Cuba wants ‘terrorist suspect’ returned from US | csmonitor.com — Well? What’s this all about then?

US President George W. Bush has said on more than one occasion during the war on terrorism that “those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves.” ABCNews reports that this statement will be put to the test by a case involving Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban who sneaked into the US recently seeking political asylum.

The New York Times reported Monday that the Cuban government accuses Mr. Posada of being involved with the bombing of a Cuban passenger jet in 1976. Posada has also admitted to “plotting attacks that damaged tourist spots in Havana and killed an Italian visitor there in 1997,” and he is also wanted in Venezuela on terrorism charges.

Thirty years ago [ABCNews.com reports] a Cuban plane was blown out of the sky off Barbados. All 73 passengers and crew members aboard Cubana Airlines Flight 455 — including Cuba’s youthful fencing team %u2014 died. The terrorist attack shook Cuba as deeply as 9/11 did the United States. The Cubans have never forgotten or forgiven those they hold responsible, including Posada.

But as ABCNews also points out, the case is complicated by Posada’s ties to political figures in the US, including his “pre-9/11 ties to Washington” and his allies in Florida’s “powerful Cuban-American” community.

The privately run, George Washington University based National Security Archives details Posada’s extensive career as a CIA- and FBI-trained operative. The Archives reports that Posada had been imprisoned in Venezuela for the ’76 bombing, but escaped in ’85, when he went to El Salvador “where he worked, using the alias ‘Ramon Medina,’ on the illegal contra resupply program being run by Lt. Col. Oliver North in the Reagan National Security Council.”