Articles of José Pertierra

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El Paso Diary: The Cross-Examination of Ann Louise Bardach

Ann Louise Bardach. Foto: Archivo de la familia Bardach

The lawyer representing Luis Posada Carriles has a reputation for aggressive and effective cross-examination. Today his job was to question one of the case’s star witnesses: Ann Louise Bardach. Anticipating the moment, some of the jurors leaned forward when Arturo Hernández approached the witness stand this morning. The African-American in the second row exchanged a knowing look with the Chicano on his right, who was rubbing his hands together with the look of a child about to devour an ice-cream cone.

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El Paso Diary: How Ann Louise Bardach Helped Win the Second Battle Over the Solo Fax

Ann Louise Bardach

By José Pertierra < Using the testimony of the journalist Ann Louise Bardach, the Government was able to introduce the Solo fax as evidence against Luis Posada Carriles. In the fax, the defendant alerts his co-conspirators to the money orders they would receive from New Jersey to carry out the bombing campaign in Havana in 1997.

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El Paso Diary: Tony Álvarez Links Posada Carriles to the Bombings in Havana

Luis Posada Carriles in Miami

Yesterday was a rough day. Today the witness reentered the courtroom with melancholy eyes, a slow step, and his shoulders sagging from the weight of his life’s burdens. But the Government did not have to force Tony Álvarez to come to El Paso to testify against Luis Posada Carriles. He offered of his own free will, just as he did 15 years ago, when he warned Guatemalan intelligence and the FBI that Posada Carriles was involved in a terrorist conspiracy to place bombs in the most famous hotels and restaurants in Cuba.

El Paso Diary: The Battle Over the Solo Fax

Luis Posada Carriles

Today the prosecution suffered a profound setback. Judge Kathleen Cardone ruled that a key document that links Luis Posada Carriles to the financing of a series of bombings in Havana in 1997 was inadmissible.

El Paso Diary: How Ann Louise Bardach Helped Win the Second Battle Over the Solo Fax

Napoleon Solo

stock trading strategies p>El Paso Diary: Day 33 of the Posada Carriles Trial By José Pertierra Using the testimony of the journalist Ann Louise Bardach, the Government was able to introduce the Solo fax as evidence against Luis Posada Carriles.  In the fax, the defendant alerts his co-conspirators to the money orders they would receive

El Paso Diary: Maria Elvira, the Afternoon Diva

Maria Elvira, periodista

Although the Justice Department called María Elvira Salazar to the witness stand, she testified in favor of Posada Carriles.
Government prosecutors wanted Salazar to corroborate Posada Carriles’ admissions that he was behind a sequence of bombings in Havana in 1997, one of which killed a thirty-two-year-old Italian businessman, Fabio Di Celmo. Salazar interviewed Posada Carriles for a Miami television station, and he answered her question about the bombings by claiming responsibility.

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El Paso Diary: Fabio’s Friend

Fabio Di Celmo

Although the Government only indicted Posada Carriles for lying, one of the lies is about a murder. Under oath, he denied being behind the killing in Havana of a 32-year-old Italian businessman named Fabio Di Celmo on September 4, 1997. The jury in El Paso has already heard a medical examiner state that Di Celmo’s death was a homicide resulting from a bomb planted in the lobby of Havana’s Copacabana Hotel. The bomb hurled a piece of shrapnel that lodged in Di Celmo’s neck and severed his jugular vein. Today the jury will hear from an eyewitness.

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El Paso Diary: Follow the Money

Mas Canosa Monzón

Oscar de Rojas, a Cuban-American accountant from New Jersey, testified in federal court today that he wired money to ex-CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles and others in El Salvador and Guatemala in 1997. The Justice Department alleges that Posada Carriles used that money to finance a terrorist bombing campaign against Cuba in 1997. One of the bombs killed an Italian businessman, Fabio Di Celmo, on September 4, 1997 in Havana’s Copacabana Hotel.

El Paso Diary: Vulgar Questions

Giustino di Celmo

During hours of interrogation, defense attorney Arturo Hernández needled the Cuban witness relentlessly with the kind of barbs more commonplace in the cafes of Miami’s Calle Ocho than in federal court. Several times, the defendant’s Miami attorney posed defiantly before the witness, as if the courtroom were a neighborhood back-alley, opened his suit jacket, put his fists on his waist and bombarded the witness with a fire hose stream of inflammatory questions.

El Paso Diary: A Gentleman on the Stand

Roberto Hernández Caballero

“The Court would first like to address the defense counsel’s motions for a mistrial or for a dismissal of counts 1, 2 and 3 of the indictment,” said Judge Cardone. She then pulled out a piece of paper and read her decision out loud.The legal impasse between the parties arose from defense counsel’s allegations that the prosecution had failed to disclose certain “exculpatory” documents before the expiration of deadlines laid down earlier by Judge Cardone.