By Norm Dixon
"We demand that the Security Council condemn the sabotage against the Cuban airline with the same firmness that we condemn the sabotage against the Pan Am and UTA airplanes", wrote Cuba's ambassador to the United Nations, Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada, in a letter to the president of the UN Security Council on April 29. Cuba is demanding that the US cease protecting the terrorists responsible for the lethal bombing of a Cubana airliner in 1976.
The case highlights the hypocrisy of the US and the United Nations, which has imposed embargoes against Libya for its refusal to hand over Libyan citizens the US claims were involved in the downing of the Pan Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie in 1988 and a French airliner over central Africa in 1989.
While the case against the Libyans is extremely tenuous, that against the perpetrators of the Cubana outrage is very solid. It was outlined by Laurent B. Frantz in a recent issue of the US Monthly Review.
On October 6, 1976, a Havana-bound Cubana Airlines DC-8 with 73 passengers was destroyed in mid-air by a bomb. The flight was routine and of no military significance. There were no survivors.
Four anticommunist Cuban exiles were arrested in Venezuela and charged with this dreadful crime. All were revealed to have been trained by the US Central Intelligence Agency and had long-term associations with US intelligence agencies. All were veterans of the CIA-orchestrated invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.
Louis Posada was accused of masterminding the outrage. Following the Bay of Pigs debacle, Posada spent most of the 1960s participating in terrorist raids and sabotage against Cuba under the guidance of the CIA station in Miami.
At the time of the Cubana bombing, Posada was running a private detective agency in Venezuela. One of his employees was fellow Bay of Pigs veteran, Hernan Ricardo Losano, an expert in explosives. Losano had boarded the airliner at Trinidad and left it at Barbados. It exploded minutes after departing Barbados. Losano admitted planting the bomb and told police of Posada's involvement.
A police raid on Posada's fortified house in East Caracas found handwritten reports describing security conditions at Cuban diplomatic missions, airline offices and aboard Cubana's Caribbean flights, including the bombed plane. Posada was able to evade arrest through bribery and disappeared.
During the Iran-contragate scandal in 1986, Posada, now with a new identity — Ramon Medina — resurfaced as one of three people the CIA had put in charge of loading arms shipments for the Nicaraguan contras at the Ilopango Air Base in El Salvador. He was working with Felix Rodriguez, a long-time friend and protege of Donald Gregg, who was the national security adviser to Vice-President George gg were both veterans of many years with the CIA.
US crew members of the secret flights admitted that Posada was in charge of such matters as housing, ground transportation and living expenses. He was nicknamed "the caretaker". It is highly improbable that the CIA would place a person in such a sensitive position on so delicate a mission without a thorough check of his history and background.
His cover blown, Posada vanished again. The only plausible conclusion is that the CIA, for the second time, arranged Posada's disappearance. At the very least, the US government did nothing to stop his escape and is aware of his whereabouts and current identity.
Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada has demanded that a Security Council meeting be called to condemn Washington for its role in the terrorist bombing and call for an end to its continued protection of Posada and another person who participated in the bombing, Orlando Bosch.
Failure to condemn the 1976 bombing, warned Alarcon, "would be an immorality which would dishonour the council and undermine its prestige and credibility."