Indictment of Anti-Castro Militant Could Boost U.S.-Latin Ties
By TIM PADGETT AND SIOBHAN MORRISSEY / MIAMI, Times Friday, Apr. 10, 2009
There's a pińata of reasons why relations between the U.S. and Latin America deteriorated under George W. Bush. But the most serious was Bush's petulant assumption that the region didn't back his war on terror, especially after most Latin American governments refused to bless his invasion of Iraq. But Latins argue they had a hard time taking the Bush crusade seriously when he himself was harboring a suspected terrorist. That would be Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban exile, suspected, arrested and once convicted (though later pardoned) in various countries for crimes that included the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner that killed 73 people; the 1997 bombings of two Havana hotels that killed an Italian tourist; and a 2000 plot to assassinate Fidel Castro. After entering the U.S. illegally in 2005, Posada, 81, is today a free man in Miami.
But the Obama Administration, a week before the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, looks set to reverse Posada's good fortune. Wednesday night, federal prosecutors filed a superseding 11-count indictment against the aging militant in which, for the first time, the U.S. links him to at least the 1997 bombings. It doesn't directly charge Posada with the crime; but it accuses him of lying about his role in it, claiming he perjured himself and obstructed justice in 2005 when, while answering questions from immigration authorities, he denied involvement in the Havana attacks even though he told the New York Times in 1998 that he'd taken part in them. Posada's Miami lawyer, Arturo V. Hernandez, says his client denies the charge. "[His] defense will be a clear and direct one, which is that he told the truth," Hernandez tells TIME. "We share in a common sense of optimism about the truth coming out in the end." (Hernandez won't say why Posada claims he didn't lie to immigration officials; but Posada in the past has suggested that his flawed English led to a misunderstanding in the Times interview.) (See the top 10 news stories of 2008.)
Either way, the official shift in the treatment of Posada will likely enhance the hemisphere's early optimistic mood about President Obama when he lands in Trinidad next week. "This will certainly be construed by Latin America as a positive step," says Daniel Erikson, a senior analyst at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, D.C., and the author of The Cuba Wars. "The region sees the Posada case as one of the worst examples of a U.S. double standard regarding the rule of law, a subject we often lecture Latin America about."
Both Cuba and Venezuela, where Posada had citizenship when the the Cubana Airlines flight blew up in 1976, have demanded Posada's extradition. So far federal judges have declined to send him to either country, where Posada insists he would be tortured. (Cuban President Raul Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have insisted he wouldn't.) But some analysts believe that if the U.S. were to eventually lock Posada away — a grand jury in New Jersey is also investigating his involvement in the bombings — it might turn down the extradition volume in Havana and Caracas. Though it urged Obama to go further than mere perjury charges against "the hemisphere's most famous terrorist," the Cuban government's official newspaper, Granma, on Thursday called Posada's indictment "a surprising strategic change." (Read "What Chávez Win Means for Latin American Democracy.")
Posada's is a quintessentially cold war story. As a CIA operative in the 1960s he worked unsuccessfully to overthrow the communist regime of then Cuban leader Fidel Castro (who officially ceded power to his younger brother Raul last year because of failing health). At the time of the 1976 airliner bombing he worked for Venezuela's secret police. Despite abundant evidence against him, a Venezuelan military tribunal acquitted him of the Cubana attack. That verdict was overturned, however; and in 1985, while Posada was being tried in a civilian criminal court, he escaped disguised as a priest. Posada and three other Cuban exiles were convicted in 2000 of conspiring to kill Fidel Castro during a summit in Panama. But four years later, inexplicably, then Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso pardoned the four men. (The Bush Administration denied it had pressured her as a favor to Miami's politically powerful exile community.)
Cuba insists it has ample evidence to try Posada for the 1997 bombings, which killed Italian businessman Fabio di Celmo as he sat in the lobby of the Copacabana Hotel. "My family and I have been waiting 12 years for the U.S. to officially link Posada to international terrorism," di Celmo's brother, Livio di Celmo, told reporters Thursday on a conference call. But the U.S. may have felt emboldened to indict Posada this week for perjury in no small part because the FBI — whose informants have linked Posada to the 1976 airline bombing, and whose agents in 2006 traveled to Havana to conduct their own investigation of the hotel bombings — in turn may have stronger evidence of Posada's participation. One of the issues Posada is accused of lying about is whether he arranged for a Salvadoran man, Raul Cruz Leon, to take explosives to Cuba in 1997. Dennis Jett, an international relations professor at Penn State University and a former U.S. Ambassador to Peru, says the new Posada indictment is "probably just an extension of the judicial process that has been underway for years, rather than a change pf policy."
Still, Obama can add the Posada indictment to the list of fence-mending planks he's taking to Trinidad — most of them involving Cuba, which has shaped up to be the central focus of the summit. Most Latin American leaders consider a change in Washington's Cuba policy — including the 47-year-old trade embargo — to be a sine qua non for improving hemispheric relations in general, the strongest indication that the U.S. is willing to deal with Latin America with the same multilateral, dialogue-based approach that Obama pledged at the G20 Summit this month in London.
Though he has said he'll keep the trade embargo intact until he sees more political reform in Cuba, Obama is expected to lift restrictions on Cuban-American travel and remittances to the island before the Americas summit begins. The U.S. Congress, for its part, appears closer than ever to passing legislation to lift the Cuban travel ban for all U.S. citizens — prominent lawmakers such as Indiana's Republican Senator Richard Lugar now call the embargo a failed policy — a measure Obama would probably sign. At the same time, Fidel and Raul Castro have both in recent days expressed an unusual willingness to talk with the U.S. about improving Washington-Havana relations. The two aging communists even met with a delegation of U.S. congressmen this week and asked what they could do toward that end. One possible answer: if the U.S. does lock up Posada, Cuba could respond in turn by freeing some of the scores of dissidents languishing in its own prisons.
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By LAURA MECKLER, The Wall Street Journal April 4, 2009-04-10
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama plans to lift longstanding U.S. restrictions on Cuba, a senior administration official said, allowing Cuban-Americans to visit families there as often as they like and to send them unlimited funds.
The gesture, which could herald more openness with the Castro regime, will fulfill a campaign promise and follows more modest action in Congress this year to loosen travel rules.
The president has authority to loosen the restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba on his own. The new rules will affect an estimated 1.5 million Americans who have family members in Cuba. Other Americans are allowed to travel to Cuba but only if they qualify through certain cultural, educational and other programs.
President Obama doesn't intend to call for lifting of the trade embargo against Cuba, which would require congressional action, nor is any specific diplomatic outreach contemplated, the official said.
Advocates for greater openness with Cuba said the move is significant in itself, signaling the Obama administration's willingness to take a fresh look at Cuba policy early in the presidency. However, others argue that overtures to Cuba as long as the Castros are in charge are not likely to foster democracy on the island.
The timing of the announcement is unclear, but several Cuba experts have speculated that it could come ahead of this month's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago.
It will come amid a series of international gestures by President Obama recently. This week, he moved to improve relations with Russia and told an audience in France on Friday that he was there to listen. Previously, he made an outreach to the people of Iran, sending a video message calling for a "new day" of relations between Washington and Tehran.
Last May in a campaign speech in Miami, Mr. Obama said, "It's time to let Cuban-Americans see their mothers and their fathers, their sisters and their brothers. It's time to let Cuban-American money make their families less dependent on the Castro regime."
The travel and remittance restrictions stem from the embargo, put in place in 1962 after Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba. President Jimmy Carter allowed the travel ban to lapse.
But President Ronald Reagan reinstituted the travel ban with some exceptions. Under President Bill Clinton, Cuban-Americans could visit family once a year. President George W. Bush's policy was at one point even looser, but in 2004, he tightened the rules, allowing family trips once every three years, and narrowing the definition of who qualified as family. Sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers and grandparents qualified, but uncles, aunts and cousins did not.
This year, Congress approved legislation that had the effect of rolling back the Bush rules. As they now stand, family members -- broadly defined -- may visit once a year. The rules on how much money family members can send to Cuba, which date to 1978, have also changed with various administrations, but under Mr. Bush, funds were limited to a maximum of $300 per quarter for each household in Cuba receiving them. Remittances from the U.S. to Cuba now amount to around $700 million a year.
The expected action comes as cries grow louder in Congress to open U.S. policy toward Cuba. A bill introduced this year would allow unlimited travel for any purpose by Americans. Sen. Richard Lugar, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote Mr. Obama this week calling for a change in U.S. posture toward Cuba and suggested that his administration open a dialogue about how to bring Cuba into the international community.
Mr. Obama has also been under pressure from Latin leaders to make a gesture toward Cuba to start rebuilding regional relations.
Reaction to the expected policy shift was mixed. "The status quo has been unnatural and immoral," said Julia Sweig, a Cuba specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations. "This will at least allow families to begin to normalize, if not the two countries."
Some Cuban-American circles have pressed to maintain U.S. restrictions because of their antipathy for Fidel Castro and his brother, Raul, who replaced him as leader after Fidel became ill. "How do you help people speak out about human rights violations if you're basically extending the dictatorship abroad?" said Mauricio Claver-Carone, director of U.S. Cuba Democracy PAC.
—-- Jose de Cordoba and John Lyons contributed to this article.
Write to Laura Meckler at laura.meckler@wsj.com
©2003 The African Independent, Inc. All rights to republication are reserved.
