Luis Posada’s rap sheet
Cuban-born Luis Posada Carriles is a prominent anti-Castro militant whose involvement in attacks on Cuba and its leader date back to the Bay of Pigs in 1961. A CIA-trained explosives expert, Posada’s rap sheet includes:
October 5, 1976: Cubana Airlines Flight 455 was bombed in flight, killing 73 people. Posada has long been regarded as one of two “intellectual authors” of the attack, the most deadly act of air terrorism in the Americas before 9/11. In 1985, while awaiting a retrial in Venezuela—he’d been acquitted in a previous trial—Posada was allegedly “allowed to escape” after his supporters bribed the prison warden.
1980s: Operating under a pseudonym, Posada became a key player in the American Iran-Contra scandal, providing arms to anti-government rebels in Nicaragua. He was never charged in the U.S. although the Nicaraguan government allegedly still wants to try him in connection with Contras affair.
September 4, 1997: Hotel Copacabana bombing
September 4, 1997: A bomb exploded in the bar of a Havana hotel, killing an Italian-Canadian businessman. It was just one of more than a dozen attacks on tourist hotels and sites in Cuba in 1997, part of a campaign by anti-Castro exiles to undermine the country’s fledgling tourism industry. Posada has alternately boasted about and denied his involvement in the bombing campaign, at one point acknowledging the attacks were financed by Florida-based anti-Castro groups. Several of those convicted in connection with the string of attacks in Cuba have since implicated Posada as the plot’s mastermind. And the Cuban government has wiretap evidence it says shows Posada taking credit for the attacks.
November 17, 2000: Posada and three other anti-Castro militants were arrested in Panama in a plot to kill Fidel Castro. Convicted on weapons offences in March 2004, they were all pardoned just five months later by the country’s outgoing president, a George W. Bush ally. The Panamanian Supreme Court later ruled the pardons illegal and have asked for Posada and the others to be returned to Panama. Posada is now in the United States, awaiting trial on immigration fraud charges in connection with his entry into the U.S. in 2005.
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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