Letter to President Bush Regarding Luis Posada Carriles
Kucinich gave the following speech in Congress on May 18, 2005
"Mr. Speaker, today 20 Representatives sent to President Bush the following letter regarding the asylum application of terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and the extradition request from Venezuela:"
Dear Mr. President: We are writing to urge you to oppose the application for asylum by Luis Posada Carriles, and to support the request for extradition to Venezuela, where he is a fugitive from justice.
Posada, a CIA-trained Cuban exile, is one of only two prime suspects in the bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner, which killed all 73 people onboard on October 6, 1976, according to FBI investigators and declassified documents. The plane had originated in Caracas and was bound for Cuba, with a stop in Barbados. The bomb went off as the plane was leaving Barbados.
In addition to the Cuban airline bombing, Posada is implicated in an act of terrorism that took place on American soil, here in Washington, DC. On September 21, 1976 former Chilean government minister Orlando Letelier and his American associate, Ronni Moffit, were killed by a car bomb near Sheridon Circle. The bombing was one of the worst acts of foreign terrorism on American soil to that date.
Carter Cornick, a retired counterterrorism specialist for the FBI who worked on the Letelier case, said in an interview that both the airline bombing and the Letelier bombing were planned at a June 1976 meeting in Santo Domingo attended by Posada in addition to others. Mr. Cornick said that Posada was involved "up to his eyeballs" in planning the attacks. At the time of the bombings, Venezuelan police found maps and other evidence in Posada's Venezuelan home that tied him to the terrorist acts. Furthermore, a recently declassified 1976 F.B.I. document confirms Posada's presence at two meetings in the Anauco Hilton Hotel in Caracas where the airline bombing was planned.
Posada, a dual citizen of Venezuela and Cuba, and a former Venezuelan intelligence agent, was jailed in Venezuela for the airline bombing, but then escaped from prison in 1985 while awaiting trial.
After escaping prison, Posada continued to terrorize civilians, and even boast publicly about his crimes. In a 1998 interview with the New York Times, he claimed responsibility for organizing a series of bombings aimed at Cuban hotels, department stores and other civilian targets during the summer of 1997. The bombings killed an Italian tourist and injured 11 other human beings.
Perhaps realizing he had not helped himself or his cause, Posada later retracted his statements.
In November 2000, Posada was arrested in Panama for preparing a bomb to explode in the University of Panama's Conference Hall, where Fidel Castro was going to deliver a speech. Hundreds of people were expected to attend this event, and had Cuban intelligence not uncovered the plot beforehand, there would have been massive civilian casualties. Posada was convicted in a Panamanian court only to be pardoned by Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso just days before she left office in August 2004.
Moscoso's successor, Martin Torrijos, criticized the pardon, aptly noting, "For me, there are not two classes of terrorism, one that is condemned and another that is pardoned. "
Similarly, in 1989, when the Justice Department was considering the asylum request of Posada's fellow Miami militant, and suspected co-conspirator in the Cubana bombing, Orlando Bosch, then-Associate U.S. Attorney General Joe D. Whitley said, "The United States cannot tolerate the inherent inhumanity of terrorism as a way of settling disputes. Appeasement of those who would use force will only breed more terrorists. We must look on terrorism as a universal evil, even if it is directed toward those with whom we have no political sympathy."
Aside from the United States' foreign policy regarding Cuba, our stated, official national security policy against terrorism is unequivocally clear.
On September 19, 2001, Mr. President, you eloquently reaffirmed our national policy against terrorism: "Anybody who harbors a terrorist, encourages terrorism, will be held accountable. I would strongly urge any nation in the world to reject terrorism, expel terrorists. "
On August 26th, 2003 you said, "If you harbor a terrorist, if you support a terrorist, if you feed a terrorist, you are just as guilty as the terrorists." The National Security Strategy of the United States, released in 2002 stated, "No cause justifies terror. The United States will make no concessions to terrorist demands and strike no deals with them. We make no distinction between terrorists and those who knowingly harbor or provide aid to them."
Not only must the United States reject the asylum application of Luis Posada Carriles, a known international terrorist, but Posada should also be returned to Venezuela for a proper adjudication of the case against him. Posada was a dual citizen of Venezuela and Cuba, he plotted terrorist crimes from Venezuela, including the bombing of the civilian airline flight that had originated in Venezuela, and he escaped from a Venezuelan prison. As a sovereign nation, Venezuela has the right to pursue justice in this case.
Posada's lawyer Eduardo Soto has objected to his client's return to Venezuela, arguing that he could be tortured there. To satisfy such concerns, the United States should abide by its standard policy on these matters, which according to William Haynes II, general counsel of the Defense Department, "is to obtain specific assurances from the receiving country that it will not torture the individual being transferred to that country." If this policy is applied in the transferring of prisoners to Syria, Morocco, Egypt and Jordan, all countries whose abusive practices have been documented and condemned by the State Department's annual human rights report, then the United States must surely apply this policy to Venezuela, a nation with a Constitution that specifically prohibits torture and provides for the prosecution of officials who instigate or tolerate torture.
Many innocent victims who happened to be Cuban died at the hands of Posada, in a crime similar to that which killed innocent American victims on September 11, 2001. It is not only inconceivable to imagine the possibility of granting this terrorist asylum, but also of denying justice to all of the victims of his crimes. Such actions would go against everything that your Administration has claimed to stand for in the "War on Terrorism." It is our hope that for the sake of all the families of terror casualties in the United States and around the world that Luis Posada Carriles is not granted asylum in the United States, and that he is rightfully extradited to Venezuela where he will finally face justice.
Sincerely,
Dennis J. Kucinich, Raul M. Grijalva, Jose E. Serrano, Barbara Lee, Cynthia McKinney, Maurice Hinchey, John W. Olver, Bobby L. Rush, James P. McGovern, Edolphus Towns, Donald M. Payne, Sam Farr, Lane Evans, Bennie G. Thompson, Carolyn B. Maloney, Ed Pastor, Tammy Baldwin, Sheila Jackson Lee, Lynn Woolsey, Maxine Waters.
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