May 11, 2007 8:59 am US/Eastern
Cuba: US Violated Anti-Terrorism Treaty On Posada
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HAVANA (CBS4) ―
Cuba accused the U.S. government on Friday of violating international anti-terrorism treaties by allowing this week's release of militant Luis Posada Carriles, a man Havana accuses of violent acts against the island.
"We'll have to see now what the White House does," said a government declaration published Friday in the Communist Party daily Granma about a U.S. District Court judge's decision to throw out an immigration indictment against the 79-year-old Posada in Texas.
"It still has the option to fulfill its international obligations to detain Luis Posada Carriles and extradite him to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela," the statement added.
Posada has never been tried for the string of 1997 hotel bombings, which killed an Italian tourist, and he has never been convicted of the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people. He was acquitted in the plane bombing in Venezuela, then escaped from prison while awaiting a retrial.
Venezuela is seeking to extradite Posada, but a U.S. federal judge ruled that Posada cannot be sent there or to Cuba for fear he may be tortured.
He was detained in March 2005 on charges of lying to U.S. immigration officials, and was awaiting trial in Texas until the federal judge dropped the charges Tuesday, accusing the U.S. government of "fraud, deceit and trickery" while trying to buy time for a separate criminal investigation.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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