[A-List] Anti-Castro Cuban Emerges from Hiding in Miami

[Macdonald Stainsby <mstainsby@xxxxxxxxx>]

Anti-Castro Cuban Emerges from Hiding in Miami
/////////////////////////////////////// by Frances Kerry Reuters


http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=200

5-05-17T140909Z_01_N17521137_RTRIDST_0_USREPORT-CUBA-EXILE-DC.XML

May 17, 2005


MIAMI  - A Cuban exile whom Venezuela wants extradited over the bombing

of a

Cuban airliner that killed 73 people has emerged from hiding in Miami
and told a newspaper he no longer feels he has to lie low.

Luis Posada Carriles, whose whereabouts had been a mystery to all but a

few

people since he slipped into the United States two months ago from

Mexico,

emerged to give an interview to the Miami Herald in an apartment in the
city's upscale Brickell business and condo district.

"At first I hid a lot," said Posada, a long-time anti-communist militant

who

is well known to Cuban exiles in the city and whose presence in the

United

States has enraged Cuban President Fidel Castro. "I thought the (U.S.)
government was looking for me," he told the paper.

"Now I hide a lot less. People have recognized me in the market, at the
doctor's office, mostly older people."

Posada, who denied involvement in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban plane that
killed 73 people, did not say where he was living and the Herald said
the interview was arranged though "cloak-and-dagger" instructions from

Posada's

contacts in south Florida.

The presence in the United States of Posada, a former CIA collaborator

and

longtime anti-communist activist, has presented U.S. authorities with
the dilemma of how to reconcile traditional sympathy for politically

influential

Cuban exiles with Washington's firm stance against terrorism suspects
following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Castro, at odds with the United States for more than four decades, has
furiously charged Washington with hypocrisy.

The Cuban president led hundreds of thousands of Cubans in a protest

march

past the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana on Tuesday to demand that the
Bush administration arrest Posada.

"Bush, fascist, capture the terrorist," the crowd chanted.


VENEZUELA EXTRADITION REQUEST

Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's president and a close ally of Castro, last week
asked the United States to extradite Posada, who has Venezuelan

citizenship.


Venezuela requested the Bush administration hunt down the 77-year-old,

and

deport him to face trial for the Cuban airliner bombing. He was arrested

in

Venezuela more than 20 years ago but escaped from prison without being
convicted.

In Washington, Justice Department officials, who said last week they
were reviewing Venezuela's request to arrest and extradite Posada,
declined to comment when asked if there were any imminent plans to
arrest him.

Immigration officials from the Department of Homeland Security also

refused

to comment.

State Department Counselor Philip Zelikow told lawmakers last week the
airliner bombing was an act of terrorism and U.S. authorities were

gathering

evidence about Posada's suspected role to determine how to treat any

asylum

request.

But U.S. authorities have apparently made no move to detain Posada since

his

lawyer said a month ago he was in the United States.

Posada was freed last August from a Panama prison after outgoing

President

Mireya Moscoso pardoned him in connection with an alleged plot to kill
Castro in 2000.

He told the Herald he ended up in Guatemala and from there went through
Belize to Mexico, crossing into the United States in a vehicle with

migrant

smuggler at the Texas border at Brownsville.

Posada said he was nearly caught on a Greyhound bus journey to Miami by
authorities but managed to persuade immigration officials who boarded
the bus he was just a harmless old man who had forgotten to bring his
papers.

Posada said he had been reading and painting while in Miami, and was
prepared to be detained if and when he had to appear for his asylum
interview. (Additional reporting by Anthony Boadle in Havana)

***


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