http://www.newsalerts.com/news/article/go:us0:133683

Cuban terror suspect’s asylum a dilemma for U.S. government

By Ruth Morris
Staff Writer
May 7, 2005


Luis Posada Carriles lays low in Miami, painting and reading while waiting for the U.S. government to process his asylum plea. There's a hitch though. Venezuelan and Cuban authorities charge he masterminded a terrorist plot that blew a midsize airliner out of the sky nearly 30 years ago.

Venezuela filed a formal request for Posada Carriles's extradition Thursday, a tough challenge for the Bush administration's war on terror. Posada Carriles apparently slipped across from Mexico undetected last month. What's more, analysts said, a successful asylum claim would undercut U.S. credibility as it roots out terror suspects overseas.

"His presence poses a really important test for the U.S. government. He has admitted to terrorist acts and we're engaged in a war on terrorism. And the president has made it very clear that to harbor a terrorist is to condone terrorism," said Philip Peters, a political analyst with the Lexington Institute, a non-profit research group in Arlington, Va.

Posada Carriles, 77, is venerated as a patriot by some and loathed as an assassin by others in the Cuban American community. Some leaders say the longer he remains in South Florida, the more volatile the situation could become. "This is Elián redux," said Pedro Freyre, a Miami attorney and Cuban activist, referring to the political fervor surrounding the Elián González refugee case. "It lends itself to all kinds of mischief. This administration has made one of its linchpins `zero tolerance' of terrorism and here is someone accused of the single major act of terrorism against the Castro government in 42 years."

U.S. officials generally refrain from commenting on pending asylum cases, but Roger Noriega, the top State Department official for Western Hemisphere affairs, suggested Tuesday Posada Carriles is in an uphill battle.

The United States "has no interest in giving quarter to someone who has committed criminal acts," Noriega told journalists. "We are a country that respects the rule of law."

Posada Carriles' friends, however, say he is a freedom fighter who served the U.S. military and CIA for decades and deserves U.S. protection.

Posada Carriles joined the U.S.-led Bay of Pigs invasion force in 1961 and was charged 15 years later in Venezuela in the bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner that killed 73 people. He was twice acquitted of that crime but remained in prison while prosecutors appealed. He escaped in 1985. He also supported covert U.S. operations against Sandinista rebels in the 1980s, and in 2000 surfaced in a Panama courtroom, where he was charged in an alleged plot to kill Fidel Castro. He served four years jail time and was pardoned.

"In our assessment, he is not wanted," said longtime friend Santiago Alvarez, who in 2000 raised funds in Miami for Posada Carriles' legal defense. "He fulfilled his obligation with immigration when he filed a claim for asylum by mail. He is not a terror suspect."

Already the case has highlighted divisions in the Cuban exile community, where left-leaning activists charge the Bush administration is applying uneven standards. They have contrasted Posada Carriles' freedom with the unexpected deportation last month of Cuban spy suspect Emilio Juan Aboy, 44, who was never convicted on criminal charges.

Investigators arrested Aboy in 2002 on suspicion the deep-sea diver had been sent to gather intelligence at the Miami headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command. Rather than charge him with a crime, however, they channeled him into deportation proceedings for lying to immigration agents.

Authorities whisked Aboy to Havana on April 19, a month after he stopped eating to protest his detention.

"It points to a double standard by the Bush administration regarding its anti-terrorism campaign," said Andrés Gómez, a Cuban activist based in Miami, of the April 19 removal. "It could lead you to think that for Bush there are good terrorists and bad terrorists."

Others questioned how Posada Carriles, with his well-publicized past, was able to slip into the United States in the first place. The Department of Homeland Security has sent hundreds of new agents to the Mexican border to crack down on illegal crossings, even as U.S. officials concede the border area is porous and difficult to manage.

"It's like saying Bin Laden is living in Hialeah," said Max Lesnik, leader of the Alianza Martiana, which opposes the embargo and favors a dialogue between the U.S. and Cuba. "It's time that they went looking for him."

Ruth Morris can be reached at rmorris@sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5012.