Cuban official demands action on Posada

HAVANA - Luis Posada Carilles is a household name in Cuba. Havana authorities identify him as “Latin America’s Osama bin Laden,” blaming him for dozens of terrorist acts aimed at toppling the government of Fidel Castro.

His supporters in Miami, undeniably fewer in today’s post-9/11 world than when he first began his fight, prefer the term “militant.”

Now his attorney is seeking asylum for Posada in the United States. NBC News producer Mary Murray spoke with Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada, President of Cuba's National Assembly, for his views on this case.

Are you surprised that Luis Posada Carilles has surfaced in Miami?
Absolutely not. In an interview with the New York Times [in 1997] he was asked specifically whether or not he enters the U.S. And he laughed, saying that he has many times and in many different ways. His family has been living in Miami for quite some time.

Not everyone in Miami was happy to hear that Posada surfaced in their city. In fact, some Cuban Americans oppose his political asylum request. This seems to represent a change in Cuban-American public opinion where at one time anyone who stood against your government was welcomed as a hero. What accounts for that change?
Everybody in the U.S. has strong feelings about terrorists. Ordinary Americans are outraged that he’s there and nothing is happening.

This is a very serious problem for the U.S. government. The U.S. has spent hundreds of millions of dollars protecting its borders, fighting illegal immigration, hunting undocumented people across the country.

At the same time that a well-known terrorist announced his specific whereabouts — in Miami Dade County — and his lawyer informed the media that his client applied for political asylum, there are more than 34,000 undocumented people requesting political refugee status.

Posada Carilles is one of them. The only difference is that 34,000 thousand were taken into custody and are now in jail while Posada Carilles is at-large.

The U.S. is under a clear obligation to find this man, take him into custody and expel him to another country.

After 9/11, the U.N. Security Council, at the request of the U.S. government, adopted Resolution 1373 on Sept. 28, 2001 that makes it mandatory for every government in the world to oppose any form of cooperation with all terrorists — no matter what they did or where. No protection. No refuge. Nothing.

The Security Council established a permanent committee to follow-up on the implementation of that resolution.

Imagine if someone asked the Committee about Posada Carilles? A fugitive of Venezuelan justice. An admitted terrorist. How can he be in the U.S. and nothing happens to him? It is extremely embarrassing for the U.S. to be forced to recognize that a person linked with terrorism is on U.S. soil.

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