I N T E R N A T I O N A L

Havana. May 16, 2006

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD —Special for Granma International—

ON May 4, 2005, Orlando Bosch was one of the first people in Southern Florida to confirm that Luis Posada Carriles was in Miami, a fact that Roger Noriega, assistant secretary of state for Latin America at the time, refused to recognize.

 In an interview with a Miami radio station reported on May 9 by The New York Times, the terrorist said, without much protocol, that he had spoken by phone with Posada and that he was in that city:  Bosch announced at the same time that he refused to reveal where his old partner was hiding.

 Speaking clearly, Orlando Bosch Avila, a criminal convicted by the U.S. courts, labeled terrorist by the FBI, free on parole, knew where or how to communicate with Posada but did not indicate that he would collaborate with authorities to speed up his arrest even though it was obvious that he had entered the country illegally, a serious crime, with the help of his friend and accomplice Santiago Alvarez.

While Posada is refusing to testify in the case of his partner Alvarez, on the contrary Orlando Bosch, his accomplice in the mid-flight sabotage of the Cubana airliner, is still boasting about having committed acts of terrorism, is preaching terrorism and freely claiming that he was involved in the death of 73 individuals in the airliner sabotage off Barbados.

 In the case of Posada, federal judge James I. Cohn will allow him to have recourse to the Fifth Amendment, but in the case of Bosch, who brags about his crimes, everyone in Miami seems to have forgotten that he confessed his complicity with Alvarez and Mitat.

 Bosch was aware of Posada’s presence in the U.S. before his arrest, but he did NOT assist the authorities to locate him and, since his release on parole in 1990 he has never complied with the conditions of his release, and even worse, has blatantly mocked the authorities that granted him that status.

 In 1987, Bosch returned to the United States—after his wrongful release from a Venezuelan prison— with the help of Otto Reich, who was the U.S. ambassador in Caracas. Upon his arrival he was arrested for violating his previous parole conditions in 1972, when he left the United States after having been convicted of firing on the Polish ship Polanica with a bazooka.

 Despite the campaign waged in Miami in favor of the old assassin, on July 23, 1989, Joe D. Whitley, U.S. deputy Attorney General, presented a detailed memorandum before an immigration court that concluded by asking for the permanent expulsion of Bosch from the United States for terrorism.

 In his conclusion, Whistley wrote:

“For 30 years, Bosch has been resolute and unwavering in his advocacy of acts of terrorism against numerous targets including nations friendly towards the United States and their high officials. He has repeatedly expressed and demonstrated a willingness to cause indiscriminate injury and death. His actions have been those of a terrorist, unfettered by laws or human decency threatening and inflicting violence without regard to the identity of his victims.”

 Nevertheless, combined pressure from the CIA, the anti-Cuba mafia and the more extreme Republican circles —headed by the then candidate to Congress, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, her campaign director Jeb Bush, and Raúl García Cantero, the nephew of… Fulgencio Batista, whom Jeb later appointed to the Florida Supreme Court— managed to get him released.

 It should be recalled here, as Reinaldo Taladrid mentioned a few days ago in Granma, that when the attack on the Cubana airliner occurred in 1976, George Herbert Walker Bush, father of the current president, was director of the CIA and “handled information regarding this first hand.” He was perfectly well aware of Bosch’s involvement in the crime.

 Since the criminal sabotage of the La Coubre vessel, crimes committed against Cuba have almost always been monitored and directed by the White house and the CIA, with the criminal complacency of the FBI.

 July 18, 1990, Bosch was released under a directive from then President George Bush Sr. to the Immigrations and Naturalization Services, in which he did not grant a pardon as such, but did order the court to release him, grossly humiliating prosecutor Whitley who has remained silent about the case to date.

 A federal judge, William Hoeveler, then released three pages of strict conditions under which Bosh could temporarily remain in the United States until a  location for asylum could be established—a disturbing similarity to the Posada case. As an additional condition, Bosch had to swear to explicitly abstain from involvement in acts of violence.

 He duly swore that before the court.

 Nevertheless, once free, Bosch scornfully described this solemn promise as a “farce” and “ridiculous” and added with grotesque irony: "They bought the chain but they don’t have the monkey."

“YOU HAVE TO DOWN AIRPLANES”

 Since his conditional release, Bosch has systematically violated the restrictions imposed upon him by launching numerous calls for terror.

 Among other cases, on October 12, 1991, he urged more than 1,000 fanatics gathered in Miami to finance terrorism on the island and to provide arms and explosives. "The time is ripe for the exile (movement) to send the mix that the Cuban builders need for the insurrection," he said. He retook that stance on several occasions.

 On October 16, 1993, Bosch announced the creation of a political party whose task was to raise funds to buy arms and other military supplies. The terrorist Partido Protagonista del Pueblo (People’s Protagonist Party) is located at 6850 Coral Way, without any harassment at all.

 On September 13, 1997, he applauded the campaign of attacks on tourist installations in Cuba plotted by his buddy Posada, but denied, always with doublespeak, any link with them. “We have nothing to do with these attacks,” he assured, but then added: “if we did have something to do with it, we would still deny it.”

 The latest of his numerous boasts, many of them made with the cooperation of his radio and television accomplices, occurred last May 5, when he was interviewed by Juan Manuel Cao of Miami’s Channel 41.

 One only needs to read some of his comments to wonder why this professional assassin is not being brought to trial, if the word “justice” has any meaning.

 “You brought down the plane in 1976?” Cao asked him.

 Bosch answered: “If I tell that I was involved, I am confessing, and if I tell you that I did not participate in the action, you will say I am lying. So, I am not going to answer either way.”

 Cao reminded him: “73 people died in this action, do you have a heavy conscience?”

 A heavy conscience: Bosch doesn’t even know what that means. “No, in a war, man, like we have (…), you have to down airplanes, you have to sink ships, you have to be prepared to attack whatever is in your reach,” he said.

 Cao insisted: “But, for those who died there, for their families, don’t you feel a little…”

 Could Bosch have a flash of humanity? No. He resorted to fantasy, to lies in an attempt to justify the unjustifiable: “This plane came from Angola… Who could have been in that plane?... Four members of the Communist Party, five North Koreans, five Guyanese…”

 Now, it just happens that in the Alvarez/Mitat case that opens before Judge Cohn, for the first time the prosecution not only recognizes the role played by Alvarez in Posada’s arrival in the United States but also specifically states that Posada admitted to being the author of the Barbados crime and that the accused conspired on various occasions to commit acts of terrorism against Cuba including in April 2001, with the failed infiltration by Ihosvany Suris and his accomplices.

In the document deposited before the Federal Court judge of the southern Florida district, March 27—the content of which just became known thanks to Radio Progreso of Miami— the prosecutor specified that his documented argument was “in opposition to the defendants' motion to exclude extrinsic-acts evidence. In other words, to explain to the judge why the defendants' previous criminal actions were relevant to the current charges of weapons possession and why those actions should be admitted in evidence.

"Evidence of the former criminal activity is vital to understanding the government's case against Defendant and is inextricably intertwined with the government's proof of the charged offense," the document states. "The evidence explains the crime in its entirety and provides the trier of fact with a chain of events explaining the crimes committed by the defendant.

Without the evidence of the former criminal activity, the jury will be unable to make a proper determination as to the defendant's guilt or innocence."

Who better than Orlando Bosch, the obstinate assassin who is grossly positioned above U.S. and international law, could constitute for the prosecutor, the live proof that Alvarez and Mitat are part of a monstrous universe of terror and death?