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News from the Caribbean as of
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Anti-Castro militant indicted in US on immigration charges
Friday, January 12, 2007
WASHINGTON, USA (AFP): A US federal grand jury has indicted anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles for lying in naturalisation proceedings, the Department of Justice said on Thursday.
Posada Carriles is wanted by Venezuela and Cuba in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.
The indictment handed down by a federal jury in Texas accuses Posada Carriles of making false statements on his application for naturalisation as a US citizen in September 2005 and of lying under oath during an interview with US officials in April 2006, the Justice Department said in a statement.
Posada Carriles, 78, told authorities he had travelled from Honduras through Belize and entered the US state of Texas over land from Mexico with help from a smuggler. But the indictment states Posada Carriles entered the United States by sea aboard the motor vessel "Santrina" accompanied by four individuals.
Venezuela has demanded the United States extradite Posada Carriles to face terrorism charges.
US officials refuse to release him to Venezuela, where he holds citizenship, or Cuba, where he was born, saying he might be tortured. But they also have refused to free him, calling the former CIA operative a threat to national security.
Posada Carriles was detained by immigration officials in May 2005 for entering the United States illegally.
Posada Carriles was jailed for eight years in Panama in a bomb plot to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro during an Ibero-American summit in Panama in 2000. He was pardoned by outgoing president Mireya Moscoso.
Cuban and Venezuelan authorities accuse the US government of harboring a known terrorist.
Recently declassified US documents show that Posada Carriles had worked for the CIA at least from 1965 until June 1976, and he reportedly helped the US government ferry supplies to so-called Contra rebels, who waged a bloody campaign to topple the Marxist Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the 1980s.
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