Articles of El Paso Diary

The El Paso Diary is written by José Pertierra–an attorney who represents the government of Venezuela in its request for the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles. Pertierra´s journals describe the testimony, evidence, legal skirmishes, quirks and follies of this very historic trial that features for the first time the close collaboration of the United States government with Cuban authorities to prosecute an ex CIA agent who is one of the masterminds of the fifty-year old dirty war against Cuba.

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.

El Paso Diary: Judge Cardone

Judge Kathleen Cardone

Judge Kathleen Cardone continued the case of Luis Posada Carriles in El Paso until next Tuesday, February 22, 2011, at 8:30 a.m. The defense attorney, Arturo Hernández, moved last week to dismiss counts one through three of the indictment: those having to do with his client’s false statements about the bombs that exploded in Havana in 1997. This morning, the judge was supposed to have announced her decision regarding that motion, but she surprised everyone by deciding to delay the case another seven days to “deliberate calmly.”

El Paso Diary: Quicksand

Posada Carriles and Arturo Hernández

El Paso Diary: Day 19 in the Trial of Posada Carriles By JOSÉ PERTIERRA Today Judge Kathleen Cardone did not allow the Cuban inspector Roberto Hernández Caballero to testify and postponed the trial of Luis Posada Carriles until Tuesday of next week. Posada Carriles’ attorney threw a roadblock before the proceedings that brought the trial

El Paso Diary: The Inspector From Cuba

Roberto Hernández Caballero

El Paso Diary: Day 18 in the Trial of Posada Carriles By José Pertierra For the first time in the history of the thorny relations between the two countries, the United States Justice Department used a Cuban law enforcement official as well as the findings of a Cuban investigation to prosecute a former CIA agent

El Paso Diary: The War Against the Evidence From Cuba

Arturo Hernández

The first witness from Cuba to testify in the trial of Luis Posada Carriles in federal court in El Paso is Roberto Hernández Caballero. Accompanied by FBI agent Omar Vega, Hernández Caballero got there early and waited in a solitary chair in the hallway. His wait was for nothing, because today Posada Carriles’ attorney declared war against any and all evidence coming from Cuba. After the defense attorney’s declaration of war, Judge Kathleen Cardone recessed proceedings until tomorrow (Wednesday) at 8:30 a.m.