La Jornada, Mexico
Loughner and Carriles: Two Terrorists, One U.S. Double Standard
"It's
319 miles from Tucson to El Paso, a trip of four and a half hours by car. A
link of dramatic tension unites the two communities - one of hate and
terrorism, only now, as Tucson is in mourning, the criminal in El Paso has full
confidence in the laws of the United States, knowing that they do not apply to
him."
By José Pertierra*
Translated By Halszka Czarnocka
January 11, 2010
Mexico
- La Jornada - Original Article (Spanish)
In El
Paso, Texas, on the eve of the sentencing of Luis
Posada Carriles, a terrorist in Tucson, Arizona, shot Congresswoman
Gabrielle Giffords in the head. She stands between life and death. The
murderer, Jared Loughner, used an automatic weapon. As I write these words,
there are six known dead - among them a little girl who born on September 11,
2001 - and 12 wounded.
It's
319 miles from Tucson to El Paso, a trip of four and a half hours by car. A
link of dramatic tension unites the two communities - one of hate and
terrorism, only now, as Tucson is in mourning, the criminal in El Paso has full
confidence in the laws of the United States, knowing that they do not apply to
him. U.S. prosecutors protect him, trying him for being a simple liar while ignoring
the memories of the dozens of people he has assassinated.
Terrorism
is a cancer on society, threatening all of us equally. We should feel the pain
of the death of the 2,752 people assassinated in the Twin Towers as we do the memories
of 3,478 Cubans killed in terrorist actions organized from Miami against the
island over the past five decades. However, for the United States, there are
victims of the first and second categories, as well as good and bad terrorists.
But,
wherever it happens, those who cultivate hatred harvest the crop of terrorism.
When the father of the 40-year-old congresswoman was asked whether his daughter
had enemies, Spencer
Giffords said: "Yes, the entire Tea
Party.” Last summer Gabrielle Gifford's opponent, an ex-marine named Jesse
Kelly who ran for her seat for the Tea Party, convened a campaign
event with the following message: “Shoot a Fully Automatic M16″
to “Get on Target” and “Remove Gabrielle Giffords.”
It
hardly matters whether Jared Loughner - the suspect in the Arizona murders -
worked for the Tea Party, or if he was recruited by Sarah Palin to try and kill
Congresswoman Giffords. What matters is that with premeditation, both the Tea
Party and Sarah Palin cultivated ferocious hatred toward members of Congress
that supported the healthcare reform pushed by President Obama - a hatred that
flourished in the perverse mind of Loughner until it made him into a killer.
For over
50 years, that same resort to hatred has been used against Cuba by the United
States, which has encouraged, trained and protected the terrorists who maintained
the island as a permanent target of aggression. A prodigal son of this hostility
was and remains Luis Posada Carriles. Declassified
documents show that the CIA taught him how to use explosives and
trained him to torture and kill. According to his own attorney, everything
Posada Carriles has done in Latin America was "in the name of Washington.”
Posada
is the mastermind of one of the most heinous crimes in the history of
international terrorism. On October 6, 1976, he detonated two bombs made with
C-4 - an explosive available only to the CIA at the time - that brought down a
Cuban aircraft in midflight near the coast of Barbados. There were no survivors
among its 73 passengers.
Like
Jared Loughner on that Saturday in Tucson, Posada assassinated a 9-year-old
girl. Sabrina Paul was traveling with her family aboard the aircraft. The blast
blew open Sabrina's head and chest. The evidence of who the perpetrators and
masterminds were was overwhelming. Because of this, Venezuela immediately
arrested Posada Carriles and charged him with first degree murder. But with the
help of his American friends, Posada escaped in 1985. A few days later he
resurfaced, having been given work, food and shelter. The CIA found him an
employment in El Salvador as one of the principal managers of Operation Iran-Contra.
His role was to facilitate the illegal transport of weapons to the Contras in
Nicaragua. Later, in 1997, he directed a bombing campaign against tourist
installations in Havana which cost the life of young Fabio di Celmo
[an Italian entrepreneur]. He contracted mercenaries who have been apprehended
on the island and have identified Posada Carriles as the man who paid them for
their "services."
Washington
continued to shield him during his bloody duty in Central America. He was
convicted in Panama in 2000 for trying to blow up an auditorium full of
students at a local university during a speech by Fidel Castro, but his friends
bribed the then-president of Panama, Mireya Moscoso, and she pardoned him in
2004, albeit illegally, according to the Panamanian Supreme Court.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
SEE ALSO ON THIS:
Juventud Rebelde, Cuba:
In Miami, It's Better to Be a Terrorist Than a Poet
Le Figaro, France:
Bush Refuses to Extradite 'Friendly' Criminal to Venezuela
Granma, Cuba:
Cubans Insist That Washington Shields An International Terrorist
Granma, Cuba:
Castro Says U.S. Implicated in 1976 Airline Bombing
Bolvariana de Noticias, Venezuela:
Obama 'Must Extradite' Carriles
Adelante, Cuba:
Posada Carriles and Al Capone: How U.S. History Repeats Itself
Adelante, Cuba:
America's Favorite Terrorist Goes Free
Der Standard, Austria:
Can Americans Disarm in Thought and Word?
Le Figaro, France:
Explaining the 'Murder and Hatred' in Arizona
Beijing Youth Daily, China:
Tucson a 'Footnote in Year of Economic Crisis'
Die Zeit, Germany:
Sarah Palin Is No Longer 'Reloading'
Excelsior, Mexico:
Mexicans Uniquely Alarmed by Arizona Shooting Attack
El Pais, Spain:
Tea Party 'Endangers Health' of American Democracy
Estadao, Brazil:
The Massacre in Arizona: Will America Ever Learn?
News Switzerland:
The Day Hope was Shot, in America and Europe
Der Spiegel, Germany:
Blaming Sarah Palin for
Tucson Attack is 'Wrong'
Rheinische Post, Germany:
America's 'Intellectual Instigators' of Hatred
Berliner Morganpost:
Mutual Respect: What U.S.
Owes Itself, World
Polityka, Poland:
America in Anger's Clutches
Salzburger Nachrichten, Austria:
Massacre in Tucson: 'A Sad Day for U.S.
Guardian, U.K.:
Arizona Shootings: Left, Right at Odds Over Effects of Toxic Politics
TLZ, Germany:
America's Hate-Filled Rhetoric 'Unworthy of a Democratic Nation'
Telegraph, U.K.:
Will Obama Stand Up to
Left's Exploitation
of National Tragedy?
Guardian, U.K.:
Shooting of
Giffords Highlights 'Man-Up'
Culture in U.S. Politics
Posada
arrived in Miami in March 2005. Venezuela immediately requested his extradition,
demanding that Washington return him to Caracas where he would be held to
account for the deaths of 73 people in the downing of the Cuban airliner.
Instead of appropriately handling the extradition request, the Bush Administration
filed charges against him for lying. These are the charges that the Obama
prosecutors aired today in El Paso.
The
United States insists on charging Posada Carriles only with having lied to the
immigration officials. They haven't filed charges of assassination or terrorism
against him, and haven't begun the procedure of extraditing him to Caracas.
They protect him. Why might this be?
Successive
U.S. governments and certain legislators have cultivated a visceral hatred
toward the Cuban revolution for more than 50 years. This hatred has been transformed
into spiritual and material support of terrorism. So much so, that Senator
Marco Rubio and congress people David Rivera and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen were among
the donors to the legal defense fund for Luis Posada Carriles in El Paso.
But
terrorism isn't fought a la carte: these, the inconvenient ones, are
terrorists; others, the convenient ones, are not. Last Friday, referring to inmates
that the U.S. keeps in Guantanamo, President Obama declared that "to prosecute
terrorists in federal court is a powerful tool in our efforts to protect the
nation, and it should remain among the options we have at our disposal.” Then
why not use this tool to try Luis Posada Carriles for terrorism?
Posada
knows perfectly well that if convicted in El Paso for lying alone, he will not
go to prison. The judge has already told him so. He'll be credited for the year
and a half he has spent behind bars while his immigration status was being resolved
- and they'll let him go free. He is calm, with no sign of remorse for his
crimes. In fact, he told The New York Times in 1998: "That Italian (Fabio di Celmo) was
sitting in a wrong place at a wrong time ... I sleep like a baby.” What would
happen if Loughner said something similar? Would he go unpunished?
*José
Pertierra is a lawyer. He has a legal practice in Washington and is
representing the Venezuelan government in the extradition case of Luis Posada
Carriles.
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