THIS May Day weekend, when the Caribbean reflects on the gains, losses and challenges for workers and the social and economic ills to be overcome, Cuba plans on also making it an occasion to expose a significant contradiction in America's "war on terrorism" that directly relates to our region.

Rickey Singh

The contradiction is associated with the protection afforded by two US administrations of two Cuban émigrés, who were the reported masterminds in the bombing of a Cubana passenger aircraft over Barbados airspace on October 6, 1976, resulting in the tragic and horrific deaths of all 73 people on board.

Countries with an interest in that human tragedy include Cuba, USA, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados.
Among the dead were 53 Cubans; 11 Guyanese and five North Koreans on their way to Havana having started out from Guyana with stops at Piarco International in Trinidad and Tobago and Grantley Adams International in Barbados.

In 1998, Barbados dedicated a sea-front monument in St James to the victims of the tragedy, with President Fidel Castro as an honoured guest for the occasion.juu

But why, 29 years after that first-ever massive terrorist bombing tragedy in the Greater Caribbean, has President's Castro's government decided to place special focus on this May Day of 2005 - an exposure of US protection of two Cuban émigrés linked with that shocking Cubana disaster?

The short answer is that if the world's sole superpower is honest in its current war against all forms of terrorism and in bringing all terrorists to justice, then Cuba, which has so often suffered from terrorism, allegedly hatched and executed from US soil, wants to remind more than Caribbean nations of the protection being afforded by America of two wanted Cuban émigrés, who were major players in that Cubana tragedy.

CASTRO... decided to place special focus on the Cubana incident during the May Day parade

Cuba's argument, to be articulated at a planned mass rally today in Havana, is that America cannot selectively protect Cuban émigrés wanted for documented terrorist activities, such as the Cubana tragedy, while adopting a self-righteous position on the war against terrorism.

The two Cuban émigrés, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, have been both extended, at different periods, protection by US authorities, although it was publicly known that they had been repeatedly engaged in terrorist activities and linked as anti-Castro collaborators with the CIA.

Venezuela, under the leadership of President Hugo Chavez, has also recently shown an interest in reviving prosecutorial investigation into the Cubana tragedy.

CHAVEZ... has also recently shown an interest in reviving prosecutorial investigation into the Cubana tragedy

Bosch had received a "pardon" from former President George Bush, after he was facilitated in leaving Venezuela for Miami following a controversial judicial ruling and before an appeal.

And just over a month ago, while his son, President George W Bush, continues his "war on terrorism", Posada was facilitated in arriving in the USA from Panama, reportedly with the help of a Miami-based businessman.

Posada had been arrested in November 2000 in Panama, along with another anti-Castro militant, for plotting to assassinate the Cuban President during an Ibero-American Summit in Panama. Prior to that, he was also wanted for the murder of the Cuban ambassador to the United Nations, Felix Garcia, on September 11, 1980 in New York.

Question: Where in the USA are Bosch and Posada today and how are they being facilitated to freely travel, but kept far from the reach of the Cuban government for crimes committed against Cuba?
The two had been exposed by naturalised Venezuelans - Hernan Ricardo Lozano and Freddie Lugo - implicated in the planting of the fatal bomb on the Cubana aircraft - as their "principals" operating out of Venezuela.

As intelligence reports and two Barbadian taxi drivers were to subsequently confirm, following earlier confessions by Lozano and Lugo to Trinidadian police, their planners for the tragedy in Venezuela were Bosch and Posada.

Prior to the Cubana tragedy, Bosh and his "Commando of United Revolutionary Organisations (CORU), which was also directly implicated in the Cubana tragedy of 1976, had been involved with Chile's intelligence service, DINA, in the assassination of the Chilean ambassador to Washington, Orlando Letelier.

There is an entire chapter devoted to this in the inspiring investigative journalism of John Dinges and Saul Laundau in their Assassination on Embassy Row (Pantheon Books 1980).

At the time of the Cubana tragedy many controversial legal issues were raised about why the then Venezuela government felt that the captured bombing duo of Lozano and Lugo should face trial either in Trinidad and Tobago or Barbados.

For their part, Trinidad and Tobago settled to expel Lozano and Lugo to Venezuela; and Barbados shared intelligence and other relevant information in its possession for the initial investigation in which the USA had requested and given a presence.

Subsequently, however, the USA failed to respond to an appeal made in November 1976, by then Venezuela President, Carlos Andres Perez, for cooperation in dispelling allegations of America's involvement with the Cubana tragedy.

Later, Washington was to claim non-involvement and, therefore, had no information to share.

This then, is the scenario involving two Cuban émigrés linked to the Cubana tragedy and the USA which, while seeking to mobilise the world to fight "terrorism", protects two known terrorists in keeping with its own war against Castro and Cuba" and from whose territory acts of terrorism and aggression continue against Cuba, a member nation of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS).

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