U.S.-backed terrorists set free in Panama

A week before the end of her term in office, on Aug. 25, Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso pardoned four Cuban counterrevolutionary exiles imprisoned for plotting to assassinate Fidel Castro at a Latin American summit in the country in November 2000 In defense of her action, which created a scandal in Panama, she argued that under the incoming government, the reactionary terrorists might be deported to Cuba or Venezuela and could be executed there. (In fact, there is no death penalty in Venezuela.)

The new president, Martin Torrijos, is the son of the former president Omar Torrijos, who followed a more nationalistic and populist policy. Upon assuming office, after praising his father as a defender of Panamanian sovereignty, he denounced Moscoso’s decision: “Last week, Panamanians saw with consternation how the government of our country granted a presidential pardon to four persons of Cuban origin who were condemned by the courts and whose sentences were being appealed.

“This pardon that so lamentably ended the court case and threw a mantle of impunity over those concerned was a blow to the justice system and the consciences of all those who reject the threat of terrorism.

“I would never have used the presidential prerogative to interrupt such an important case and forestall a definitive decision of the court. For me, there are not two types of terrorism, one that is condemned and the other that is pardoned.”

The Cuban government broke diplomatic relations with Panama in protest against Moscoso’s pardon of the reactionary terrorists. But it appeared that normal relations would be restored with the new Torrijos government.

Immediately after their release, three of the right-wing terrorists hopped a plane for Miami, back to their sponsors in the Cuban counterrevolutionary mafia. The fourth, Luis Posadas Carriles, a former CIA agent, apparently sneaked into Honduras.

According to the Honduran president, Posadas Carriles entered the country on an unscheduled flight with a false passport. The Honduran head of immigration said he had been helped by a “Cuban American businessman.”

In its Aug. 30 issue, the Mexican national daily La Jornada reported that Moscoso had admitted that she informed the former U.S. ambassador to Panama, Simon Ferro, himself of Cuban origin, of the release of the four counterrevolutionary terrorists.

Needless to say, the U.S. government claimed that it had nothing to do with Moscoso’s decision. But the collusion was obvious, in particular since men flagrantly guilty of terrorist crimes had been allowed to enter the United States without even any inconvenience at the port of entry.

The hypocrisy of the U.S. government, which proclaims that it is leading a fight against world terrorism, became a stench in the nostrils of Latin American public opinion. One Panamanian governor resigned in protest against the pardon. He was of Palestinian origin and asked the obvious question of how these men would have been treated if they were Arabs or Muslims.

In a statement on Aug. 26, the Cuban government listed the crimes of the beneficiaries of Moscoso’s pardon and the U.S. government’s good offices:“Among many terrorist acts, Luis Posadas Carriles is the direct author of the destruction in flight in 1976 of a Cubana de Aviacion airliner in which 73 persons were killed, of the bombing campaign against Cuban hotels at the end of the 1990s, which cost the life of the young Italian tourist Fabio de Celmo, and of many plans to assassinate our commander in chief. He is also a fugitive from Venezuelan justice.

“Gaspar Jimenez Escobedo, in addition to many crimes, murdered the Cuban fishing technician Artanan Diaz Diaz in Mexico, as well as participating in the planning of bomb attacks on Cuban hotels and training mercenaries who were recruited for terrorist actions. Jimenez Escobedo was a fugitive from Mexican justice, after being indicted for traffic in explosives and drugs.

“Guillermo Novo Sampoll, besides being guilty of planting explosive devices in embassies in Cuba, in airplanes and ports of countries that trade with Cuba, to such an extent that many countries are calling for him to be handed over to them, was an agent of the DINA, the secret police of the bloody Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

He was one of the murderers of Orlando Letelier, a chancellor in [Allende’s] Popular Front government. The murder was committed in Washington, DC. In addition, Novo Sampoll was involved directly in training terrorists coming from United States territory who were captured in Cuba in 2001 after landing on our coast with the objective of acting against civilian and tourist facilities in our country.

“Pedro Ramon Rodriguez murdered the Cuban diplomat Felix Garcia Rodriguez on Sept. 11, 1980, as well as the Cuban emigrant Jose Eulalio Negrin. He also planted bombs in the Cuban Permanent Mission to the UN at the end of 1979 and tried to kill the Cuban ambassador to the UN a few months later.”

While the U.S. government and its Panamanian stooge Moscoso were solicitous of the life and apparently the welfare and prosperity of these hired homicidal maniacs, they have no sympathy for five Cubans who have been jailed in the United States without hope of release in the foreseeable future because they provided information both to the Cuban and U.S. governments to try to prevent such killers from carrying out their murderous plans.