Former CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles, who is wanted in Venezuela and Cuba for several deadly bombings, was to go on trial in Texas yesterday on charges he lied to US immigration officials in 2005.
With Venezuela and Cuba seeking his extradition, Posada Carriles, 82, faces up to 60 years behind bars if convicted, but his case is likely to stir up more trouble between the US and its two top regional foes regardless of how he fares.
With a tangled past reaching back to the doomed CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 and intelligence operations in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile and Argentina, he has been a constant embarrassment to Washington.
Arrested and jailed in 2005 for illegally entering the country, he was released on bail in May 2007 by a US federal judge in Texas who said the US government had tricked the former CIA contractor by using a citizenship interview to obtain evidence against him.
The US government appealed his release and in the upcoming trial will attempt to bring up Posada Carriles’ dark past in hopes of cementing the immigration charges and seeing him locked away for years.
Posada Carriles in 2007 officially requested political asylum in the US, but quickly withdrew his request in order not to embarrass the administration of then-US president George W. Bush.
“I have spent 30 years in hiding,” he said at the time. “If my request for political asylum creates a problem for the United States, I’ll withdraw it.”
He has been living quietly with his family in Miami, Florida, since his release.
A Cuba-born Venezuelan national, Posada Carriles was jailed in Venezuela in 1976 for allegedly masterminding the downing of a Cuban jet off Barbados that same year that killed 73 people. The plane had taken off from Caracas.
He escaped in 1985, was sentenced to eight years in jail in Panama for a 2000 bomb plot to assassinate then-Cuban president Fidel Castro and was pardoned four years later.
Cuba charges him with several assassination plots against Castro and of involvement in a 1997 Havana hotel bombing that killed an Italian tourist.
However, he has not been indicted in the US for any of the attacks and US authorities have refused to extradite him to Cuba or Venezuela, claiming he might be tortured there. The US government failed to find takers when it suggested sending him to another country.
Cuban President Raul Castro and his ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, have repeatedly accused Washington of harboring a wanted terrorist, while at the same time claiming to wage a worldwide battle against terrorism.
Declassified US documents show that Posada Carriles worked for the CIA from 1965 to June 1976.
He also reportedly helped the US government ferry supplies to the Contra rebels who waged a bloody campaign to topple the socialist Sandinista government in Nicaragua in the 1980s.
Born in Cienfuegos, Cuba, on Feb. 15, 1928, Posada Carriles began his education in religious schools, then studied chemistry and launched an insecticide business in his native town.
One year after the Cuban revolution, he openly opposed Fidel Castro, was briefly imprisoned, fled Cuba and signed up in 1961 as a volunteer to take part in the doomed CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of his home country.
Posada Carriles never saw combat because he was slated to take part in a second wave of the invasion that was called off because of the rout suffered by those in the initial landings.
Two years later, he enlisted in the US military, where he was trained for intelligence operations.
In 1967, he left Miami for Latin America. While maintaining ties to the CIA, he worked for the secret services of Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile and Argentina.
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