ASKIAM
Senior Correspondent

WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) – There have been 47 years of constant “terrorist-like” activities going on in Cuba and against Cubans, and the United States government may have a hand in the terror with its harboring of one of the chief “terrorists”–Luis Posada Carriles.

By contrast, five Cubans who opposed anti-Cuban terrorist activities, sponsored and organized in this country, have been unjustly imprisoned since September 1998. They are the Cuban 5.

Mr. Posada goes on trial in mid-May on immigration charges, rather than terrorism-related charges. A federal judge released the anti-Castro Cuban militant on bail in April, even though The Miami Herald is reporting that the FBI now believes Mr. Posada was the mastermind of a series of deadly bombings in Cuba in the 1990s, in addition to charges he masterminded a 1976 Cuban airline bombing which killed 73 innocent people.

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Both Venezuela and Cuba would like to extradite Mr. Posada so he can be tried for bombing the airliner. America’s sanctuary for Mr. Posada is just one of the “atrocities” the United States government is committing against Cuba, according to Paul Minott of the Jamaican Committee to Free the Cuban 5.

“Overall, there has been more deaths in Cuba as a result of terrorist activities, launched from American soil, that has killed far more than the 9/11 bombs have killed American citizens and other people of the world in New York and the Pentagon. We are saying that we would like to have the American people be sensitized as much as possible, so that we could have an effort–a global effort–for the freedom of these five,” Mr. Minott told The Final Call.

“The Cuban 5 are five Cuban heroes who, for eight years now, have been held in U.S. prisons as a result of their efforts to fight terrorism,” against Cuba, according to a book “The Story of the Five Cuban Heroes,” written by Mr. Minott’s committee. They were arrested after they infiltrated and tried to break-up an anti-Cuban terrorist gang in Miami, Fla.

Meanwhile, the National Security Archives has revealed that during the 1970s, Mr. Posada kept a detailed list of targets to attack in the Caribbean because they had a link to Cuba. Four of those targets were in fact bombed in 1976.

“It would help that [the American public] could be more able to understand the actual heroic deeds that these Cuban 5 have been doing, and also further to understand the amount of atrocities, in terms of bombings and terrorist activities that have carried on in Cuba since 1959,” Mr. Minott said. “In actual fact, it has been 47 years of constant terrorist activities that has been going on in Cuba, and against Cubans. One of it has been highlighted by the Cuban jet that was actually blown up by the terrorist Posada, killing 73 Cubans in Barbados.”

The FBI documents can be seen on the National Security Archive’s web page and includes written statements by the perpetrators of the attack, who blame each other for having blown up the aircraft with a C-4 bomb. Both identify Mr. Posada and Orlando Bosch as the masterminds of the terrorist operation.

The National Security Archives has also disclosed an intelligence report found among Mr. Posada’s personal papers, demonstrating that he not only masterminded the sabotage attack off the coast of Barbados, but other attacks on Cuban installations in Panama, Trinidad and Colombia in the months preceding the downing of Cuban Flight CU-455.

The Bush administration is reportedly trying to bar Mr. Posada from discussing his ties with the CIA during his upcoming trial. Former President George H.W. Bush was the head of the CIA at the time of the October 1976 bombing of the Cuban airliner, according to the Cuban newspaper Granma.

“These documents provide a real historical framework for the legal proceedings against [Mr.] Posada,” said Peter Kombluh, responsible for documentation on Cuba in the National Security Archives. “In practice, the Bush administration is attempting to give impunity to the terrorist,” he said, according to Granma.

“This is one of the reasons we would like this book disseminated among the public in America,” said Mr. Minott, “that they could have a fuller understanding of the oppression that has reached out against these heroes.”

His book asks, “Can you imagine what American life would be like, if for the next 47 years, more terrorist attacks (like Sept. 11, 2001) routinely occur on American soil?” and continues with, “Constant terrorist actions have been the reality for the people of the Republic of Cuba for the past 47 years. That is since the triumph of the Cuban revolution on Jan. 1, 1959.”

The book also argues that there have been “thousands of terrorist acts against the people and government of Cuba, which have resulted in the death of 3,478 innocent persons, and injuries to more than 20,000, and immense economic cost to the nation.”

In addition to support from Jamaicans in this country, Latino pro-immigration activists also condemn the Bush administration’s release of Mr. Posada, just as they condemn his harsh immigration policies.

“We do understand that Posada Carriles represents a contradiction to the needs that are requested and petitioned by our communities that are undocumented. It is really a shame that the Bush administration and the government is actually protecting Posada Carriles, who is a criminal who committed crimes, rather than protecting our communities that are vulnerable, and not able to protect themselves; and that are just targets of the immigration raids and don’t have any legal protections, and don’t have any moral protections,” Artemio Martinez of the Latino Media Collective told a pre-May Day press conference in response to a question from The Final Call.

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