Posada trial, Day 3: Opening arguments, the Bill Clinton sex defence
Laying the groundwork for what sounded very much like a Bill Clinton “I-did-not-have-sex-with-that-woman” defence, Luis Posada’s lawyer insisted today his client “told the truth… told substantially the truth on the major questions” that U.S. prosecutors insist he lied about.
During opening arguments at Posada’s trial on charges he lied during his 2005 immigration application, Arturo Hernandez attempted to parse the words “soliciting” and “arranging”—which Posada denied he did in relation to a 1997 Havana hotel bombing campaign—as “terms of art."
He also said that during a 1998 interview with journalist Ann Louise Bardach, when Posada claimed credit for the bombings, he was simply taking “overall responsibility as the world’s most well known anti-Castro activist... the dean of anti-Castro opponents” for what was, in reality "an inside operation."
Hernandez also served notice he plans to attack the credibility of key prosecution witnesses, calling one a “Cuban spy” and dismissing another as a man who had “dated Castro’s daughter.” He described journalist Bardach, who is scheduled to testify, as a “biased individual” and said it’s a “known fact” that the New York Times for which she wrote the story often has a “pro-Castro” bias.
But the judge prevented Hernandez—for the moment at least—from directly making one of his other key arguments: that Cuba has a 50-year track record of “fabricating evidence,” including at the trial of the Cuban Five and in eight other instances.
Judge Kathleen Cardone ruled he could not use that material in his opening statement. She said the defence could introduce such evidence later in the trial, but only if it can lay a legal foundation for it. “That’s a high burden,” she added.
In contrast to the dapper, avuncular Hernandez’s impassioned hour-long presentation, chief prosecutor Timothy Reardon III, a balding man with a grey fringe who normally walks with a cane but limped, cane-less, during his presentation this morning, spoke slowly and deliberately during his 30-minute opening statement.
“This is a case about lying and choice,” he told the jurors, and proceeded to take them through the chronology of the case from March 18, 2005 when the prosecution says Posada arrived in Miami by boat—Posada told officials he had entered the U.S. near Houston after paying $10,000 to a "coyote" or illegal alien smuggler—to the superseding indictment filed against Posada in April 2009.
Summing up the government's case, Reardon quoted Scottish author Walter Scott: "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive."
The case continues.
More later...
Copyright 2011 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
Posada trial: Day 2
Freshly-minted jurors at the Luis Posada Carriles trial in El Paso got a taste yesterday of what they can expect during the next few months as Posada’s immigration fraud proceedings morphed from jury selection to the almost-beginnings of the trial itself.
Luis Posada Carriles
After lawyers for the two sides agreed on who should serve on the jury—they chose seven women and five men, plus four female alternates, almost all of them Hispanic—the jurors cooled their heels outside the courtroom while prosecution and defence lawyers debated legal points during a private, 16-minute side-bar with Judge Kathleen Cardone.
After the jurors were finally sworn in, the judge sent them on what was supposed to be a brief familiarization tour of the jury room that will be their home away from home for the duration of the trial. While the jurors got the guided tour, the lawyers clashed again in a lengthy dispute outside the jury’s hearing, this time over who would get to say what and in what order during the trial’s opening statements, which are expected to begin this morning.
By the time the jurors were eventually recalled to the court room, there was only time enough left in the day for the judge to admonish the jurors not to talk about evidence they have yet to hear and send them on their way for the day.
Random notes:
- Judge Kathleen Cardone gave defence lawyers one more chance to convince her they should be able to argue—as part of their opening statement to the jury today—that Cuba has a history of “fabricating” evidence, including during the Cuban Five trial in 2000. Posada’s defence lawyers want to argue that Cuba offered doctored documents at that trial concerning a 1996 shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft. Cardone made it clear she was leaning to ruling the Cuban Five case irrelevant to the current proceedings but agreed to hear more defence arguments first.
- Lead prosecutor Timothy Reardon, poured scorn on the defence strategy. “This is not the History Channel,” he said of plans to put what the defence calls the "Cuban regime" on trial.
- In what may be a sign of prosecution strategy to come, Reardon also his his best to bait the defendant. He turned to face Posada directly as he raised the issue of what he called the “poor Italian” who was killed during one of the 1997 Havana bomb blasts. Posada appeared to meet his gaze and smirked in return. Judge Cardone quickly admonished Reardon not to make “comments.”
- There was more outside-the-courtroom byplay too. A lawyer representing Venezuela claims one of Posada’s henchman threatened to kill him. José Pertierra says the man warned him during an encounter at the nearby hotel where Posada is staying: “Dog, I'll take care of you.” Venezuela is seeking Posada’s extradition to face charges in connection with the 1976 bombing of Cubana Airlines Flight 455 that killed 73 people. Pertierra has complained to the FBI about the incident which was witnessed by a reporter from Telesur, a Latin American TV network.
- There’s apparently a back story to Judge Kathleen Cardone’s reluctance to allow any kind of recording devices in her courtroom. Cardone was the judge in another controversial, high profile case. Two U.S. Border Patrol agents were on trial for shooting a fleeing drug smuggler in 2005. During the proceedings, someone apparently used a cell phone to surreptitiously make videos of court proceedings, which ended up on the Internet. When El Paso’s new federal court house opened seven months ago, cellphones, cameras and other recording devices were banned from the building.
Copyright 2011 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
Posada trial opening day
EL PASO, Texas--Luis Posada Carrile's long-awaited, much delayed trial stuttered--almost literally--out of the gate Monday.
Anti Posada demonstrators outside court house
Judge Kathleen Cardone spent a long day bulk-questioning 130 potential jurors about everything from whether they'd read or heard anything about the case--42 had--to whether they, or their friends or family, had any connection with law enforcement. A surprising number--or perhaps not so surprising in a city that boasts one of the largest police and border patrol establishments in the United States—detailed their various family and social connections to law enforcement.
At least as many jurors responded to the judge's question about whether they or anyone close to them had gone through the American naturalization process to become citizens, an especially common experience in this border town where 80 per cent of the population describes themselves as of Hispanic heritage.
Only one would-be juror said she didn't really know "anything" about the state of relations between Cuba and the United States, but none claimed they had a strong opinion about Cuban-American relations.
Lawyers will use the potential jurors’ answers to the judge’s questions--along with material they've generated themselves--to help them choose what they hope will be the most sympathetic jury for their case.
The trial itself is expected to begin with opening arguments Tuesday and will probably last for four to six weeks.
Random notes from Day 1:
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The day began with dueling demonstrations by pro- and anti-Posada factions. The two groups kept a respectful distance as they waved posters and chanted for the cameras in front of the courthouse building on East San Antonio Avenue. You can watch a video report on the anti-Posada demonstration at the website of the Nation Committee to Free the Five.
Pro Posada demonstrators - Posada, with a retinue of bodyguards wearing weapons, arrived at the courthouse just after 8 a.m. and breezed past the protestors.
- During the trial, Posada and his entourage are staying at the nearby Camina Real hotel, which is where some of the organizers of the anti-Posada rally also bunked down Sunday night. Although there was apparently a mild confrontation at breakfast--someone yelled insults at Posada--Gloria La Riva, the director of the National Free the Five Committee, which organized the protest, insists the heckler "wasn't one of ours."
- Because of the size of the jury pool, Judge Cardone moved jury selection out of her usual courtroom into a larger one. Even that wasn’t large enough for all the first batch of 130 potential jurors, however, so additional chairs were brought in. Half a dozen reporters and a handful of interested spectators were shuffled off to an empty court room five floors below to watch the proceedings via closed circuit TV. But officials couldn't get the audio to work properly. The reporters couldn’t see anything more revealing than a static wide shot of the front of the courtroom—which did not include a view of the defence table, for example, where Posada was seated—and the headache-inducing reverberation from a stuttering audio feed made it virtually impossible to decipher what anyone was saying. Once the jury is selected, proceedings will return to Judge Cardone’s regular court room for the actual trial.
- Although the Albert Armendariz, Sr., court house in downtown El Paso, where the case is being heard, is just seven months old and boasts large, airy court rooms, it is decidedly media and new-technology unfriendly. Visitors to the building, including reporters, aren't allowed to bring cell phones, cameras, or recording devices into the building, let alone the courtroom. Most judges, Cardone among them, won't even permit reporters to use laptops in their court rooms. To complicate matters, there is nopress room on the premises where the reporters can work.
- During one of the breaks in the day’s action, I noticed a court security officer reading—with what appeared to be interest—Luis Posada Carriles: Notes from a Tribunal, a pamphlet about a 2008 panel on the Posada case that anti-Posada demonstators were distributing yesterday.
- The El Paso Times asked its readers to weigh in on how best to deal with Luis Posada. 73.8 per cent of the 378 people who voted said Posada should be tried on terrorism charges; 13.22 per cent argued authorities should leave him alone—"he's an old man—and 12.96 per cent declared him "innocent" of the charges against him.
Copyright 2011 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
Posada to go on trial… finally
Barring some unforeseen delay or last-minute stall, alleged terrorist Luis Posada Carriles will finally get his day in court a week from today in an El Paso, Texas, courtroom.
But he won’t be facing terrorism charges… at least not directly.
Luis Posada Carriles
Posada, 82—a Cuban-exile militant with a rap sheet that stretches back to 1961 and includes allegations he masterminded blowing a Cuban passenger plane out of mid-air in 1976—is officially charged with lying to immigration authorities when he entered the United States in 2005.
It’s what Posada is accused of lying about that makes this court case so interesting.
American authorities say he lied when immigration officials asked whether he was involved in a 1997 terrorist hotel bombing campaign against Cuba that killed an Italian-Canadian businessman and injured dozens of others. Though Posada had publicly boasted of his role on previous occasions, he denied any connection during his immigration interview.
Among the evidence American prosecutors plan to introduce at Posada’s trial are reports prepared by Cuban State Security that document Posada’s connections to the bombing campaign. A number of Cuban officials are also expected to testify, as will journalist Ann Bardach whose 1998 interview with Posada included his claims he'd been behind the plot.
I’ll be in El Paso next week to provide coverage of the beginning of the case as well as a “People's Tribunal on Posada's Crimes,” which is scheduled to take place in El Paso the day before the trial opens.
Related documents:
- The indictment against Posada
- Posada's long and winding road to justice
- Posada's selected "rap" sheet
- An example of Cuba's wiretap evidence against Posada
- Ann Bardach's testimony to a U.S. Congressional committee on her investigations into Luis Posada
Copyright 2011 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
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About
This is the site for What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five, collected research and other materials for an in-progress narrative nonfiction book about the Cuban Five by Stephen Kimber.
The Cuban Five were members of "La Red Avispa"—the Wasp Network—spies Havana dispatched to Florida in the early 1990s to infiltrate militant anti-Castro exile groups that Cuba believed were plotting terrorist attacks on its soil. The Cuban Five were arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to long prison terms in the United States.
In the United States, they are virtually unknown. In Cuba, they are heroes.
That’s the short version of the story. The long version is… well, more complicated... Stay tuned.
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