The
Terrorist Walks
By Fidel Castro
17 April, 2007
Countercurrents.org
George
W. Bush is undoubtedly the most genuine representative of a system of
terror forced on the world by the technological, economic and political
superiority of the most powerful country known to this planet. For this
reason, we share the tragedy of the American people and their ethical
values. The instructions for the verdict issued by Judge Kathleen Cardone,
of the El Paso Federal Court last Friday, granting Luis Posada Carriles
freedom on bail, could only have come from the White House.
It was President Bush himself
who ignored at all times the criminal and terrorist nature of the defendant
who was protected with a simple accusation of immigration violation
leveled at him. The reply is brutal. The government of the United States
and its most representative institutions had already decided to release
the monster.
The backgrounds are well-known
and reach far back. The people who trained him and ordered him to destroy
a Cuban passenger plane in midair, with 73 athletes, students and other
Cuban and foreign travelers on board, together with its dedicated crew;
those who bought his freedom while the terrorist was held in prison
in Venezuela, so that he could supply and practically conduct a dirty
war against the people of Nicaragua, resulting in the loss of thousands
of lives and the devastation of a country for decades to come; those
who empowered him to smuggle with drugs and weapons making a mockery
of the laws of Congress; those who collaborated with him to create the
terrible Operation Condor and to internationalize terror; the same who
brought torture, death and often the physical disappearance of hundreds
of thousands of Latin Americans, could not possibly act any different.
Even though Bush's decision
was to be expected, it is certainly no less humiliating for our people.
Thanks to the revelations of "Por Esto!" a Mexican publication
from the state of Quintana Roo later complemented by our own sources,
Cuba knew with absolute precision how Posada Carriles entered from Central
America, via Cancun, to the Isla Mujeres departing from there on board
the Santrina, after the ship was inspected by the Mexican federal authorities,
heading with other terrorists straight to Miami.
Denounced and publicly challenged
with exact information on the matter, since April 15, 2005, it took
the government of that country more than a month to arrest the terrorist,
and a year and two months to admit that Luis Posada Carriles had entered
through the Florida coast illegally on board the Santrina, a presumed
school-ship licensed in the United States.
Not a single word is said
of his countless victims, of the bombs he set off in tourist facilities
in recent years, of his dozens of plans financed by the government of
the United States to physically eliminate me.
It was not enough for Bush
to offend the name of Cuba by installing a horrible torture center similar
to Abu Ghraib on the territory illegally occupied in Guantánamo,
horrifying the world with this procedure. The cruel actions of his predecessors
seemed not enough for him. It was not enough to force a poor and underdeveloped
country like Cuba to spend 100 billion dollars. To accuse Posada Carriles
was tantamount to accusing himself.
Throughout almost half a
century, everything was fair game against our small island lying 90
miles away from its coast, wanting to be independent. Florida saw the
installation of the largest station for intelligence and subversion
that ever existed on this planet.
It was not enough to send
a mercenary invasion on the Bay of Pigs, costing us 176 dead and more
than 300 wounded at a time when the few medical specialists they left
us had no experience treating war wounds.
Earlier still, the French
ship La Coubre carrying Belgian weapons and grenades for Cuba had exploded
on the docks of Havana Harbor. The two well synchronized explosions
caused the deaths of more than 100 workers and wounded others as many
of them tool part in the rescue attempts.
It was not enough to have
the Missile Crisis of 1962, which brought the world to the brink of
an all-consuming thermonuclear war, at a time when there were bombs
50 times more powerful than the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It was not enough to introduce
in our country viruses, bacteria and fungi to attack plantations and
flocks; and incredible as it may seem, to attack human beings. Some
of these pathogens came out of American laboratories and were brought
to Cuba by well-known terrorists in the service of the United States
government.
Add to all this the enormous
injustice of keeping five heroic patriots imprisoned for supplying information
about terrorist activities; they were condemned in a fraudulent manner
to sentences that include two life sentences and they stoically withstand
cruel mistreatment, each of them in a different prison.
Time and again the Cuban
people have fearlessly faced the threat of death. They have demonstrated
that with intelligence, using appropriate tactics and strategies, and
especially preserving unity around their political and social vanguard,
there can be no force on this earth capable of defeating them.
I think that the coming May
Day celebration would be the ideal day for our people, --using the minimum
of fuel and transportation-- to show their feelings to the workers and
the poor of the world.
Havana, April 10, 2007.
Click
here to comment
on this article