Posada threatens to put more pressure on the Bush’s

WASHINGTON, June 7.—The defense of the international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles is currently evaluating another maneuver for the release of the criminal, this time based on testimonies from U.S. politicians and former soldiers, according to a Prensa Latina cable.

"We are trying to establish that Luis Posada was always a tool employed and paid by the government of this country (the United States), which, for political convenience is now attempting to qualify as terrorist the same activities that it formerly promoted," stated the lawyer Eduardo Soto.

According to the Spanish-language edition of the Miami Herald, Soto is attempting to call John Kerry, the senator and former presidential candidate, and Oliver North, a significant figure in the Iran-Contra affair, in real terms a drug trafficking scandal.

According to the lawyer, Kerry, North and "a few others" could be called as witnesses to demonstrate that for years his client acted under instructions from and with the backing of the U.S. government.

One of the means of pressuring the government is Posada Carriles’ participation in actions against the Sandinista Revolution, in particular its link to the arms for drugs exchange, whose central figure was the then vice president George Bush I.

The scandal broke when it emerged that the United States was financing Nicaraguan counterrevolutionary groups with money from that exchange of arms for drugs.

The operation was executed by the CIA and headed by Oliver North, then a member of the National Security Council, under the orders of Bush Sr.

In Soto’s opinion, Senator Kerry was "a key piece in the investigation into the Iran-Contras case," and has sufficient knowledge of reports and testimonies that record the participation of former CIA agent Posada in that operation.

Operating under the pseudonym of Ramón Medina, the criminal was located at the Ilopango base in El Salvador when the scandal broke in 1986 after the bringing down in Nicaragua of a U.S. aircraft piloted by Eugene Hassenfus.

At that time Kerry was involved in the investigation into the implication of the National Security Council (NSC) in supplying the Nicaraguan Contras with military hardware via profits from the sale of weapons to Iran.

At Posada Carriles’ trial, scheduled for July 6 in a federal court in El Paso, Texas, the court is to decide on the habeas corpus petition for the terrorist lodged in early April.

Soto is hoping that the authorities will release the criminal and grant him U.S. citizenship in payment for his services to the U.S. army from 1963-65 during the war in Vietnam and, years later, as a paid agent in operations in Central America and other CIA fronts in Latin America.

The international criminal is in a detention center in Texas, where he was placed in May 2005 after making a public appearance in Miami, when his illegal entry into the United States was made evident.

To date, he has only been charged on that migratory count, in spite of the application for extradition presented by Venezuela, whose justice system is demanding him for his responsibility in the sabotage of a Cuban passenger plane in 1976, an act of terrorism in which 73 people died. Posada was sprung from a Venezuelan jail with the help of U.S. and Venezuelan officials to hook up with Félix Rodríguez Mengutía, who needed him as a bastion in the scandalous trafficking in Central America.

His criminal record also includes the plotting of a series of bombing attacks on tourist installations in Havana in 1997, one of which led to the death of the young Italian Fabio di Celmo.

Posada Carriles entered the United States illegally after being pardoned in 2004 by the then Panamanian president, Mireya Moscoso before she left the position.

Together with three other terrorists, he was serving a sentence in a Panama prison after organizing an attempt on the life of President Fidel Castro in the framework of the 2000 Ibero-American Summit in that country.