóasó, who was taken captive in the raid two weeks ago along with Jorge Tadik, a Bolivian ex-military man trained in Bolivia but with Hungarian roots, even convinced the ambassador of his own country that he was just an innocent adventurer, in spite of the evidence shown by a video of the conspirators making assassination plans.

"This man, to me, is far from being a terrorist. Young, 29 years old, who made mistakes, and I believe they invited him to come here offering to pay him this and that, but he didn't know what lay in store...I believe that this man had no money, because the financial crisis has hit Hungary hard too. We're very badly off, so this stems from the fact that our people have no money. He was young, and looking for adventure, and accepted something I don't think he thought through," said the Hungarian diplomat, trying to intervene on behalf of his countryman.

In Hungary, Tóasó was known to have belonged to the so-called "Szeklers", who consider themselves to be direct descendants of pure Hungarians, according to Opinión.

Along with Arpad Magyarosi, Tóasó joined the far-right paramilitary "Szekler Legion", which went to war in Croatia for separatist causes in the 1990s.

Translation mine. Linkage added.

Yeah, just another cute young dreamer, like that Irish dude, who supposedly got in over his head and couldn't possibly have been a baddie. Looks to me like he damn well knew what he was doing, and didn't care as long as the rich "Bolivian financier" supplied plenty of money, guns and ammo. (And BMWs, as Mike Dwyer bragged to his friends back home. Which, incidentally, do NOT come cheap in Bolivia, even if you're only renting. Sorry, Mike's friends, your ol' buddy was definitely mobbed up.)

The open question remains as to who that "financier" was, but my spidey-sense tells me Branko Marinkovic has got to be feeling the noose closing in on him by now. The government of Bolivia has sent troops to guard the Brazilian and Paraguayan borders of Santa Cruz, since it's known that the weaponry and Jorge Rózsa Flores both got in through Puerto Suárez, on the border with Brazil. If I were in that gummint, I'd make sure that Branko had no means of leaving the country, lest he pull a Burusas and seek "political asylum" in Peru, too.

PS: For another portrait of a deranged Hungarian from the inside of his cracked skull, I recommend this piece in the Irish Times. Fancy a racist fascist calling Evo, who has never said one prejudiced word against whites, a Nazi! Pot, say hi to kettle over there in the funhouse mirror...

PPS: Andras Kepes, look for a subpoena from the Bolivian government in your mail this week. They're not impressed with you for interviewing that Flores crackpot and then sitting on it instead of informing the authorities of a terror plan. That makes you look kind of complicit in it, dude.

PPPS: A German-language blogger in Ireland is asking the same questions in his blog as Otto, BoRev and I are tackling, respectively, in ours. He's also found the "actual" website of the Szekler Legion to be "under construction", although it wasn't last week. Go to his link if you wanna see screenshots of the icky place before it was taken down for "construction".

PPPPS: And finally, don't worry--these Szekler whackjobs aren't the scariest Hungarians out there by a long shot. Click here to see who is.

Not So Fast, Christian Soldiers. You are the real terrorists.

Maybe what the war in Iraq needs is not more troops but more religion. At least that’s the message the Department of Defense seems to be sending.

Last week, after an investigation spurred by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the Pentagon abruptly announced that it would not be delivering “freedom packages” to our soldiers in Iraq, as it had originally intended.

What were the packages to contain? Not body armor or home-baked cookies. Rather, they held Bibles, proselytizing material in English and Arabic and the apocalyptic computer game “Left Behind: Eternal Forces” (derived from the series of post-Rapture novels), in which “soldiers for Christ” hunt down enemies who look suspiciously like U.N. peacekeepers.

The packages were put together by a fundamentalist Christian ministry called Operation Straight Up, or OSU. Headed by former kickboxer Jonathan Spinks, OSU is an official member of the Defense Department’s “America Supports You” program. The group has staged a number of Christian-themed shows at military bases, featuring athletes, strongmen and actor-turned-evangelist Stephen Baldwin. But thanks in part to the support of the Pentagon, Operation Straight Up has now begun focusing on Iraq, where, according to its website (on pages taken down last week), it planned an entertainment tour called the “Military Crusade.”

Apparently the wonks at the Pentagon forgot that Muslims tend to bristle at the word “crusade” and thought that what the Iraq war lacked was a dose of end-times theology.

In the end, the Defense Department realized the folly of participating in any Operation Straight Up crusade. But the episode is just another example of increasingly disturbing, and indeed unconstitutional, relationships being forged between the U.S. military and private evangelical groups.

Take, for instance, the recent scandal involving Christian Embassy, a group whose expressed purpose is to proselytize to military personnel, diplomats, Capitol Hill staffers and political appointees. In a shocking breach of security, Defense Department officials allowed a Christian Embassy film crew to roam the corridors of the Pentagon unescorted while making a promotional video featuring high-ranking officers and political appointees. (Christian Embassy, which holds prayer meetings weekly at the Pentagon, is so entrenched that Air Force Maj. Gen. John J. Catton Jr. said he’d assumed the organization was a “quasi-federal entity.”)

The Pentagon’s inspector general recently released a report recommending unspecified “corrective action” for those officers who appeared in the video for violating Defense Department regulations. But, in a telling gesture, the report avoided any discussion of how allowing an evangelical group to function within the Defense Department is an obvious violation of the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment.

The extent to which such relationships have damaged international goodwill toward the U.S. is beyond measure. As the inspector general noted, a leading Turkish newspaper, Sabah, published an article on Air Force Maj. Gen. Peter Sutton, who is the U.S. liaison to the Turkish military — and who appeared in the Christian Embassy video. The article described Christian Embassy as a “radical fundamentalist sect,” perhaps irreparably damaging Sutton’s primary job objective of building closer ties to the Turkish General Staff, which has expressed alarm at the influence of fundamentalist Christian groups inside the U.S. military.

Our military personnel swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, not the Bible. Yet by turning a blind eye to OSU and Christian Embassy activities, the Pentagon is, in essence, endorsing their proselytizing. And sometimes it’s more explicit than that.

That certainly was the case with Army Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence. The Pentagon put him in charge of the hunt for Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda in 2003. The same year, Boykin was found to be touring American churches, where he gave speeches — in uniform — casting the Iraq war in end-times terms. “We’re in is a spiritual battle,” he told one congregation in Oregon. “Satan wants to destroy this nation . . . and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army.” The story wound up in newspapers, magazines and on “60 Minutes.” And, of course, it was reported all over the Muslim world. The Pentagon reacted with a collective shrug.

American military and political officials must, at the very least, have the foresight not to promote crusade rhetoric in the midst of an already religion-tinged war. Many of our enemies in the Mideast already believe that the world is locked in a contest between Christianity and Islam. Why are our military officials validating this ludicrous claim with their own fiery religious rhetoric?

It’s time to actively strip the so-called war on terror of its religious connotations, not add to them. Because religious wars are not just ugly, they are unwinnable. And despite what Operation Straight Up and its supporters in the Pentagon may think is taking place in Iraq, the Rapture is not a viable exit strategy.

Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/22/3331/
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"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell

FABIAN ESCALANTE, EX-CHIEF OF CUBAN INTELLIGENCE: Posada knows too much

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD—Granma International staff writer—

“POSADA is a killer, an assassin who kills without any emotion whatsoever, but he does know too much and constitutes a real danger for those who used him for more than 40 years,” commented Fabian Escalante, former chief of the Cuban intelligence services, recalling in an interview with Granma International the terrorist offensive of 1976, in the midst of which Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles masterminded the explosion in full flight of a Cubana Aviación DC-10.

After heading the Cuban counterintelligence services, Escalante was appointed chief of the State Security Department, precisely in January of that fateful year of 1976 when Bosch and Posada executed the series of attacks that culminated in the assassination in Washington of the former Chilean foreign minister, Orlando Letelier and the destruction of the Cuban passenger plane that left 73 people dead.

On that subject, Escalante related some unknown facts of that period. “By chance, and that came out later, at the same time as Bosch and various of his accomplices arrived in Santiago in December 1974 to place themselves at Pinochet’s disposition and become his paid terrorists, the Cuban security services began an important operation against the CIA in various Latin American countries, in search of information related to these activities, known to be underway.

“Bosch was going to offer himself to Pinochet along with this group of terrorists of Cuban origin who would become killers within Operation Condor. He met up with General Manuel Contreras, made contact with the U.S. agent Michael Townley and, a few months later, organized the kidnapping of two Cuban officials in Argentina, who were brutally murdered.

“The Security services organized an operation to discover what the terrorist plans being prepared were. Of course, we didn’t know of the existence of Operation Condor, but we already knew its instruments. I reiterate that we had no idea of its dimensions, but we did know of the danger and resources that the main organizers had at their disposal.

“Moreover, I reiterate, we did have significant information via the penetration that we had achieved within the CIA structures that a subversive mechanism, at that time called ‘autonomous operations,’ had been activated.”

GENESIS OF THE TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS

The concept of autonomous organization was coined in 1963 and was approved by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Escalante recalled.

“Basically, this concept established that the CIA was creating organizations of Cuban counterrevolutionaries to operate outside of U.S. territory. The CIA assigned them case officers to attend to them, fix their objectives for actions, subsidize them in terms of money and war materials and¼ discovered the result of their actions in the newspapers.

“And, precisely then, in 1974, we found out that these organizations had been reactivated, that operational concept which developed into the genesis of the terrorist organizations.

Did you know about Bosch’s stay in Chile?

We didn’t know that Bosch was in Santiago de Chile. We didn’t know that. But we did know that these groups where Bosch was, with Alvin Ross, the Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll brothers; with Luis Posada Carriles and Ricardo ‘El Mono’ Morales Navarrete in Venezuela; Antonio Veciana Blanch in Bolivia, were being prepared to unleash an operation against Cuba. An operation that, in 1976, Orlando Bosch himself called ‘the war around the world.’

We had information and we were working on that. But we didn’t have all the information and the details.

Unfortunately it wasn’t possible to discover the plans as a whole. They were highly secret plans. But even so, we began to prepare and activate all the agents infiltrated into the CIA networks to seek out this information.

Paradoxically, on the same date that Bosch was embarking on his activities in Santiago de Chile, selecting his collaborators and safe houses to place them at the service of the Condor mechanism, at that very moment, very close to them, the Cuban services initiated their penetration of the CIA networks which, in the end, made it possible to dismantle some of the conspiracies planned.

I remember that one byproduct of that operation was the exposé and unmasking of the then CIA station head in Lima, Peru, which was an important operative base for the agency in the region. As a result of these actions, the CIA had no alternative but to withdraw it and locate it in another country.

By 1975 we had achieved a significant penetration and I am referring to the CIA networks directed to working against Cuba and a number of the terrorist groups acting against our homeland from Miami, where they had had a powerful operational base up until 1969.

In those years there was intense fighting in the shadows. Information is obtained to act upon. There were a series of plans that were dismantled and others that regrettably were not. I am referring to placing bombs in aircraft, attempts on the lives of officials and diplomats working abroad, terrorist attacks on companies trading with Cuba in various countries of the region.

To what point did you manage to locate each of the many groups active at that time?

We were searching on many fronts at the same time, in many countries. Those people moved around a lot; they were in Mexico, in Central America, in Venezuela, where Posada Carriles was virtually deputy chief of the DISIP (Venezuelan Intelligence Police) and Ricardo Morales Navarrete was chief of the Counterintelligence Department. They had a strong base there.

They were also in Bolivia, where Antonio Veciana Blanch was. They had created structures – with the assassination of Che; that is to say at the end of the 60s and beginning of the 70s – and moreover, drug trafficking networks, because the common trait of all these people is that in addition to their actions against Cuba, they are linked to the whole business of drug trafficking, of contraband. That was their way of making more money. It has to be said that the war on Cuba, the country where they were born, became for them a way of making money, lots of money.

Information that emerged from investigations by the U.S. Congress on CIA conspiracies to assassinate Fidel, reveals that Antonio Veciana received a payment of $360,000 from his CIA case officer in 1976. Why that payment, when one would suppose that all the operations in which he took part were punctually funded? Is it because they were trying to buy his silence on an extremely delicate matter?

What other million-dollar sums have been paid to Bosch, Posada and their other associates in all these years of terror? And the Cuban-American National Foundation hadn’t yet been created.

And then 76 arrived, with its succession of attacks. How did you confront those events?

The year of 76 was a very hard year for us. We prepared ourselves, dismantled a good number of these terrorist projects. There were frustrated actions, known in advance by the Cuban Intelligence Services and which thus remained unknown. However, regrettably, there were many others, those known publicly, that we couldn’t dismantle and all those terrorist actions of 76 were going to culminate in the explosion of the Cuban passenger plane.

In that year the wave of terror carefully planned by the CIA – at that time directed by George Bush Senior, was unleashed. Pinochet ordered the assassination of Generals Prats of Chile and Juan José Torres of Bolivia; the Cuban embassy in Lisbon was blown up; a number of Cuban diplomats and officials were killed in countries in the region; former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier’s car was blown up right in the middle of Washington; and finally, a Cuban civilian aircraft was brought down in full flight by two bombs. These are plots that these people were carrying out as part of Operation Condor.

What was known in Cuba at that time about Luis Posada Carriles?

In ‘76, we had very fragmented information on Posada. Orlando Bosch , Antonio Veciana, the Novo Sampoll brothers, Nazario Sargén, Jorge Mas Canosa and many other organization leaders were the ones who were planning and had contact with the CIA and thus gave us the opportunity of directly discovering when and where they planned to act and, for that reason, were among the priorities then.

Posada was never the leader of anything. Posada is a hired assassin, a paid terrorist. He is a killer, an assassin like those in U.S. movies, who would murder anymore without a trace of emotion, just for money, out of self-interest.

But he is a very, very dangerous witness.

I remember that in 1971 information emerged in relation to a conspiracy to assassinate Fidel during his visit to Chile in which Posada was involved. Afterwards, years later, the details came out. The conspiracy was really diabolical. Its first phase consisted of using a film camera to conceal a revolver with which two of Posada’s henchmen, accredited as Venezuelan journalists, were to shoot the Cuban leader during his initial press conference on reaching Santiago de Chile. To that end, Antonio Veciana and his Alpha 66 group had smuggled in arms and explosives to have available other options of assassinating the Commander in Chief, in the event of the first attempt failing.

A Plan B was carefully prepared by Posada Carriles, then chief of operations of the Venezuelan political police. As it happened, a correspondent of the Soviet TASS news agency who was also a KGB officer was in Caracas. Posada arranged things to photograph his two agents while they were talking with the Russian, so that after the assassination of the Comandante, a media campaign would be unleashed showing the photos and accusing the Soviets of being the perpetrators of the crime, given the “existing political contradictions.” Posada and Veciana had fixed things with Eduardo Sepúlveda, colonel of the Chilean Mounted Police, responsible for security in the location where Fidel would give his press conference, so that instead of detaining the assassins, he would eliminate them and thus avert any indiscretion.

Where were you when the Cubana passenger plane exploded?

I was on an official visit to the USSR. That was a terrible day. With the time difference, I heard about it late at night on the 6th (October) or in the early hours of the next day. There were two or three of us Cubans there together¼ it was a terrible night because we realized that we had not done everything that we should have done. My impression was¼ of much pain, a feeling of great impotence. I returned immediately.

Our government immediately sent a team of technicians and investigators to Barbados. Within a few days, thanks to the investigations made and the statements of Hernán Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, caught in Trinidad and Tobago, we discovered almost all the details, and the masterminds, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada.

Recently declassified documents demonstrate that the CIA, the FBI and the U.S. embassy in Venezuela knew about it¼ And nobody did anything at all to avert that monstrous crime.

Did you penetrate the CORU at any point?

The CORU no, but the organizations comprising it, yes. Sometimes I have thought that if the Cuban services had available to them the ultramodern communications equipment that the CIA had then, more conspiracies would definitely have been avoided. In that period, they were working with so-called rapid fire communications equipment, which transmitted messages in 15 to 16 seconds. Speed of communications was the main problem that we had: gathering information and bringing it in for analysis. Because information is valuable when you can compare it with other information, when it is analyzed and meditated upon.

In those years, information took many days to arrive. I remember the case of an informant who, with important information in his hands, stole a speedboat in Miami and came here to Cuba to deliver it. At that time, correspondence both into and out of Cuba had to go through a center that the CIA had set up in Mexico City, where it was carefully revised.

From the end of ‘76, in ‘77 and in ‘78, these acts of terrorism gradually disappeared as a result of the actions of the Cuban Intelligence and Counterintelligence Services and the important – I would say decisive – political measures taken in terms of Cuban emigration which, as it turned out, became a neutralizing element of the first order.

What happened with the CIA and its autonomous organizations?

In the end I think they got out of control. The case of Bin Laden is one example. There is an interesting book by U.S. writer David Wise, The Invisible Government, on that theme. Organizations like the CIA or Mossad in Israel, and others in other regions of the world have acquired unlimited power, because they have information on their own presidents that they can manipulate or dress up and moreover, they have the capacity to act without controls to obtain secret results. Remember the Iran-Contra scandal where the U.S. Security Council was involved in a huge drug trafficking operation to fund the dirty war against Sandinista Nicaragua.

Just imagine, the Central Intelligence Agency in the 60s, with bases spread throughout the world, handling operations as delicate as the U-2 spy planes with ultramodern radars, with a large operations base in Miami with a $100-million budget (equivalent to $1 billion now) with 55 phantom enterprises that were producing uncontrolled profits. Where did all that money that produced the war on Cuba go?

There’s a fabulous U.S. film from the ‘70s called precisely Three Days of the Condor, with Robert Redford, which relates how a CIA unit dedicated to studying detective novels for errors or poor interpretation, comes across an ultra-secret covert operation in progress. The decision taken by the bosses is to eliminate all the employees, who are nothing more than novel readers and a number of characters attack the house where the unit is located and liquidate everyone, minus Redford, who had gone out to get food. That’s where the film starts, with Redford fleeing and pursued by all his bosses. The anecdote reflects how far things can get in that dark and shady underworld.

Isn’t that what happened to Posada in Guatemala?

I think drug trafficking was an issue there. Because, remember, Posada “escaped” in 85 from a Venezuelan prison and was received in El Salvador by Félix Rodríguez Mendigutía, who made him CIA operations chief at Ilopango airport and responsible for the supply flights for the Nicaraguan Contras.

At that time, there was a man in Honduras, Mario Delamico of Cuban origin, closely linked to the CIA and the Honduran army, who was in contact with other mercenaries including a number of Cubans located in Costa Rica. They had various enterprises and were to take charge of receiving and distributing the flights loaded with arms sent by Posada and sending back Colombian drugs on the same planes for transportation to the United States.

This was the business handled by Luis Posada Carriles, directly subordinated to Félix Rodríguez, the assassin of Comandante Ernesto Guevara.

I don’t know what happened in Guatemala. But after the capture in Nicaraguan territory of the U.S. pilot Eugenio Hassenfus, when he was dropping weapons to the Contras, Posada had to dismantle his camp in El Salvador.

What he did afterwards, one would have to ask him, but I, for one, don’t know. It is said that when he went to Guatemala City, some hired killers – probably around drugs – wanted to kill him. That’s all the information we have. But now I ask myself: What money would he have been left with? What could he have done? Who would he have wanted to get out of the way?

What are your thoughts on the legal proceedings against Posada Carriles since his arrival in the United States? Where is all that going?

Well¼ to an official pardon. There’s not the slightest doubt of that. There is something underlying this, not only the case of Luis Posada Carriles. but all the current U.S. policy and it is its brutality and prepotency.

Before they were more professional, more skilful. Before there were more intelligent people. If there’s one thing I’m sure about, it is that this lot today are not intelligent.

Before there was a Robert Kennedy and a Richard Helms who thought up the autonomous operations to remove the mess from American soil and validate the U.S. doctrine of plausible negotiation. In other words, always having the elements to deny U.S. participation in a specific event.

Nowadays, these people are more ignorant, as ignorant as the U.S. president himself. It was evident that the United States couldn’t allow Posada to be tried.

First there was the situation in Panama, where they no alternative but to try him, because he was caught red-handed. And it became obvious that when Mireya Moscoso left power that she would pardon him because she was part of all that. She was a U.S. agent.

Then he went to ground in El Salvador, was in Yucatan and entered the United States on the orders of his bosses. Posada would never have done that without an express order. His handlers told him: ‘come over here, we’re doing to do the same for you as we did with Orlando Bosch.’

But they didn’t take into account the action of people in solidarity, of independent journalism and then came the condemnations and things became evident. The pressure by Cuba has been very decisive, so decisive that they probably wouldn’t have done what they had to do without the Cuban exposé, the combative marches, the roundtables, the open tribunals, international solidarity, all of which, in my view, are pressure mechanisms that have been essential in terms of forcing the United States to do everything that it has done, attempting to have Posada go on trial as an illegal immigrant.

But they have assured that they are still investigating the case Thomas Shannon, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, has just affirmed that That’s a fact, isn’t it?

All of that is a lie. A white lie to satisfy some “democrats,” for whom there has been no other remedy than to condemn Posada’s release and who need an argument to be able to say: “you see, the United States is going to do something.” No, the United States is not going to do anything at all.

Luis Posada Carriles could die at any time. I repeat: he will always be a very dangerous witness. And he knows too much.

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"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell

“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. -- Edward R. Murrow

Terrorist Luis Posada Carriles - Double Standard in the U.S. War on Terror

By: Venezuela Information Office

Luis Posada Carriles is one of Latin America's most notorious criminals, a terrorist protected by the U.S. and allowed to live freely within its borders. Recruited by the CIA in 1962, Posada has since carried out deadly bombings and other crimes against humanity.

The Deadliest Terrorist Attack before 9/11
In 1976, the Cuban-born Venezuelan citizen blew up an airliner, killing all 73 passengers aboard, including 24 teenage members of Cuba's champion fencing team and 11 Guyanese medical students. Until 9/11, this was the deadliest attack on an airplane ever to occur in the Western Hemisphere. Posada was arrested in Venezuela and charged with masterminding the attack. However, he escaped from prison in 1985 and resumed coordinating terrorist acts throughout the region. In 1997, Posada was linked to several bombings in Havana hotels that left an Italian tourist dead and several injured. In 2000, he was arrested in Panama for attempting to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro using C-4 explosives in a school auditorium. Each time, Posada evaded those seeking to bring him to justice.

Extradition Requests Ignored
In March 2005, Posada entered the U.S. illegally. He was allowed to languish in a luxurious Miami apartment, emboldened by the fact that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had not detained him. In May of 2005, Venezuela formally requested his extradition from the U.S. so that he could be tried for 73 counts of murder in the 1976 bombing. The U.S. has yet to honor the extradition request or even respond to it. Only after bragging to the Miami press that the DHS was not looking for him, Posada was detained by DHS officials who neglected even to handcuff him as they took him away.

The Immigration, Customs and Enforcement Agency (ICE) quickly stated that it would not deport Posada to Cuba or “a country acting on behalf of Cuba”. By doing so, ICE set a precedent that indicated the U.S. government’s lenient stance on Posada even before his immigration case had begun. Despite Venezuela's repeated requests that the U.S. detain Posada for extradition purposes, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has yet to act. On June 15, 2005, Venezuela filed a formal extradition request with the State Department, providing voluminous documentary evidence of Posada's crimes. The State Department referred the case to the DOJ, which failed to bring it to court as required by law.

Protected by the U.S.
By flaunting extradition treaties, the U.S. has chosen to treat Posada Carriles’ case as a minor immigration offense, charging him only with illegal entry into the country. Posada brought a single witness to testify in that case, his long time lawyer and associate Joaquín Chaffardet, who was never cross-examined nor questioned about his own links to Posada and terrorist activities. Instead, Chaffardet was allowed to testify as an objective expert on Venezuela's human rights record. The DHS submitted no evidence against Posada, indicating to the defense and to the Judge that the U.S. government would prefer he be granted Convention Against Torture relief. However, no evidence exists to support claims that he would be tortured in Venezuela.

22 months have passed since Venezuela's first extradition request, and the U.S. has failed to present Posada's case to a federal court, despite treaty obligations that require it to do so. Though a U.S. ICE officer admits that Posada has a "long history of criminal activity and violence in which innocent civilians were killed," the Justice Department has not charged him with the 1976 attack. This is despite the binding obligations of a 1971 international convention to which the U.S. is a party. Nor has Posada been classified as a terrorist, which the Patriot Act allows. Indeed, the 79-year-old terrorist has never been charged by U.S. justice officials with participating in a violent act.

Posada Freed by U.S. Courts
On May 9, 2007, immigration charges brought against Posada were overturned by Texas District Judge Kathleen Cardone, leaving a man branded by the U.S. DOJ as "a dangerous criminal and an admitted mastermind of terrorist plots" free to roam a country he entered illegally and from which another court has ordered him to be deported. There is no explanation for having a high profile case that deals with a known-terrorist be ruled as an immigration matter, when it clearly should be oversee by the highest levels of government. “In addition to engaging in fraud, deceit and trickery, this Court finds the Government's tactics in this case are so grossly shocking and so outrageous as to violate the universal sense of justice. As a result, this Court is left with no choice but to dismiss the indictment," Judge Cardone wrote in her scathing opinion.

As international condemnation mounts against the U.S.' failure to prosecute an admitted terrorist, congressional leaders have demanded to know why U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales never declared Posada a security threat nor jailed him under the Patriot Act. Congressman William Delahunt (D-MA) stated in a letter to Gonzales that "Mr. Posada's release from prison calls into question our commitment to combating terrorism and raises concerns about a double standard in our treatment of terrorists." Delahunt is launching an investigation into Posada's relationship with the U.S. government as well as the failure of the Bush administration to designate Posada a terrorist. A former prosecutor himself, Rep. Delahunt called Judge Cardone's critique of the government's handling of the case unprecedented. Interestingly, Cardone threw out transcripts containing incriminating evidence against Posada on the grounds that an interpreter hired by the U.S. government was unreliable.

A Double Standard in the War on Terror
By refusing to extradite or prosecute Posada, the U.S. demonstrates contradictions in its war on terror. While claiming to lead a global offensive against terrorism using measures such as foreign intervention and the restriction of civil liberties at home, the U.S. also continues to recruit, tolerate, and protect terrorists within its own borders. A consistent hesitance to bring Posada to justice – and, more broadly, to allow political loyalties to define who is a terrorist, regardless of criminal records – confirms this fact.

Venezuela’s Ambassador to the White House, Bernardo Alvarez, recently confirmed the same: “While relations between Venezuela and the U.S. have been strained, nothing should prevent the U.S. government from either extraditing Posada to Venezuela or prosecuting him for the 1976 bombing. Posada’s violent attack could not be justified then; much less should it be overlooked now. Should Posada be allowed to escape justice for his vicious crimes, it will send a powerful message to the international community that some terrorism is acceptable. It isn’t.”

Cuba asks UN to circulate official protest on Posada’s release

CUBA has asked the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council to circulate, as an official document among their members, a statement protesting the release in the United States of international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles.

In a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, Cuban Ambassador Rodrigo Malmierca affirms that “an authority of the United States justice system dismissed, on May 8, all charges brought against that terrorist and freed him.”

Cuba holds the U.S. government responsible for that ruling, which is further evidence of the double standard applied by that country in its so-called “war on terrorism,” states the letter, summed up by Prensa Latina.

It adds that the decision to not classify this individual as a terrorist is not only a violation of U.S. law by the U.S. government itself, it also clearly fails to comply with commitments made via international agreements and treaties.

Malmierca reiterated that freeing Posada Carriles is a violation of pertinent resolutions of the General Assembly and the Security Council.

The Cuban ambassador issued his most energetic condemnation of this latest maneuver, which he described as an insult to the Cuban people, and the victims and family members of the detestable terrorist act against a Cuban civilian airliner, which killed 73 innocent people.

He expressly requested the secretary-general to circulate that letter and its appendix with the statement by the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Cuba, dated May 9, 2007, as an official document of the General Assembly’s 61st Session.

The circulation of the document is in accordance with items 66, 80 and 100 of the current session period.

Those items deal with, respectively, the right of nations to self-determination, the rule of law nationally and internationally and measures to eliminate international terrorism.

Malmierca also requested for Havana’s statement to be circulated as an official document.

Translated by Granma International