Castro slams US court order freeing anti-Castro militant on bail News
Castro slams US court order freeing anti-Castro militant on bail

[JURIST] Cuban President Fidel Castro [official profile] issued a statement [text] Tuesday condemning a US district court ruling freeing an anti-Castro militant on bail [JURIST report] prior to his May 11 trial on charges that he lied in his attempt to become a US citizen. Luis Posada Carriles [Wikipedia profile; additional materials; JURIST news archive] is wanted in Cuba and Venezuela for allegedly plotting the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner [Wikipedia backgrounder; additional materials] in which 73 Cuban nationals were killed. Carriles is now awaiting trial [JURIST report] after his 2005 arrest [JURIST report] in Texas on illegal immigration charges. The ailing Cuban leader said in a text distributed by the Cuban Foreign Ministry:

The instructions for the verdict issued by Judge Kathleen Cardone, of the El Paso Federal Court last Friday, granting Luis Posada Carriles freedom on bail, could only have come from the White House.

It was President Bush himself who ignored at all times the criminal and terrorist nature of the defendant who was protected with a simple accusation of immigration violation leveled at him. The reply is brutal. The government of the United States and its most representative institutions had already decided to release the monster.

A US immigration judge ruled in 2005 that Carriles should be deported, but not to Cuba or Venezuela [JURIST report] because of the threat that he could be tortured. The US, however, has not yet identified a country willing to take Carriles after his upcoming trial. On Monday, a lawyer for the government of Venezuela accused the US of preventing his extradition [JURIST report]. AP has more.

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