(Translated by Granma Internacional)

Giustino Di Celmo father of the young Italian Fabio Di Celmo, killed September 4, 1997

EVERY year since September 4, 1997, Giustino Di Celmo returns to Havana’s Copacabana Hotel, walks through its halls, greets the employees, embraces the workers. In the lobby, he places a kiss on his hand and caresses the bronze plaque engraved with the face of Fabio, his son and the innocent victim of a crime. The grief-stricken Di Celmo family have never ceased demanding justice and an end to acts terrorism against Cuba.

On this occasion, family members of the five anti-terrorist Cubans incarcerated in the United States; the leadership of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP); and the Copacabana workers filled the hotel to honor Fabio Di Celmo and his father, an untiring fighter for the liberation of the Five.

Act in the Hotel Copacabana

Magaly Llort, Fernando González’ mother, was the bearer of a wooden plaque for Fabio’s father containing an inscribed message signed by Gerardo Fernández Nordelo, Ramón Labañino Salazar, René González Schwerert, Fernando González Llort and Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez.

In her words, Magaly Llort emphasized that, at the very beginning of the movement for the return of the Five, Giustino Di Celmo promised that his family members would take up the cause of these unjustly imprisoned men as if it were theirs. And Fabio’s father and brother Livio have fulfilled that promise.

Despite his advanced age, Giustino has undertaken many actions to make people aware of the interconnected events concerning the death of Fabio Di Celmo, as irrefutable evidence of the State of Necessity which the Cuban people have to seek information within terrorist groups in order to avert further crimes.

An Italian Member of the AAIC expresses Militant Solidarity Giustino

Finally, Magaly Llort read the text engraved on the plaque:

“For Giustino Di Celmo, with profound gratitude for your support of our struggle for justice.”

Di Celmo expressed his thanks for the gift. “No pain can be greater than that of the death of a son and even more so when it is caused by a violent and cruel act. It pains me to think about all the acts of terrorist against Cuba. It pains me to think that Luis Posada Carriles, the confirmed and self-confessed murderer of my son and of multiple crimes, is freely walking the streets of Miami while these young men who were fighting to stop any more acts of terrorism in Cuba are confined in prison cells.

“I want to ask all people of good will to divulge this great truth and to write to the President of the United States asking him to release the five Cuban anti-terrorists. They are just men and justice cannot be incarcerated. If my Fabio were alive, I know that he would have written a letter to Obama advocating their immediate liberation.”

Magalis Llort delivery Giustino Di Celmo message

Giustino Di Celmo receives message from Cuban Five

Message of the five Cubans Giustino Di Celmo

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.

The Diva

María Elvira, as she’s known in Miami, took the stand in an elegant red shoulder scarf and a casual blue suit, looking every bit the Spanish-language television personality she is.

Although she often says that she would have preferred to become a missionary, her employer—MEGATV in Miami—touts her as one of its “afternoon divas.”

The witness told the jurors that she was born in Miami and calls herself a Cuban American. She said that she began a career in journalism in 1984 and now works for MEGATV. She has her own Spanish-language hour-long program Monday through Friday on matters that are of interest to the Miami community. “I’m a very respected journalist in South Florida, especially among Cubans, Venezuelans and Mexicans,” Salazar declared with pride.

Last year, she told Miami’s El Nuevo Herald, “I’m like Oprah. Being an independent producer allows me to choose who works with me and how much they earn. Since I manage the budget, I can decide if I should buy a video of Fidel Castro in his underwear.”

The Posada Carriles interview

Prosecutor Timothy J. Reardon, III, conducted the direct examination. He went straight to the point and asked her whether she had ever met Luis Posada Carriles. “Yes, I met him in 1998, when I interviewed him for the Telemundo network,” she said and added that the interview lasted an entire day, “although we aired it in three segments over consecutive days.”

She readily admitted the reason she wanted to speak to him. “I wanted to interview Posada Carriles to boost the ratings for my show,” she said.

Wanting to lay a proper evidentiary foundation for its eventual submission into evidence, prosecutor Reardon showed Salazar a written transcript and a CD. “This is a transcript of the interview, and the CD is my recording. It has my voice and the voice of Mr. Posada,” stated Salazar. Her declaration was what Judge Kathleen Cardone needed to accept both items into evidence.

After a brief sidebar, the prosecutor and the defense attorney agreed that the best way to proceed was simply to play the entire recorded interview on the courtroom monitors, so that the jurors could watch it. The video is subtitled in English, and the jurors were asked to follow along by reading from the bilingual transcript that was provided to them.

Using a small laptop computer that she controlled from the prosecutor’s table, Government attorney Sue Ellis played the videotaped interview for the jury. For the first time, the jurors in El Paso actually saw Luis Posada Carriles speaking—although his face only appeared in silhouette, because that is the way it was recorded at the time to conceal his identity.

Earlier in the case, we’d heard the defendant’s voice on some recordings made by the Immigration Service during interviews conducted in 2005 and 2006, but those were only audiotapes. The Salazar interview is a videotape, and the jurors could see Posada Carriles while he spoke.

No one believes that Posada Carriles will take the stand in El Paso. In the United States, the defendant is not required to testify, and his attorneys are reluctant to expose their client to even more charges of perjury. Therefore this videotape will be the only opportunity the jurors will have to view and evaluate Posada Carriles’ demeanor as he makes allegedly inculpatory statements.

Posada: “I have no remorse.”

Among the highlights of the interview is an apparently compromising statement by Posada Carriles. “I have no remorse whatsoever, and I accept my historical responsibility. The only option we Cubans have is to fight a violent regime with violence,” he says to María Salazar on the videotape.

Prosecutor Reardon did not ask Salazar many questions. He preferred that the videotape speak for itself. He twice played a snippet of the interview, where Salazar asked Posada Carriles about a series of bombs that exploded in Havana in 1997. “It was you who thought of them, who organized them and sent people to place them?” Salazar asked him. The ex-CIA agent replied, “For any action that takes place within Cuban territory, against the regime in Havana, I take responsibility, I am guilty.”

A boast or a confession?

Instead of opening fire on the witness, during cross-examination—as he usually does—defense counsel Arturo Hernández simply asked Salazar if Luis Posada Carriles is well thought of in Miami. “He’s someone that the Cuban exile community holds in very high esteem,” answered the television personality from Miami. “He has dedicated his entire life to eliminating Fidel Castro and the regime that is in power in Cuba.”

Attorney Arturo Hernández then asked that Salazar view, once again, the part of the interview in which Posada Carriles says, “I accept my historical responsibility. The only option we Cubans have is to fight a violent regime with violence.”

“Did you take this as a rhetorical admission of a historical nature, or is he is assuming responsibility for a series of specific acts?” asked the defense attorney.

Salazar responded, “My impression is that he was taking credit for all the different attacks that have taken place in Cuba against the regime. He was boasting about things that he might—or might not—have done.”

“One single person cannot assume responsibility for all actions in Cuba over the last 50 years, can they?” asked Hernández.

“True. He was boasting there. It’s not possible to take responsibility for everything that has been done there,” stated Salazar.

Then attorney Hernández asked Salazar the key question of the day for him, “Do you know if Posada Carriles admitted being responsible for the series of bombings in Havana?”

“No. His answers were ambiguous,” said the Cuban-American television personality from Miami.

To avoid his client’s conviction, a defense attorney always looks to spark some doubt in the mind of at least one juror. Here attorney Hernández was trying to raise doubts about the apparently inculpatory statements that Posada Carriles made to María Elvira Salazar in the television interview that the jurors watched in court.

“Have you experienced boasting from any of those you’ve interviewed?” inquired Hernández.

Salazar chuckled. “Of course,” she said. “They all boast. For example, Posada told me that he wanted to return to Cuba to launch an armed attack. They already blew away half his face. If he returns to Cuba, they’ll kill him. During his interview with me, he was boasting. That is where this interview lost all credibility with me,” the correspondent stated, ending her words with resounding laughter.

“Do you know if the Castro regime is waging a disinformation campaign against Posada Carriles?” asked the defense attorney, seemingly enchanted with Salazar and laughing with her.

With a bemused expression still on her face, María Elvira looked at the defense attorney and said, “Not just against Posada but against me, too. They have even threatened me personally.”

Hernández did not ask about the threats that Salazar claims to have received. Instead, he turned to Judge Kathleen Cardone and announced that he had no more questions for the witness. The judge then called a 15-minute recess. She stood up and exited the courtroom through the side door.

Posada Carriles was giddy over Salazar’s testimony. “No, no, no, it was great,” he said to his attorney within earshot of those of us in the audience. “Did you see? You asked her questions and she laughed, she laughed,” he added.

The prosecution tries to recover

The prosecutors took advantage of the recess to discuss how to handle the witness they still had on the stand. Timothy Reardon, Jerome Teresinski and Bridget Behling—the three prosecutors—went off by themselves to talk. Omar Vega, the lead FBI agent on the case, joined the impromptu meeting.

When the gavel sounded three times to announce the return of the jury, Reardon approached the podium to question Salazar again. This time, the tone of his questions changed, as though she were a hostile witness.

“What is your opinion of Fidel Castro?” asked Reardon.

“I have very strong feelings against Castro,” answered Salazar.

“Do you support the use of violence against Cuba?” the prosecutor inquired.

Salazar hesitated a moment before responding warily, “Not necessarily, but I think that the Cuban army should remove Castro from power.”

“You testified that Posada Carriles wanted to give you an interview to clarify certain things from the New York Times reports. Is that true?” Reardon asked.

“Certain people told me that they knew that I am an unbiased, impartial reporter and that Bardach [the journalist who interviewed Posada for theNew York Times] is very biased. Posada wanted to say the real truth, rather than what the New York Times said that he said,” Salazar replied.

Long live America

Reardon then turned again to the interview Posada Carriles gave Salazar in June of 1998.

He asked her to tell the jury, “If you thought—as you stated during the cross-examination done by the defense counsel—that Posada dodged your questions about his responsibility for the string of bombings in Cuba, why did you change the subject and not insist that he answer the questions you were putting to him?”

“It was a television interview. I moved on. It wasn’t something for the courts, where there is so much nitpicking,” answered Salazar.

“Nitpicking?” asked the prosecutor. “Surely you don’t think that we are here in court analyzing inconsequential things?”

Embarrassed, Salazar told Reardon that she didn’t understand the proper meaning of the term nitpicking. She said, “I didn’t mean nitpicking. I meant detailed,” abruptly adding, “Long live America and the judicial due process of law.” By “America” she meant the United States—and not the continent.

Tomorrow, toward the essence of the case

After Salazar’s testimony, the prosecutors announced that tomorrow’s witness, Antonio “Tony” Álvarez, landed at El Paso’s airport only a few minutes ago. Álvarez alerted the FBI in Guatemala in 1997 about Posada Carriles’ bombing plot against Havana’s tourist industry. He also alerted the FBI about Posada Carriles’ plans to assassinate then President of Cuba Fidel Castro during a presidential summit in Venezuela.

Showing impatience with the slowness of the ongoing trial, Judge Cardone asked prosecutor Teresinski whether Ann Louise Bardach, another of the prosecution’s key witnesses, was in town and ready to testify after Tony Álvarez.

“She’s under a doctor’s care,” said Teresinski. “We received an email from her attorney asking us to allow her to come on Monday.”

“She needs to be here by the day after tomorrow,” the judge said firmly. “I’m not going to allow her to delay her arrival any more.”

The defense attorney quickly contributed his own position on the timing of Bardach’s testimony, “We oppose a delay,” said attorney Hernández.

Ann Louise Bardach is the New York Times journalist to whom Posada Carriles admitted being the mastermind of the sequence of bombings in Havana in 1997. Bardach has been reluctant to testify in this case, and the prosecution has had a labored engagement with the lawyers who represent her before willing the battle and forcing her to commit to flying to El Paso to testify.

Probably expressing too much confidence that the case might move full speed ahead in the next few days, Teresinski told Judge Cardone, “We’d like to finish the Government’s case in chief by the end of the week.”

This observer, however, anticipates new legal skirmishes between the attorneys that will inevitably delay the proceedings beyond the Government’s optimistic target date.

Tony Álvarez and Ann Louise Bardach are the two star witnesses against Posada Carriles, at least regarding the part of the case that has to do with the bombings in Havana in 1997. The defense attorney will do everything possible to impede their testifying, and Bardach’s personal attorney will do the same.

An aside

One of the most controversial events in the FBI’s management of the Posada Carriles case is the destruction of its investigative record. Ann Louise Bardach broke the story that the head of the FBI’s Miami office, Hector Pesquera, gave the order before retiring that the documents be destroyed by his successors.

Pesquera has a long history of fraternizing with leaders of extremist Cuban exile groups in Miami.

Because the FBI destroyed its own files in 2004, the prosecutors have had to battle in El Paso with nothing more than copies of certain key documents, such as the money orders to Posada Carriles from New Jersey.

Last week, FBI Agent Omar Vega testified that an Assistant U.S. Attorney from the Department of Justice office in Miami inexplicably decided to close the case and authorized the destruction of the FBI files.

Agent Vega didn’t name the Miami prosecutor. Two months ago, however, a Department of Homeland Security prosecutor told the jury in El Paso that she had asked the person in charge of the Posada case at the Justice Department in Miami to indict Posada Carriles on criminal charges, and the prosecutor refused. The witness identified that prosecutor as none other than Caroline Heck Miller: the same prosecutor who inexorably pursued the Cuban Five with a cruelty reminiscent of Inspector Javert in his pursuit of Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.

Might it have been Caroline Heck Miller who ordered the destruction of the FBI files in the Posada Carriles case? If so, why?

José Pertierra practices law in Washington, DC. He represents the government of Venezuela in the case to extradite Luis Posada Carriles.

Translated by Machetera and Manuel Talens. They are members of Tlaxcala, the international network of translators for linguistic diversity.

Spanish language version:http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2011/03/09/diario-de-el-paso-maria-elvira-la-diva-de-la-tarde

By José Pertierra

By José Pertierra

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.

The New Jersey accountant

Oscar de Rojas took the stand late this afternoon. A subpoena forced him to come to El Paso to testify. The Government granted him immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony.

He is a 74-year-old man whose every step appears to be a painful effort. Once on the witness stand, he awkwardly raised his right arm to take the oath, but it lingered midway for several seconds like an unintentional Nazi salute.

De Rojas testified that he was born in Havana and completed high school there at the Colegio Belén, the same high school Fidel Castro attended. After graduation, de Rojas said, he went on to major in accounting at the Universidad Católica de Santo Tomás de Villanueva, also in Havana. He told the jury that he left Cuba in 1967 for Madrid before finally settling in New Jersey.

Although he is a public accountant, he said, he is not a certified public accountant. “My English is not good enough to take the exam,” he told the jury. He worked for 23 years as the bookkeeper for Arnold Fashions in New Jersey, a store specializing in women’s clothing. “I worked there five and half days a week until the owner died,” said de Rojas.

The money guy

The owner of Arnold Fashions was Arnaldo Monzón Plasencia. In 1998, Cuba provided the United States with evidence that Monzón was “Posada’s main financier” and a member of the Board of Directors of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF). According to the Miami Herald, which also reported the news, “Monzón and Posada have been friends since their childhood in Cuba.”

The witness recounted to the jurors that Jorge Mas Canosa used to invite Monzón to fundraisers and even visited Monzón at the office in New Jersey. “Mas Canosa was CANF’s president, and I was a member until 2004,” de Rojas testified.

An August 1998 report by Cuba’s Interior Ministry stated that Monzón was one of the masterminds behind a terrorist plan to assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro during a presidential summit in Isla Margarita, Venezuela. It also found that Monzón was behind a failed terrorist attack on the famous Tropicana Cabaret in Havana—also in 1997, the year the bombing campaign was executed. The report concluded that Monzón financed many of the terrorist actions against Cuba in the 1990s from New Jersey.

Money for Bob Menendez and Robert Torricelli

Monzón also was an important contributor to the electoral campaigns of congressman (now Senator) Bob Menendez—a Democrat from New Jersey—and of former legislator Robert Torricelli, also a Democrat from New Jersey. Both politicians are fierce enemies of Cuba and have sponsored legislation to tighten the screws on the U.S. blockade of Cuba. Apart from making individual contributions to Menendez, Arnaldo Monzón held several fundraisers for the congressman and was one of his most important sources of financing. A review of contributions made to Menendez and Torricelli in the 1990s shows that de Rojas also helped finance their campaigns as a contributor.

In 1998, New York’s El Diario/La Prensa quoted Congressman Menendez’s spokesperson’s acknowledgment that Monzón had “contributed to [Menendez's] political campaigns.” The article went on to say that the congressman’s office emphasized Monzón’s “work for the community and his struggle for peace, freedom and a democratic transition in Cuba.”

The jurors follow the money

During the investigation into the 1972 Watergate scandal, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward found a source, whom he referred to only as “Deep Throat,” who told him to “follow the money.” Woodward and fellow journalist Carl Bernstein followed the money trail and unraveled the mysteries behind the crimes and subsequent cover-ups of President Richard M. Nixon and his White House staff.

Taking a leaf out of Woodward and Bernstein’s book, government prosecutor Jerome Teresinski took the jurors in El Paso on a walk along the money trail that extended from New Jersey to Havana by way of El Salvador and Guatemala.

Prodded by Teresinski to recall money transfers he had made between March and September of 1997, de Rojas declared, “Monzón told me in March of 1997 that I had to go to the bank to purchase and send some money orders.” This was the time that a chain of bombs exploded in many of Havana’s finest hotels and restaurants. “I purchased the money orders and sent them through Western Union, and then I gave the receipts to Monzón.”

“What were the quantities of the money orders?” asked Teresinski. “$800,” de Rojas answered.

“And how many of these money orders did you send?” the prosecutor asked.

“Ten or twelve,” said de Rojas.

“And in whose name were the money orders made out?” asked Teresinski.

“Ramón Medina,” responded de Rojas. That was one of the aliases that Posada Carriles used for many years. He admitted this in several immigration applications he filed with the Immigration Service.

“Where did you send the money orders?” asked the prosecutor, seeking still more detail about the money sent to Luis Posada Carriles from New Jersey.

“Monzón always gave me the addresses—either in El Salvador or in Guatemala,” answered de Rojas.

Teresinski then showed the witness three forms from Western Union. “Whose handwriting is this?” Mr. de Rojas looked at the papers and without hesitating said, “Mine. I filled out the forms in block letters. Monzón instructed me to fill them out.”

Having thus established the authenticity of the Western Union forms, Teresinski asked his assistant, Sue Ellis, to show them to the jurors on their television monitors. Ellis is also a government prosecutor, and her job is to keep track of the exhibits. When asked to do so, she projects them—through her laptop—to the jurors’ small personal television monitors.

As Ellis struggled with her computer, the witness from New Jersey told the jurors that he used an agency called Peerless to send the Western Union money orders to El Salvador and Guatemala.

Just then, the first image of a Western Union form appeared clearly on the monitors. The witness read from it: “Recipient, Ramón Medina. Remitter, Oscar Rojas. Date, August 22, 1997. Destination, San Salvador. Amount, $800, plus $52 in fees.”

Teresinski asked the witness, “If your last name is de Rojas, why did you put Rojas on the form?” “I’m used to calling myself ‘Oscar Rojas’ in unofficial matters,” said the witness. “So as not to confuse people,” he added.
Francisco Chávez Abarca

Teresinski asked Sue Ellis to show the next exhibit to the jurors. The recipient of that money order was not Luis Posada Carriles, but “Francisco Chávez.” It was dated September 11, 1997, one week after the murder of Fabio Di Celmo in Havana. “I sent those $800,” the accountant confessed reluctantly. “I sent that money. Monzón gave it to me,” he added.

Francisco Chávez Abarca was the head of human resources for Posada Carriles’ nefarious enterprise. He was Posada Carriles right-hand man in El Salvador, responsible for recruiting Posada’s triggermen—young Salvadorans and Guatemalans—to whom he paid a mere $2,000 per explosion. Chávez Abarca also personally placed the bombs at the Aché nightclub of the Meliá Cohíba Hotel, the first in the string of bombings in Havana in 1997. He was captured by Venezuelan authorities last year and extradited to Cuba, where he confessed and was sentenced to 30 years in prison for terrorism.

Ramón Medina and Luis Posada Carriles are one and the same

The witness Oscar de Rojas continued with his testimony. Teresinski showed him a third money order, and de Rojas said that he personally sent it to Ramón Medina in El Salvador. It was in the amount of $800, on September 12, 1997, he said. Eight days after the murder of Fabio Di Celmo.

“These successive money orders to El Salvador and Guatemala seemed very odd to me,” said de Rojas.

To try and nail down for the jury the fact that Ramón Medina and Luis Posada Carriles are one and the same person and that de Rojas knew it, Teresinski asked, “Did there come a time when you learned who Ramón Medina was?”

“Objection,” said the defense’s Hernández. He asked to come to sidebar so that he could explain his reasons out of earshot of the jurors. After a ten-minute discussion, Judge Cardone ruled that she was sustaining the objection. She did not elaborate.

It doesn’t matter. Luis Posada Carriles has never hidden the fact that one of his favorite pseudonyms is Ramón Medina. He admitted to it on various forms he presented to the Immigration Service and in several interviews with U.S. government officials. These are all available to the jurors because they have been introduced into evidence.

Not available to the jury is Posada Carriles’ autobiography, where he candidly discloses how he came to adopt the name Ramón Medina. He recounts that he wanted a false identity to avoid being detected at roadside checkpoints should he escape from prison in 1985 in Venezuela. He writes that he was provided with an identification card under the name Ramón Medina. “With a special pen I painted its picture with hair like mine and with an eraser and pens I straightened the squinty eye; so it looked pretty much like me.”

Teresinski’s direct examination of the witness was almost over. Knowing that the defense attorney would cross-examine de Rojas about any prior inconsistent statements, Teresinski asked, “Did the FBI approach you in June 2006?” “Yes, a female agent named Lisa,” responded the witness. “I lied to her and denied that I had signed the money order requests. I later went to her and asked for forgiveness. Monzón would have fired me had I not lied for him.”

A compromising fax

A fax that Posada Carriles sent from El Salvador to Guatemala under another of his aliases, on August 25, 1997, corroborates de Rojas’ testimony. In the fax, Posada Carriles informed two of his co-conspirators, “This afternoon, via Wester [sic] Union, you’ll receive four payments of $800.” He further added, “I need all the data from the nightclub in order to try to confirm it. If there is no publicity, there is no payment.”

The prosecution is expected to introduce the fax into evidence soon.

New York Times reporter, Ann Louise Bardach, came into possession of the fax in 1998 and published an article on the subject on Sunday, July 12, 1998, in which she reported that a Cuban-American businessman, Tony Álvarez, who had a business in Guatemala, intercepted a fax that Posada had sent from El Salvador. Posada signed the document under the pseudonym “Solo.” “Mr. Posada acknowledged having written the document,” Bardach reported.

Bardach and Tony Álvarez

The prosecution announced at the beginning of this trial that Ann Louise Bardach and Tony Álvarez would be called to testify in El Paso. Defense attorney Arturo Hernández is already on record as opposing Tony Alvarez’s serving as a witness.

During opening statements on the first day of trial, Hernández told the jury that Tony Álvarez is a biased witness. He is “a personal friend of Fidel Castro and has had an intimate relationship with Fidel Castro’s daughter,” said Hernández that day. He also accused Ann Louise Bardach of bias, because she has continually written “against the exile community.” We shall see whether the defense attorney has anything to support his allegations.

The Mexican witness

Today the Court also heard the testimony of another witness, Mauricio Castro Medina, a Mexican immigration officer.

He waited in the hallway for an hour because Judge Cardone held yet another closed-door conference with some of the attorneys in the case. There is an ongoing battle over certain documents that the defense wants turned over to Posada Carriles. The Government has refused to turn some of them over, because they allegedly impact upon the nation’s security. The judge already heard arguments from both sides on this subject.

Before holding this latest closed hearing, Judge Cardone emptied the courtroom of everyone but her personal secretary, three prosecutors and the lead defense attorney. The marshals led Posada Carriles, one of his attorneys, the interpreters, the guards, the bailiffs and even one of the Government’s prosecutors out of the courtroom and into the hallway.

Meanwhile the witness from the Mexican Immigration Service passed the time reading an 884-page book about the life of Pancho Villa written by Paco Ignacio Taíbo, II.

When Mauricio Castro at last took the stand, he testified regarding the Mexican immigration stamps on a Guatemalan passport bearing the name of Manuel Enrique Castillo López. He said the passport had been used to enter Mexico by land via Chetumal in March of 2005.

The witness was also asked to examine a United States passport bearing the name of Generoso Bringas and declared that it had been used to depart Mexico by sea through Isla Mujeres in March of 2005.

The jurors should know from past testimony and evidence presented that the Guatemalan passport in question carries the photograph of Luis Posada Carriles and that Bringas’ U.S. passport was the one used by Posada to leave Mexico on the Santrina in March of 2005.

This witness’ testimony was monotonous and long. Judge Cardone yawned at least three times. As the witness droned on, Arturo Hernández stood up to stretch his back. “It aches,” Hernández told his colleague Felipe Millán. And what about Posada Carriles? He slept all the way through and snored so loudly that he made some of the jurors laugh.

José Pertierra practices law in Washington, DC. He represents the government of Venezuela in the case to extradite Luis Posada Carriles.

Translated by Manuel Talens and Machetera. They are members of Tlaxcala the international network of translators for linguistic diversity.

Spanish language version:http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2011/03/03/diario-de-el-paso-siguiendo-la-pista-al-dinero

Giustino di Celmo

El Paso Diary: Day 22 in the Trial of Posada Carriles

The testimony from the Cuban investigator Roberto Hernández Caballero in the case of United States v. Luis Posada Carriles ended today. Through Hernández Caballero’s statements over the past three days, the prosecution managed to establish as evidence that a series of explosions occurred in Havana in 1997-also that one of the explosions resulted in the murder of Fabio Di Celmo on September 4, 1997 in the Copacabana Hotel and that others resulted in physical injuries and material damages.

The Cuban witness gave his testimony in a concrete, coherent and credible manner over the course of three days on the stand. Posada Carriles’ defense attorney tried to impeach his credibility during two days of intense cross-examination but did not manage to puncture the candidness of the witness.

Poison barbs

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.

One notable sample being, “Isn’t it true that you are not a real investigator, but an officer of the Cuban intelligence services?” Lt. Col. Roberto Hernández Caballero responded with self-assurance and dignity. “I am an investigator,” he said, emphasizing the noun. The defense attorney wanted to ambush the witness by using a photograph of the damage caused by an explosion at the Hotel Nacional, but his plans were foiled by his own faulty premises: ones shaped entirely by the distorted vision of Cuba that the media in Miami provides.

“Is this the same photograph that you identified previously?” asked the attorney. The Cuban investigator first looked at the attorney-wondering what was coming-and then at the photo. “Correct,” he answered. “The hotel where you said an explosion occurred on July 12th, 1997?” “Yes.” “Can ordinary Cubans go to the Hotel Nacional without asking for permission?” “Yes,” he answered perplexed. “Can ordinary Cubans spend the night in a Cuban hotel without asking permission?” “Yes.” “Isn’t it a fact that ordinary Cubans do not have access to these hotels?” “No.” “Can Cubans have computers?”

Here, the prosecutor, Timothy J. Reardon, interrupted, “Objection, Your Honor. Relevance”. Reardon argued that this trial is not about life in Cuba-but whether Luis Posada Carriles made false declarations to the U.S. Government. The judge sustained Reardon’s objection and told Hernández, “Move on.”

A Miami attorney’s lesson in litigation

Almost all Americans boast that their legal system is the best in the world. In the United States, however, litigation is not necessarily a search for truth. Law students in this country learn right away that the job of a good defense attorney is to confuse the jury and twist the evidence. Posada Carriles’ attorney learned this lesson well, for he knows how to turn a serious case into something grotesque and ridiculous. Today he offered us a lesson into how to confound the evidence: the point being to so bewilder the jurors that they will be unable to distinguish between credible evidence and unfounded allegations.

The Cuban government shared with the U.S. Government detailed reports of its investigations into the series of bombs that exploded in Havana in 1997. The U.S. Government is using some of that evidence to prosecute Luis Posada Carriles in the federal court in El Paso. The prosecutors are also using a Cuban investigator from the Ministry of the Interior, Lt. Col. Hernández Caballero, as a star witness. He testified that the crime scene photographs are “true and faithful representations” of the destruction left behind by the explosions.

Since he apparently felt that he couldn’t discredit the photographs, Posada Carriles’ defense attorney spent several hours trying to discredit the witness. Using only part of the investigative reports, the Miami attorney cross-examined the Cuban witness and elicited from him confirmation that his signature appears on only one of the reports: the one having to do with the explosion at the Aché nightclub in the Hotel Meliá Cohiba. “I show you the investigative report from the incident at the Hotel Tritón: is your name on the report?”

One at a time, he also asked about the investigative reports from the hotels Capri, Nacional, Sol Palmeras and Chateau Miramar, as well as the restaurant La Bodeguita del Medio. He thus elicited a series of “no’s” from the witness, which is what he was after all along. The defense attorney wanted to leave the jurors with the impression that the Cuban investigator had perjured himself when he testified to having been present at most of the crime scenes. Thereby calling into question whether bombs exploded at all in Havana in 1997.

“If you would be so kind…”

“If you would be so kind as to examine my complete investigative report, you will see my name there,” answered the Cuban investigator. But Posada Carriles’ attorney wasn’t interested in the truth. Instead, he barked, “Isn’t it true that your name doesn’t appear on these reports because you are not an investigator after all, but a Cuban intelligence officer?” “No,” the Cuban investigator responded patiently, and once again he reminded the Miami attorney that the full investigative report carries his name as chief investigator. It also names several other team members who helped him with the investigation. “That’s not to say that I didn’t see, that I didn’t observe,” added the witness. “Look, I’m a boss. I go to the crime scene, I see it, I give orders,” explained the investigator, “but I have other people who conduct different details of the investigation.”

When it was the U.S. Attorney’s turn to question the witness, he directed the jurors’ attention once again to the crime scene photographs. The photos are very important, because they are evidence that several bombs exploded in Havana in 1997. Reardon showed the witness photo after photo, and asked that he tell “the ladies and gentlemen of the jury if these crime scenes are those that you saw with your own eyes.” “Yes,” he affirmed as he looked at each photo. It was then Posada Carriles’ attorney turn to question the witness again. Lawyers call this re-cross.

The Miami attorney asked the clerk of the court to project onto the court’s television monitors the image of the Copacabana on September 4, 1997. Although the defense attorney didn’t remind the jurors, that’s the hotel where an explosion killed the Italian businessman, Fabio Di Celmo.

Wicker chairs The defense attorney cross-examined the Cuban investigator at length about the wicker chairs that appear in the photos alongside the pool of blood from Di Celmo’s fatal wounds. “The alleged pool of blood,” as Hernández cynically referred to it. “Doesn’t it seem strange to you that the explosion could have destroyed wood but not have affected the wicker chairs?” he asked, pointing to the upright chairs in the photograph. The witness’ response surprised him. “Wicker chairs are hollow. That’s why the shock waves from the explosion did not knock them to the ground,” said the Cuban investigator.

“Wickerwork is not like the sail of a boat that fills with the wind. Furthermore, the hotel is a relatively open place,” he added. Despite the investigator’s explanation, Posada Carriles’ attorney persisted in trying to insinuate to the jury that the crime scene must have been altered.

The jury

Each time the defense attorney asked the same question, the witness gave him the same answer—over and over. I looked at the jurors. The notepads were on their laps and the pencils in their pockets, no one was taking notes any more. The juror with the white blouse in the front row rubbed her eyes. The overweight juror on the left stretched and yawned, and the African-American in the second row who always appears more attentive than the rest, looked uncomfortably at his watch. What must they be thinking?

And what was Posada doing?

Meanwhile, Luis Posada Carriles slept like a baby. During a break, when he sensed movement all about him, he awoke and uttered, “We shall see, we shall see.” The jurors only see the defendant, when they are in the jury box. They see an old man who naps every day. I’m sure they hear him snore. I do. They have probably also seen him awaken, usually dabbing at the saliva on his chin with the white handkerchief he keeps in his pocket. But the jurors don’t see him during the breaks, stepping briskly down the hallways of the courthouse with his papers and plastic shopping bag. They don’t see him animatedly engaging with his lawyers and assistants.

Could it be that his lawyers want the jurors to see him asleep? Might they be looking for the jurors to take pity on a seemingly frail little old man? Is that why his lawyers don’t wake him? Is he really asleep?

The curtain falls

The scene of the defense attorney’s final act with the Cuban investigator ended similarly to the play’s opening scene-with great fanfare and a cascade of questions intended to confuse and obfuscate the jury. Questions are not evidence, but they are weighty. Attorney Hernández asked these and more like them. “When you met with the prosecutors in Cuba, what did they promise you?” “Did you participate in any negotiations about the terms of your testimony?” “Isn’t it a fact that the U.S. Government is paying your expenses during your stay in this country?” “Did they offer you any immunity in exchange for your testimony here? Yes or no.” “Do you know what sworn testimony is?” “Do you know what an oath is?” “Questions were asked of you here whose answers were under oath. Do you know that answers offered under oath expose one to sanctions such as perjury?” “Do you feel free to answer questions about Cuba?” “Did you tell the truth when you stated that Cubans can freely enter and use hotels on the island?”

It’s not necessary to detail how the even-tempered witness responded. I have rarely seen a witness as coherent and confident in front of a jury. The way in which he concluded his testimony will suffice: “The only thing that the United States asked me to do was that I tell the truth about my investigations in the case of the bombs that exploded in Havana.” Tomorrow the Cuban forensic pathologist, Yleana Vizcaíno Dimé, will testify about the autopsy she performed on Fabio Di Celmo.

To be continued.

José Pertierra practices law in Washington, DC. He represents the government of Venezuela in the case to extradite Luis Posada Carriles.

Translated by Machetera and Manuel Talens. They are members of Tlaxcala, the international network of translators for linguistic diversity.
Spanish language version: http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2011/02/11/diario-de-el-paso-arenas-movedizas

The trial of Luis Posada Carriles in El Paso stands now al filo del agua-on the eve of a major storm. I’m not talking about an Arctic storm like the one that hit this border town last week, causing power outages and even problems with our potable water, due to the record-breaking cold-minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit. The storm that will probably arrive tomorrow in El Paso is of another nature.

The great Mexican writer, Agustín Yáñez, said “al filo del agua is a campesino expression, meaning the immediate moments before the rains.” In a figurative sense, it means the coming of a major storm.

Tuesday

This Tuesday we get to the heart of the matter: the evidence and testimony related to the campaign of terror that set off bombs in a number of hotels and restaurants in Cuba in 1997. One of these killed an Italian businessman, Fabio Di Celmo, in Havana on September 4, 1997 at the Copacabana Hotel.

Up to now, the case has involved only the immigration infractions of Luis Posada Carriles’ illegal entry into the United States. The prosecution alleges that he arrived on the Santrina, a converted shrimp boat, and disembarked in Miami. Whereas the defendant says that a smuggler drove him into the country in a blue pickup truck that crossed the Mexican/U.S. border at Brownsville, Texas. No one doubts that he entered illegally, but the prosecution maintains that Posada lied to protect his coconspirators aboard the Santrina. It’s a very serious felony to smuggle a terrorist into the United States. Punishment could include up to 30 years in prison. We also heard testimony and looked at evidence of Posada Carriles’ use of false names, including one that appears next to his photograph in a Guatemalan passport.

The Cuban witnesses

As the case moves towards its dénouement, we turn to the next chapter. Already in El Paso and prepared to testify, are three Cuban experts who investigated these crimes in 1997:

1. Lieutenant Colonel Roberto Hernández Caballero, the only Cuban witness in the case of the Cuban Five in Miami in 2000/2001.

2. Major Misael Fonte, from the Central Crime Lab in Havana, with 18 years of experience as an expert there.

3. Dr. Ileana Vizcáino Dime, the medical forensic pathologist who examined the body of Fabio Di Celmo and found that the cause of death was a piece of shrapnel hurled from an explosive device that slashed his jugular vein.

But the United States is not accusing Posada Carriles of terrorism or murder. He stands indicted only for making false statements to U.S. Immigration authorities and committing perjury. However, much of Posada’s mendacity, under oath, is closely related to the bombs that were placed in Havana’s hotels in 1997 and to the murder of Fabio Di Celmo.

Three weeks ago, a jury in El Paso listened to a recording and clearly heard Posada Carriles tell an immigration judge in 2005 that he was not involved with the bombs that exploded in Havana in 1997, nor had he sent anyone with explosives from Central America to Cuba in that year.

Now the jury will hear that there was indeed a terrorist campaign that shook Havana 14 years ago.

Cuba delivered four files of information containing samples of the materials used for the explosives, videos with statements from eyewitnesses and from those arrested and transcripts of telephone conversations of those who perpetrated the terrorist acts. Cuban law enforcement officials taped some of these conversations.

Hernández: “The source is rotten”

What is Posada Carriles’ attorney’s strategy for confronting the testimony from the Cubans? In an interview that Posada Carriles’ attorney gave Channel 41 in Miami two months ago, Arturo Hernández outlined his opposition to the witnesses and to the Cuban evidence. “The problem is that the government’s proof comes from Cuba, and since the source is rotten, the evidence is rotten,” he said.

Judge Kathleen Cardone has prohibited the attorneys from giving interviews to the press while the case is being litigated. On August 25, 2009, Judge Cardone told the lawyers, including Hernández, that they must not make statements to the press that might influence the jury. This restriction was also placed upon Posada Carriles.

Hernández’s statements on Channel 41 caused a brief stir in court last week, when prosecution attorney Teresinski complained that Hernández had given an interview to that television station. Hernández told Judge Cardone that he’d only gone on the program to raise funds for the costs of litigating the case.

The video reveals that in an interview that lasted 11 minutes and 55 seconds, Hernández dedicated only a minute and a half to soliciting money. The rest of the interview is a frontal attack on the Cuban witnesses and evidence.

For example, in reference to the Cuban witnesses and without first listening to their testimony, Hernández already prejudged it. “There cannot be any truthful testimony while these individuals [the witnesses] are in the claws of the dictatorship of Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro…[In Cuba] there’s no truth. There, only the dictator’s truth exists. No statement that might come from Cuba is worth anything at all, in my opinion,” he said to the Channel 41 reporter.

It’s obvious that Hernández will brand the Cuban witnesses as nothing more than puppets of the Cuban government, as well as liars. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear him say that they are spies. Miami Cubans love to go down that road.

Thomas B. Wilner, an attorney with the law firm of Shearman & Sterling in Washington, DC, told me that the statements Hernandez made on Miami television are a possible violation of the rules of conduct that Judge Cardone imposed on the attorneys. “What Hernández said in that interview was designed to undercut the testimony, the evidence and the verdict,” said Wilner. “The prosecutor ought to raise this with the judge and tell her the details of what he said on Miami television,” he concluded.

During the interview with Channel 41, Hernández said, “I admire [Posada Carriles] as a Cuban patriot.” He did not explain why he admires him. The U.S. filmmaker Saul Landau commented, “if Posada has done nothing, why is he so admired and why do they pay him so much homage in Miami?”

The battle over the passport: Act Two

As a prelude to the gathering storm, today’s session began with motions from the prosecutors and the defense attorneys. Posada Carriles’ attorney, Rhonda Anderson, asked Judge Cardone to reconsider her decision last Friday to admit the Guatemalan report as evidence. This report also includes a copy of the Guatemalan passport with the photo of Posada Carriles, but under the name of Manuel Enrique Castillo López.

The prosecutors also moved for reconsideration. They argued that the judge should accept the original Guatemalan passport into evidence, since she had already accepted the copy as evidence.

Judge Cardone rejected the motions from both sides in less than two minutes and convened the jury.

ICE official: “I never searched the Santrina”

Attorney Arturo Hernández cross-examined Steven Usscher, an investigator from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who also testified on Friday. He managed to get Usscher to tell the jury that he had never carried out an inspection of the Santrina to find evidence that Posada Carriles had been on the boat. He said that he has no photographs or other evidence of the presence of Posada Carriles aboard the boat. Usscher, however, was not assigned to the case until a year after the Santrina is alleged to have brought Posada to Miami.

Prosecutor Reardon

The prosecutor, Timothy J. Reardon, then called the next witness, James Patterson, of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) office in El Paso. Despite heading up the government’s legal team, Reardon has until now allowed his colleagues Jerome Teresinski and Bridget Behling to conduct most of the direct examination.

Reardon exudes personal presence. He dresses with elegance in pinstriped suits, starched white shirts, colorful ties and a white handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket. As the famous tango says, las nieves del tiempo blanquearon su sien, “the snows of time whitened his temples.” He is eloquent yet knows how to get directly to the point.

When the members of the jury realized that he would be in charge of Patterson’s questioning, they took notice, sat up straighter, took out their notebooks and pencils and readied themselves to take notes.

But they had to wait a bit for the direct examination to begin. The defense attorney, Felipe Millán objected to Patterson’s testimony. “It’s cumulative testimony,” said Millán. “Patterson has nothing to do with the Posada case. “Officer Bolaños already testified on the same points. She was the person who interviewed Posada in 2006 in relation to his naturalization application,” he told the judge.

“No,” said Reardon. “Mr. Patterson will testify to complete the record.” Reardon argued “the defense´s cross-examination of Bolaños insinuated that the naturalization interview was an attempt to entrap Posada.” Patterson, he said, “destroys the myth that there was a government conspiracy against Posada.”

The judge overruled Millán’s objection and asked Reardon to begin his direct examination of Patterson.

Patterson did not testify about anything of substance. He said he has almost 13 years of experience and has performed some five or six thousand interviews in naturalization cases. Patterson said that “naturalization officers are obligated to interview each applicant personally in order to determine whether they are eligible,” thus debunking the defense theory that the interview had been a pretext for entrapment. Hearing what he wanted to hear, the prosecutor concluded his direct examination.

The expressions on the faces of the jury members showed their disappointment. They had wanted to hear something substantive: important evidence. They were frustrated that the witness was only called to establish the bureaucratic procedures at USCIS.

The jurors don’t realize it yet, but tomorrow they will hear substantive testimony. Although it has not been announced, I am sure that the person who will examine the Cuban witnesses will be Reardon. It’s a question of the importance of the testimony but also one of protocol. The witnesses are here at the special invitation of the government of the United States, and it is logical that lead counsel will conduct the direct examination.

Historic collaboration

When in 1998, Cuba gave the United States evidence regarding terrorist acts on the island, Washington used it to jail the Cuban Five. None of the terrorists was prosecuted or arrested. It would appear that a new paradigm of collaboration between the two nations is at work here.

Posada Carriles’ attorney commented to Channel 41 in December that “it’s scandalous that the government of the United States is collaborating in this unprecedented way with the Cuban government.” Among certain extremist sectors in Miami that collaboration may be seen as a scandal, but it is important and historic.

For the first time, the United States is showing a willingness to establish before a federal court that Posada Carriles directed a terror campaign against Cubans with the financing of certain terrorist groups in Miami and New Jersey. It’s true, until now he has only been indicted for lying, but beginning tomorrow, there is much, much more at stake in El Paso.

José Pertierra practices law in Washington, DC. He represents the government of Venezuela in the case to extradite Luis Posada Carriles.

Translated by Machetera and Manuel Talens. They are members of Tlaxcala, the international network of translators for linguistic diversity.

Spanish language version:http://www.cubadebate.cu/opinion/2011/02/05/el-diario-del-paso-la-batalla-del-pasaporte/