PANAMA

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD—Special for Granma International—

FRANCISCO "Paco" Pimentel had strong motives for making a fulsome apology for international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles at the very entrance to the Panama Maritime Court at lunchtime on the third day of the old assassin’s trial.

Located in Venezuela, the businessman was so much in Posada’s confidence that, in 1997, the latter kept him informed of every bomb that exploded or was set to explode in Cuba during his criminal campaign of terror that culminated on September 4 of that year with the death of young Italian tourist Fabio di Celmo.

Pimentel had to be aware in that period, that Arnaldo Monzón Plasencia, director of the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), along with Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo and Guillermo Novo Sampoll, currently detained in Panama with Posada, were recruiting, contracting and funding Central American criminals to plant explosive devices in Cuban hotels.

He must also have known, in addition to the death of Di Celmo, that a further seven people were wounded as a consequence of the devices that detonated in the Copacabana, Tritón and Chateau Miramar hotels and the Bodeguito del Medio restaurant in Havana, as he was informed of those crimes in advance.

In the same period, Posada had also involved Pimentel in the preparation of the failed assassination attempt on the Cuban president, inadvertently discovered when the U.S. Coast Guard captured La Esperanza yacht on October 27, 1997 in Puerto Rican waters close to the coast of Capo Rojo.

The conspirators, all of them linked to the CANF – thanks once again to Monzón Plasencia – planned to undertake the attempt during the 7th Ibero-American summit on the Island of Margarita, Venezuela and had previously reconnoitered the island to define the ideal points from which to fire on the presidential aircraft with two Caliber 50 rifles with telescopic sights.

Certain counterrevolutionary partners of Pimentel, likewise resident in Venezuela, also participated in the preparations, including Nelly Rojas and her husband Pedro Morales. Currently among the active opponents of Hugo Chávez’ government these people take every opportunity to support the Venezuelan network of "Posada’s buddies," headed by Hermes Rojas Peralta, involved in the April 2002 coup.

FOUR TERRORIST TARGETS

Pimentel is one of the bunch of terrorist accomplices lined up on the fourth row of the courtroom where the trial of Luis Posada Carriles and his three henchmen: Pedro Crispín Remón, Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo and Guillermo Novo Sampoll, Cuban-Panamanian César Matamoros and his employee José Hurtado took place from March 15 through 17.

Few legal terrorism-related cases in the world have had the dubious privilege of the attendance of such a parade of criminal elements openly belonging to criminal associations promoting terrorism against Cuba and accustomed to tolerance in South Florida.

Other individuals identified as terrorists or accomplices of terrorism present in court included:

Osiel González Rodríguez, an outstanding student at the CIA school of terrorism in Fort Benning, where he studied sabotage techniques along with Posada, Félix Rodríguez Mendigutía, Jorge Mas Canosa and other characters in the Miami terrorist mafia. Captured in the United States in 1971 with a stash of weapons and explosives, Osiel González is already on file as a leader of Alpha 66, a paramilitary group that maintains, without any FBI intervention, offices in Flager Street, Miami; as well as its terrorist clone, the Comandos F-4.

Pedro Gómez, leader of the Democratic Movement of Ramón Saúl Sánchez, whose feats in the Omega 7 terrorist organization at the side of Pedro Remón are well known. The U.S. government recently granted Sánchez U.S. nationality despite his wide-ranging and well-documented terrorist past.

Ernesto Abreu, the worthy son of terrorist Ernestino Abreu who infiltrated the Cuban province of Pinar del Río with another mercenary in 1998 with four AK-47 rifles, an AR-15 rifle, two shotguns, three pistols and a crossbow. The failed operation confirmed a coordinated operation by the Cuban Patriotic Junta, the People’s Protagonistic Party (headed by killer Orlando Bosch), the Revolutionary Recovery Movement and New Republic, other Miami organizations openly promoting acts of terrorism. The investigation also revealed that the terrorist operation was linked to the campaign of terror unleashed by Posada on Cuban tourist installations in this period.

In addition to other conspirators, the Miami troupe was completed by María del Carmen Jiménez, the wife of Guillermo Novo, and Alicia del Busto alias Gutiérrez, likewise associated with terrorist Pedro Remón and Ramón Saúl Sánchez, who committed the imprudence of trying to provoke an incident in the park adjoining the court building.

Nevertheless, conspicuous in their absence were at least four old comrades of Posada in his criminal adventures: Santiago Alvarez Fernández-Magri?a, Nelsy Ignacio Castro Matos, Rubén Darío López Castro and Puerto Rican Reynold Rodríguez. Present at earlier hearings, they decided not to show their faces this time.

FROM POSADA TO ZU?IGA

Beyond the many parties, commandos and grouplets comprising the extremist Miami panorama, the anti-Cuban mafia is concentrated in a relatively small number of experienced terrorists.

In that context, the Miami terrorist "delegation’ present in the Panamanian Maritime Court, like the criminals who participated in former "delegations" make it possible to observe that behind the Panama plot are capos now affiliated to the Cuban Liberty Council (CLC) of Luis Zu?iga Rey and Ninoska Lucrecia Pérez-Castellón, partners of Alpha 66 and its chief Nazario Sargen, and the Democratic Movement and its leader Ramón Saúl Sánchez, the ex-hired killer of Omega 7.

Zuñiga’s CLC currently brings together Alberto Hernández, Horacio García, Roberto Martín Pérez, Francisco José Hernández Calvo and the rest of the Miami mafia with a well-charted history of support for terrorism who hurriedly fled the CANF a few days before September 11, 2001.

But the limit in terms of that terrorist connection who went from Miami to Panama is that Zúñiga himself turned up a few days ago the midst of the U.S. delegation to the 60th meeting of the Human Rights Commission (HRC) in Geneva.

That fact is even more scandalous taking into account a 1999 report from Enrique Bernales Ballesteros, the HRC special rapporteur, who pointed to Zúñiga as a member of the CANF underground group.

Evidence of his criminal responsibility appears in the testimony of Guatemalan citizen Percy Francisco Alvarado Godoy, whom Zúñiga personally recruited to carry out acts of terrorism in Cuba.

In relation to the attack plotted for the 10th Summit, where Posada and his henchmen were arrested, it was directly ordered by Francisco Hernández and Alberto Hernández, in secret meetings with Posada in various Central American countries. All of them are at Zúñiga’s side in the CLC today.

When the U.S. government includes one of the most high-profile capos of Cuban-American terrorism in its official delegation to Geneva, that must give a clear signal to the professional conspirators who are freely walking the streets of Miami and the corridors in Geneva.

As one of the prosecution lawyers observed in the Panama trial, many – but many – characters were missing from the dock.