Granma International
August 29, 2003

Release for the four dangerous international terrorists?

                        BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD—Special for Granma International—

                   ON Wednesday, September 3 in Panama, a preliminary hearing will
                   determine the fate of four exceedingly dangerous international terrorists,
                   including none other than Luis Posada Carriles, an individual whose bloody
                   history dates back to dirty CIA covert operations in the 1960s, and whom
                   various experts have linked with the assassination of former U.S. president,
                   John F. Kennedy.

                   A Panamanian court judge will have the responsibility of
                   keeping away from their arsenals those notorious killers
                   from Miami mafia organizations, whose victims in Cuba,
                   the United States and elsewhere reach the thousands.

                   Posada Carriles, aged 74; Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo, 67;
                   Guillermo Novo Sampoll, 62; and Pedro Remón, 58 were
                   arrested in Panama City on November 17, 2000, shortly
                   after Cuba revealed to the Panamanian authorities a
                   conspiracy to kill President Fidel Castro in the middle of a
                   mass meeting in the University of Panama auditorium, in
                   what would have been a massacre averted at the last
                   minute.

                   THE MOST DANGEROUS TERRORIST IN THE HEMISPHERE

                   With Orlando Bosch of Miami, Posada shares the title of
                   most dangerous terrorist in the hemisphere, in the words of
                   the FBI. And without exception, his accomplices have
                   lengthy terrorist records. Among other crimes, Jiménez is
                   the murderer of Cuban technician Artagñán Díaz Díaz in
                   Mexico; Remón killed Félix García Rodríguez, Cuban
                   diplomat to the UN; and Novo was involved in the
                   assassination of the former Chilean foreign minister,
                   Orlando Letelier.

                   On November 19, 2000 Panama’s highest authorities
                   confirmed that they had arrested various terrorists,
                   including Posada, Jiménez, Novo and Remón, and
                   additionally had uncovered proof of the terrible conspiracy,
                   such as a large quantity of U.S. manufactured C-4 explosive
                   and compromising documents.

                   However, in the following months, the seeming
                   determination of the Panamanian legal apparatus to
                   prosecute the four suspects dissolved in the face of
                   interventions by the Miami mafia linked to powerful sectors
                   of the Panamanian bourgeoisie, behind the scenes
                   maneuvers, press campaigns and other stunts orchestrated
                   by Rogelio Cruz. It should be noted how this former
                   Panamanian attorney general, deposed due to his relations
                   with the Colombian cartels, was selected by the Miami
                   capos to get their protégés out of jail.

                   Conclusion: fully justified extradition applications for
                   Posada Carriles on the part of Cuba and Venezuela were
                   dismissed, as well as a request for DNA samples, and the
                   latest discovery of those in charge of saving the four
                   terrorists: the explosives detonator has evaporated into thin
                   air, while the conspirators’ driver, a sudden victim of
                   amnesia, does not recall having seen the explosives.

                   Thus, next Wednesday, the killer quartet will end up
                   confronting not a charge of attempted murder, as would be
                   logical, but four lesser charges: possession of explosives,
                   illicit association in order to commit a crime, and
                   falsification of public documents.

                   FAR BEYOND THE AUDITORIUM CRIME

                   But the case of Posada, Remón, Jiménez and Novo goes
                   way beyond what took place in Panama on that November 17, 2000.

                   All of them have records of more than 40 years of consistent terrorist activity,
                   leaving in their wake thousands of dead and wounded, families destroyed,
                   children orphaned, principally in Cuba, but also in the United States, Latin
                   America and various nations outside this continent.

                   Posada, Remón, Jiménez and Novo were, on many occasions, the founders of
                   terrorist organizations that, with the protection of the U.S. intelligence
                   agencies and the highest spheres of government, spilled the blood of innocent
                   victims.

                   The case of Posada is even more dirty and at the same level as his most prized
                   alter ego, Orlando Bosch, the killer pediatrician who now moves freely
                   through the streets of Miami, benefiting from a presidential blessing.

                   Posada’s history dates back to the CIA’s Operation 40, through which dozens
                   of saboteurs, assassins and terrorists were trained at Fort Benning to support
                   the projected Bay of Pigs invasion. That force gave rise to some of the worst
                   criminals known in the United States in following decades, including various
                   drug traffickers who converted Miami into the continental drugs capital.

                   Various experts on the conspiracy to kill U.S. president John Kennedy affirmed
                   that Posada was in Dealey Square from where the fatal shots were fired. Some
                   even state that the Cuban-American was one of the snipers whose bullets hit
                   the U.S. head of state.

                   Sources likewise indicate that Posada was one of the most perverse of the
                   mercenaries in Viet Nam who directed the sinister Operation Phoenix, where
                   thousands of sympathizers of the Vietnamese revolutionary forces were
                   eliminated in extermination camps.

                   Posada turned up again in Venezuela where, as he recently boasted from his
                   Panamanian cell, he carried out another dirty operation which, he claims,
                   systematically eliminated partisans of the guerrilla struggle. In this sister
                   country, he reached the highest leadership role in the DISIP, at the time
                   penetrated by the CIA.

                   He joined the terrorist group CORU when it was founded by Orlando Bosch
                   under the instructions of George Bush Senior, then head of the CIA. He
                   coordinated a whole series of explosions in the United States, Spain, Jamaica,
                   Barbados, Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago and Panama against Cuban and
                   foreign diplomatic buildings and airlines, and various assassinations.

                   On October 6, 1976 in conjunction with Orlando Bosch, Posada masterminded
                   the sabotage in full flight of a Cubana Aviation passenger plane off the coast of
                   Barbados, killing all 73 persons on board.

                   Posada and Bosch were subsequently detained by the Venezuelan authorities,
                   but continued directing CORU operations from prison, and in 1977 planned
                   various acts of terrorism against Venezuelan interests and targets abroad, as a
                   means of pressure.

                   Luis Posada Carriles’ links with the drug trafficking world date back to those of
                   Operation 40 but developed significantly in the 1980s, after he escaped from
                   the Venezuelan penitentiary where he was being held.

                   His escape, ordered, financed and organized by the CIA and the Miami mafia
                   cupola, resulted in his becoming the right-hand man of Félix Rodríguez, one
                   of the most faithful “Company” scum in the Ilopango airbase in El Salvador,
                   in a shady chapter of the ill-named Iran-Contra scandal. The leader of the
                   gang maintained his links with the drug trafficking circles of Miami, the U.S.
                   drugs capital.

                   In 1997, various Salvadoran and Guatemalan mercenaries were arrested in
                   Cuba and revealed how terrorist Luis Posada Carriles had contracted them to
                   place explosive devices in tourist installations in Havana, at the price of a few
                   hundred dollars per explosion.

                   On November 15, 1997, The Miami Herald published the results of its
                   investigation into the campaign of terror in the Cuban capital and affirmed
                   that Posada Carriles was the brains behind the operation, for which he had
                   collected $15,000 in Miami.

                   However, in articles in The New York Times, run on July 11, 12 and 13,
                   1998, Luis Posada Carriles himself confessed to his crime, stating that he had
                   received $200,000 from the hands of Jorge Mas Canosa, president of the
                   Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), for funding the terrorist plot.

                   At the time of his arrest in Panama, Posada had just visited his partner José
                   Valladares Acosta, a drug trafficker on the run from U.S. justice, who
                   conveniently died on October 7, 2001 while awaiting trial as an accomplice of
                   the sinister planned attack on Fidel. Valladares was associated with
                   Cuban-American Orestes Cosío, deported on May 22, 2003 to the United
                   States for drug trafficking and participation in three homicides, but his name
                   still does not appear in the files of those held by the U.S. federal prison service.

                   PEDRO REMON, THE OMEGA 7 KILLER

                   According to a declassified FBI report, datelined October 1993 and published
                   on the Internet, Pedro Crispin Remón Hernández, the current spokesman for
                   Posada and his buddies in their luxurious detention apartment in the Renacer
                   “model” prison, was first linked to terrorist activities when he was arrested on
                   the borders of Canada and the United States in December 1980, a few hours
                   after the explosion of a bomb in the Cuban Consulate in Montreal. He was
                   accompanied by Ramón Saúl Sánchez Riso, now a well-known figure in the
                   Miami mafia, and another one to have forgotten his murky past.

                   While cooperating with the FBI a few months later, Eduardo Arocena, chief of
                   Omega-7, identified Remón as the killer in the murders of Eulalio José Negrín,
                   a Cuban émigré involved in a political dialogue with Havana, and diplomat
                   Félix García Rodríguez. The latter was intercepted alone in his car at a
                   stoplight, and cowardly killed in a submachine gun attack, on September 11,
                   1980.

                   Negrín was killed in front of his 12-year-old son on November 25, 1979.
                   (Orlando Bosch bragged about ordering the crime in prison in Venezuela).

                   Both victims were killed with the same weapon, a MAC 10 submachine gun.

                   Arrested in 1986 and brought before a grand jury, Pedro Remón refused to
                   cooperate and was saved… benefiting from a 10-year prison terms and a
                   $20,000 fine.

                   Once released, this dangerous individual didn’t hesitate to involve himself in
                   new acts of terrorism.

                   Arocena, the former chief of Omega-7, always believed he had been
                   denounced to the FBI in 1979, by another terrorist, presently also detained
                   with Posada Carriles: Guillermo Novo Sampoll, one of the authors of the
                   double homicide of the former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier and
                   human rights worker Ronnie Moffit, on September 21, 1976.

                   Five suspects of Cuban origin were arrested by the FBI, including brothers
                   Guillermo and Ignacio Novo, two capos from the CORU of Bosch and Posada.

                   The brother terrorists were not unknown to the FBI. In 1961, on the orders of
                   the Nationalist Cuban Movement (MNC) they had joined in preparations for
                   the Bay of Pigs invasion but their group did not land. Afterwards they linked
                   up with Julio Pérez Pérez’ group and publicly admitted to having placed
                   bombs on behalf of Comando Cero. In 1962, they attacked the Cuban vessel
                   María Teresa in the port of Montreal, Canada. They were detained in 1964,
                   and charged with attacking the UN building with a bazooka when
                   Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara was speaking before the General
                   Assembly. In 1965, they were again arrested for the illegal possession of arms
                   and explosives.

                   In 1979 the Novo brothers were finally tried and sentenced to eight years’
                   imprisonment, a term that was revoked in 1980. Their defense used various
                   subterfuges to discount the prosecution’s key evidence. Yet another trick, no
                   doubt inspired by the CIA to save its collaborators.

                   Shortly after their release, Ignacio and Guillermo Novo were contracted by the
                   CANF and its head, Jorge Mas Canosa, to direct the group’s Information
                   Committee. They also pursued their terrorist career from the terrorist
                   “protectorate” of South Florida.

                   JIMENEZ, ANOTHER CORU KILLER

                   This terrorist’s name appears in an FBI report on anti-Cuban activities in the
                   United States, entitled Survey of Anti-Castro Cuban Terrorist Activities
                   in the United States, where he is noted as one of the central Miami terrorist
                   figures.

                   In fact, Jiménez is yet another CIA baby who, under the orders of Orlando
                   Bosch, executed a whole series of criminal acts, including a number of
                   murders.

                   On July 23, 1976, Jiménez cold-bloodedly killed Artagñán Díaz Díaz, a fishing
                   industry professional, in Mérida, Mexico.

                   The Miami killer opened fire three times against Díaz in the middle of the
                   street. One of the bullets hit the Cuban official full in the face and the other
                   two reached vital organs.

                   Jiménez subsequently ordered the torture and execution in Buenos Aires of
                   two Cuban officials – Crecencio Galañena Hernández and Jesús Cejas Arias –
                   whose bodies were thrown into the foundations of a building under
                   construction.

                   He later confessed to Cuban agent Pedro Escalona , infiltrated into the Miami
                   mafia, that he had been involved in the organization of the above-mentioned
                   Cubana Aviation sabotage.

                   Sentenced for the homicide of Artagñán Díaz Díaz, Jiménez was imprisoned in
                   Chetumal, Qunitana Roo, but the Miami mafia managed to buy his release.
                   In May 1983, barely 27 months after his detention, Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo
                   was set free, and resumed his criminal activities.

                   He then resurfaced on the board of the CANF under the protection of Alberto
                   Hernández, one of the capos who attend to terrorist actions. There he was in
                   constant contact with Luis Posada Carriles, Pedro Crispin Remón and
                   Guillermo Novo Sampoll with whom he mounted terrorist operations on
                   various occasions.

                   THE FORMIDABLE TASK OF JUDGE PANIZA

                   When the trial of terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and his accomplices resumes,
                   Judge Enrique Paniza of the Fifth Penal Court will bear the huge responsibility
                   of deciding if Posada, Remón, Jiménez and Novo remain behind bars or
                   return to the streets to renew their terrorist activities, as they always have
                   done.

                   He will have facing him a whole troupe of Miami terrorists who will impunely
                   arrive to try and influence the course of his decision by any means – including
                   violence, blackmail or bribery.

                   Each one of the charged killers has a history whose pages are soaked in the
                   blood of dozens of victims.

                   According to specialists, if it had gone ahead as planned, the Panama crime
                   would have provoked more victims than the attack on the Twin Towers. Julio
                   Berríos, representing the Panamanian trade unions, affirmed there were a few
                   thousand people present that night.

                   Will the Panamanian judge allow these four notorious terrorists to commit
                   even more crimes? Will the decisions needed to keep these patent recidivists of
                   international terrorism off the streets?

                   On Wednesday, September 3, the world will have its sights on Panama where
                   the fate of those individuals, who to date have never paid the price of their
                   crimes, will be decided.