U.S. will harbour terrorist Posada Carriles

[musa]

A United States judge has ruled against handing over terrorist Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela where he faces criminal charges for his leading involvement in multiple counts of terrorist acts, including masterminding the 1976 jetliner bombing that killed 73 people.

Judge William L. Abbott cynically cited conventions against extradition to a country if a person is likely to face torture. I say cynically because nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Chavez has been heavily criticized by many poor and working class Venezuelans because of his soft treatment of the opposition who engaged in a U.S. backed coup in 2002, as well as other actions intended to bring down his government. On the other hand, it is the United States that has been caught engaging in the American-style torturing (http://www.internationalist.org/iraqtorture0504.html).

Thestatement (http://www.livejournal.com/users/raudypenguins/5806.html) from the embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela by Ambassador Bernado Alvarez correctly points out that "Luis Posada Carriles is the Osama Bin Laden of Latin America."

This case helps to underline that just as the "War on Drugs" has little to do with the actual combating of drugs, and all to do with the harassment and racist assault on blacks and other minorities in the U.S., similarly the terrorist "War on Terror" is a pretext and a rationale for endless war against the oppressed peoples of the world, part of the logic of U.S. imperialism. It should also be noted that far from fighting terrorism, the United States is the biggest state terrorist and sponser of terrorism in the world.

There exist ample evidence that Posada, a former CIA operative, engineered the 1976 bombing, including U.S. intelligence declassified records (http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/). One particularly damning CIA document from early 1976 even shows that the United States was aware of the plans to bomb the jetliner before it happened.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Source?

Not doubting you, just want to see the ruling and reports on it.

[MexAmLeft]

absolute hypocrisy by the US gov

[musa]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29 2005, 12:11 AM
Source?

Not doubting you, just want to see the ruling and reports on it.
I first found out about the court ruling from the following reuters report:

Venezuela blasts US refusal to extradite Cuban (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050928/ts_nm/security_cuban_venezuela_dc_1)

[CubaSocialista]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29 2005, 12:06 AM
A United States judge has ruled against handing over terrorist Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela where he faces criminal charges for his leading involvement in multiple counts of terrorist acts, including masterminding the 1976 jetliner bombing that killed 73 people.

Judge William L. Abbott cynically cited conventions against extradition to a country if a person is likely to face torture. I say cynically because nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Chavez has been heavily criticized by many poor and working class Venezuelans because of his soft treatment of the opposition who engaged in a U.S. backed coup in 2002, as well as other actions intended to bring down his government. On the other hand, it is the United States that has been caught engaging in the American-style torturing (http://www.internationalist.org/iraqtorture0504.html).

Thestatement (http://www.livejournal.com/users/raudypenguins/5806.html) from the embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela by Ambassador Bernado Alvarez correctly points out that "Luis Posada Carriles is the Osama Bin Laden of Latin America."

This case helps to underline that just as the "War on Drugs" has little to do with the actual combating of drugs, and all to do with the harassment and racist assault on blacks and other minorities in the U.S., similarly the terrorist "War on Terror" is a pretext and a rationale for endless war against the oppressed peoples of the world, part of the logic of U.S. imperialism. It should also be noted that far from fighting terrorism, the United States is the biggest state terrorist and sponser of terrorism in the world.

There exist ample evidence that Posada, a former CIA operative, engineered the 1976 bombing, including U.S. intelligence declassified records (http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/). One particularly damning CIA document from early 1976 even shows that the United States was aware of the plans to bomb the jetliner before it happened.
Unreported in the mainstream media, and we broke an extradition treaty with that "evil socialist government" in Venezuela.
"We dont usually extradite to countries working on Cuba's behalf."
We send terrorists to Syria to be tortured, if we think that's what Cuba will do.
No excuse, just hypocrisy.
As usual, fuck the U$.
I am not surprised, but I am infuriated. The U$ has a tendency to value, love, and respect mucous-covered sacks of excrement like Carriles and the Cuban American National Foundation.

Carriles will get his, one way or another. Murderers of the innocent must face justice eventually. Perhaps his knowing that the Cuban Revolution will outlast any of his efforts and will go on for ages is a good enough torture for him.

[CubaSocialista]

Another reason to hate this war
By Deirdre Griswold

The cruel, illegal and unprecedented treatment of prisoners captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and flown halfway around the world to "Camp X-Ray" in Guantanamo, Cuba, should be a matter of grave concern to anyone worrying about where U.S. society is going.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld doesn't see anything wrong with what his Pentagon is doing. He said so in a lengthy, rambling briefing on Jan. 22 intended as damage control after the International Committee of the Red Cross criticized the conditions at the camp, and after a group of lawyers, including former U.S. Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark, filed a petition in Los Angeles challenging the detentions.

Rumsfeld won't even admit that the prisoners are prisoners and therefore subject to certain international norms of conduct. He calls them "unlawful combatants," which is supposed to allow the Pentagon to do anything they want with these men.

Anyone who ever served in the military knows that you are told only to give your "name, rank and serial number" if taken prisoner. The 1949 Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war protects them from brutal treatment, torture and forced interrogation. Rumsfeld says the hell with all that. On Jan. 11, the day the first prisoners arrived at Guantanamo, the U.S. government announced officially that it was refusing to abide by the Geneva Convention.

What has shocked most of the world--prompting media denunciations from even the staunchest allies of U.S. imperialism in Europe--seems to have created barely a ripple in the moneyed media here. All the news commentary is designed to explain to the public why it is reasonable and necessary that hundreds of men from the Middle East be shackled, hooded, blindfolded, drugged, their arms and sometimes mouths immobilized with tape, to be herded into military planes and transported in this condition for a 27-hour flight.

On arrival at the base that the Pentagon has arrogantly imposed on Cuban soil, they are dragged into exposed, 6-by-8-foot chain-link cages that would be condemned by dog owners if their pets were confined there for any length of time. But race and class hatred have so poisoned a large part of the populace in the United States that plenty of apologists can be found for this repugnant treatment of Arab and Asian people.

Isn't what is happening an extension of the brutal and racist prison conditions inside the U.S. itself? According to the United Nations, this country imprisons more people than any other in the world--some 2 million. Executions have become routine here even as most other industrialized countries have done away with capital punishment. The popular culture takes for granted that prisoners are tortured, raped, set up for beatings, driven mad by sensory deprivation, and even murdered while in the custody of the state.

U.S. "justice" throws poor people, especially those of color, behind bars while it protects the quality of life of the rich. Yet even this proven system of injustice is not tough enough for Rumsfeld and the brass. They want their prisoners kept off U.S. territory and outside the reach of the Geneva Convention so they can have no recourse to either constitutional rights or international protection.

Why is the Bush administration so anxious to keep these prisoners, supposedly members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, from being able to communicate with the world in any way? Is it really to stop terrorism? Or might there be other reasons?

How many of them might indict the government and armed forces of the U.S. for their deliberate bombings of Afghan villages, hospitals, food warehouses, journalists, surrendering troops, and even elders headed for Kabul? How many might know the details of what dirty deals preceded the military assault, when U.S. oil giant Unocal and government officials were trying to get the Taliban to agree to a pipeline through Afghanistan?

How many who came to Afghanistan from other Arab countries hold secrets of CIA operations back when the U.S. was backing the "mujahadeen," not only against the progressive Afghan government of the 1980s, but in Kosovo, Bosnia, Chechnya and other places targeted for fratricidal war by the devious strategists in the U.S. foreign policy establishment?

Just as the Enron corporation is now scrambling to shred its compromising documents, the Pentagon and CIA are trying to erase not just the hard drives but also the memories of those it has used and abused.

It mustn't be forgotten that President George W. Bush's main excuse for the war was to "get" Osama bin Laden, the supposed mastermind of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. This dominated the news for months, but now bin Laden is almost forgotten and the menacing eye of the Pentagon has moved to other targets.

In the meanwhile, no evidence has been presented anywhere to prove anything, except a sensationalized videotape with a muffled soundtrack that is scoffed at by Arabic-speaking people. The Pentagon, however, has thoughtfully provided the U.S. media with a " justifying its assault upon yet another poor nation.

No wonder they are doing everything possible to deny the prisoners of war not only humane conditions but any contact with the world or chance to have their day in court.