BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD -Special for Granma International-

PANAMA CITY.- International terrorists for more than 40
years, Luis Posada Carriles and Pedro Remón have revealed a
passion for television "spectaculars" in Panama's El Renacer
prison. Thanks to the complacency of Ricardo Apu, director
of the penal establishment, they regularly grant interviews
in the reception room of their detention apartments or in
the canal-side gardens to the squadron of "friendly"
journalists recruited by their "press officers" in Miami.
The questions asked are invariably and suspiciously
courteous. And that's a real shame. Here are a few examples
of the questions that are absent from the notes of the
distinguished reporters who parade through the magnificent
gardens of the model prison:

1. What was Posada doing at 5.20am on the morning of
November 14, 2000 when his driver José "Pepe" Hurtado came
to collect him in a red Mitsubishi Lancer from Room 310 of
the Coral Suite motel?

2. By chance, do they happen to know a Miami delinquent by
the name of Orestes Cosío, alias Luis "Mack" Navarro, who
was deported from Panama to the United States on May 22,
2002?

3. Between August and October 2000, Posada made several
trips to Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama. Who did he meet
with and for what purpose?

4. José Francisco "Pepe" Hernández Calvo and Alberto
Hernández Sarduy, two executives from the Cuban-American
National Foundation (CANF), traveled to El Salvador during
the first week of August 2000 to meet up with Posada. What
was the motive of this meeting?

5. Shortly after this meeting, Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo
also traveled to El Salvador to speak to Posada. What was
the content of their conversation?

6. On November 15, 1997, The Miami Herald published an
extensive article revealing that Luis Posada Carriles had
raised $15,000 in Miami to execute the 1997 terror campaign
in Havana with the aid of Central American mercenaries. In
interviews with The New York Times, published July 11-13,
1998, Posada admitted that he had received $200,000 from
CANF founder and president Jorge Mas Canosa for his
murderous plans. Did he receive any money from CANF in
August 2000 as well?

7. On December 5, 2000, the Miami press announced with
evident joy that Posada, Remón, and their cell mates Gaspar
Jiménez Escobedo and Guillermo Novo Sampoll were getting a
new lawyer: former Panamanian attorney general, Rogelio
Cruz, removed from his post several years before for his
links with Colombian drug cartels, and currently a lawyer
for notorious drug traffickers. How can this choice be
explained?

8. In a Miami tribute to Posada, Remón, Jiménez and Novo
on November 15, 2002, right after their detention in Panama,
terrorist Orlando Bosch acted as an apologist for anti-Cuban
terrorism. Another speaker, Dionosio Suárez said, "They
deserve respect, they deserve applause." To whom was he
referring?

9. Who are Ramón Medina, El Bambi, El Calambuco de
Cienfuegos, El Condotiero and Franco Rodríguez Mena?

10. One frequent visitor to El Renacer prison is Ignacio
Castro Matos from Miami. Who is this individual and what
does he do exactly?

TEN WELL-DOCUMENTED ANSWERS
There are, in fact, very clear answers to each of these
questions that have nothing to do with spokesman Remón's
verbal acrobatics:

1. On November 14, 2000, José "Pepe" Hurtado took Posada
to the farm belonging to his old buddy José Valladares
Acosta - alias "Pepe the Lame" or "Pepe the Skinny" - (U.S.
passport no. 044995538), a fugitive from U.S. justice for
drug-related crimes, who was doing him the favor of hiding
the explosives to be used in the plot to assassinate
President Fidel Castro in the amphitheater of the University
of Panama. The farm was also where the terrorist leader met
with his accomplices, amongst them the very same¼Remón.

2. A permanent guest at José Valladares Acosta's farm,
drug trafficker Orestes Cosío (alias Luis "Mack" Navarro)
was also a buddy of Pedro Caridad Gordillo Serrano, a
retired Miami police officer retrained as a drug trafficker,
who operated out of a mechanics workshop known as Big Truck.
Just pure chance? Cosío's name is not on U.S. federal
correction services' lists despite the seriousness of the
crimes - including several homicides - that justified his
expulsion.

3. In Honduras, Posada traveled to San Pedro Sula where he
met with Rafael Hernández Nodarse - alias Ralph Nodarse -
who lived on Fifth Avenue, between 25 and 26 Streets with
his son Joaquín, a resident of Beltway 26. Apart from their
more official activities within the world of television,
both were known arms traffickers. In Costa Rica, he was
looked after by Gustavo and Armando Lora Hernández, CANF
agents who maintained contact with José Francisco "Pepe"
Hernández, the CANF president who initiated the failed plan
to assassinate President Fidel Castro in November. In
Honduras, Posada bought arms and explosives. In Costa Rica,
he found help to clandestinely introduce this material into
Panamanian territory with the aid of Honduran Carlos Vicente
"Chente" López Sánchez.

4. That August, "Pepe" Hernández Calvo and Alberto
Hernández Sarduy proposed to Posada a plan to assassinate
Fidel Castro during the upcoming Ibero-American summit in
Panama. They offered to pay all costs, such as the purchase
of arms and explosives, travel, communications, house rental
and the hitmen's wages.

5. Named in an FBI report as one of the most dangerous
terrorists of the Miami mafia, Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo -
currently detained in Panama alongside Posada - traveled to
El Salvador to finalize details of the conspiracy to murder
Fidel in Panama. At that meeting, Posada indicated that he
had chosen several potential accomplices and named Antonio
"Tony" Iglesias Pons, Santiago Álvarez Fernández Magriña,
Guillermo Novo Sampoll and - of course - Pedro Remón. During
that visit, Jiménez confirmed to Posada that he already had
more than 100lbs of U.S-manufactured C-4 plastic explosive.
Amongst his many crimes, Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo killed
Cuban official Artaigñan Díaz Díaz in Mexico in 1976.

6. During the course of his visit to El Salvador, Gaspar
Jiménez Escobedo handed over $8,000 to Posada. Days later,
Antonio "Tony" Iglesias Pons also appeared in the same
country, where Posada had gained permanent residence, and
gave him a further $5,000. However, the terrorist leader
continued to ask for more and more money for his criminal
plan. "Tony" Iglesias then accompanied Posada to Honduras on
an arms-buying trip.

7. The terrorist Miami mafia has countless links with
drug-trafficking operations. Posada has always maintained
relationships with a large number of drug-traffickers who
received illegal training from him within the CIA's
Operation 40, prior to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.
During the 1980s, according to the records of U.S. Senate
meetings, Posada acted as right-hand man for Félix
Rodríguez, the CIA's most low-life scum, in the mega
drug-trafficking operation that "blew" with the Iran-Contra
scandal. He was then put on file by Celerino Castillo of the
Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

Hundreds of tons of cocaine were subsequently transported
from Colombia to the United States via Southern Air
Transportation Services under Posada's direction. Meanwhile,
while working as a hired killer for the Omega-7 terrorist
group, Pedro Remón was seen trafficking narcotics by the
FBI. He was subsequently employed as a hired assassin by
criminal organizations in New Jersey as a part of their
drug-trafficking activities. Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo - who
has a criminal record for personal consumption - escaped
from an eastern Mexican jail on March 21, 1977 thanks to
Colombian capo Carlos Estrada Ortiz. Another individual
detained in Panama, Guillermo Novo Sampoll, was arrested on
April 14, 1978 with a kilogram of cocaine.

8. Bosch - named by the FBI as "the most dangerous
terrorist in the hemisphere" on a par with Posada - has an
extensive criminal history behind him, the most horrific
moment of which was the mid-flight explosion of a Cubana
Aviation passenger plane off the coast of Barbados in 1976.
This crime, masterminded by Posada, led to the death of all
73 persons on board. Dionosio "Bloodbath" Suárez Esquivel
was released from a Florida jail just a few weeks before
September 11, 2001 by President George W. Bush, after
serving a short sentence for the assassination of former
Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier and his colleague
Ronni Moffit in Washington on September 21, 1976. Guillermo
Novo Sampoll took part in this crime. The Miami event was,
of course, to pay tribute to the four men imprisoned in
Panama as terrorists.

9. Posada has used all these aliases and nicknames, as
well as many others during the course of his terrorist
"career". On November 5, 2000 he illegally entered Panama
with false documents bearing the name Franco Rodríguez Mena
and signed in using this alias at the Las Vegas Hotel in the
nation's capital. He did the same thing on November 8 at the
Coral Suite motel.

10. Nelsy Ignacio Castro Matos is an active member of
several terrorist organizations and, over four decades, has
carried out countless acts of a criminal nature against
Cuban civilian and commercial targets as well as those of
other Latin American countries. He has been a friend of Luis
Posada Carriles since they both worked together (thanks to
their CIA membership) in the then infamous Intelligence and
Prevention Services Office in Venezuela during the 1970s.

After Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch were imprisoned as
the authors of the Cubana Aviation explosion, Castro Matos
continued to be a close collaborator of these dangerous
individuals, helping them to link up with terrorist groups
in Miami through the United Revolutionary Organizations
Coordinating Committee by taking advantage of his position
as a Venezuelan government official. Since the 1980s, he has
been implicated in several attempted attacks on President
Fidel Castro and together with the four terrorists currently
incarcerated in Panama, he was actively involved in the
Miami-based preparations to assassinate the Cuban head of
state during the 10th Ibero-American summit in November
2000. Despite these facts, he has been authorized to visit
Posada and his henchmen in El Renacer prison on a number of
occasions.

At the beginning of 2001, this individual was received by
José A. Sossa, the Panamanian attorney general, to whom he
delivered a plea not to extradite Carriles and the other
prisoners to Cuba on behalf of the Miami mafia leadership.
In the same period, he also visited Nicaragua and El
Salvador where he held meetings with different
representatives of the respective governments, always to
discuss Posada's case. Three terrorists detained in Cuba in
April 2001 positively identified (using photographs and
videos) Nelsy Ignacio Castro Matos and his Miami
accomplices, Santiago Álvarez Fernández Magriña and Rubén
Dario López Castro as members of the planning, organization
and financing of the operation during which they were
arrested carrying four Romanian-manufactured AK47 7.62 mm
caliber rifles, among other weapons.

Many more questions could be asked of the two El Renacer
"showmen" who have distinguished themselves up to now with
their theatrical disguises and the volume of lies in their
scripts. It now remains to be seen in Panama whether justice
can face up to the pressure of certain media channels that
are attempting to transform four international terrorists
into the unassuming victims of persecution.