Cuba reveals new evidence against alleged terrorist Posada Carriles

Cuba revealed Friday new evidence involving alleged anti-Cuba terrorist Luis Posada Carriles' bombing of hotels in Havana and his failed murder plot against President Fidel Castro in 1997.

Cuba's official daily Granma published Friday a two-page transcription of anti-Castro militant Posada Carriles' 14 telephone conversations carried out between February 21 and September 9 of 1997, planning his attacks with accomplices.

"I am involved in these activities and I assure you I am backed by a lot of money," Posada Carriles said in an August-25-1977 telephone call to his accomplice Francisco "Paco" Pimentel in Venezuela.

The journalist Reinaldo Taladrid Herrero, who wrote Friday's two-page news story, recalls the 1997 and 1998 bomb attacks against hotels in Havana by mercenaries contracted directly by Posada Carriles and paid with money from the National Cuban- American Foundation operating (Ncaf) in Miami, Florida.

According to information obtained by Cuba, Posada Carriles was also involved with now deceased Ncaf directive Arnaldo Monzon Plasencia in a plot to assassinate Castro during the 1997 Ibero- American Summit in Margarita Island, Venezuela.

Taladrid says these telephone conversations were held between El Salvador and Venezuela and assures that its contents is known by the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) since 1998.

A total of 14 explosive devices were prepared, eight exploded, four were deactivated and two others were found in the airport when they tried to introduce them in Cuba.

Those bombs killed one person, injured many people and caused a lot of material damage.

According to statements from the people arrested in La Esperanza yacht -- quoted by Granma -- the objective was to shoot Castro's airplane with high caliber weapons be it landed in Margarita Island, Venezuela.

In Friday's article Taladrid asks if Posada Carriles and his accomplices "with all their criminal plots fit into the definition of terrorists" established by "(George W.) Bush's doctrine."

Source: Xinhua