LAST Wednesday’s 34th anniversary of the bombing by “anti-Castro” terrorists of a Cubana passenger aircraft off Barbados that killed all 73 people onboard, also coincided with the launch of an appeal by Caribbean citizens for the release of five Cuban political prisoners in jail in the USA since September 1998.

The appeal, bearing the signatures of Caribbean nationals across the region, and posted on the popular website of the Jamaica-born Caribbean economist Dr Norman Girvan, is specifically directed to President Barack Obama.

The ‘Cuban Five’, as they have come to be known in an international campaign launched by Cuba in 2000, at the time of their conviction in the USA on charges of “espionage and conspiracy to commit murder”, are: Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, Fernandez Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez.

The Cuban political prisoners have been consistent in denying the nature of the charges and have been protesting against the “unfairness” of their trials and the “inhumane conditions” they have had to endure prior to and during the court trials and over the period of the past eight years.

The Cuban Government had acknowledged the five were members of Cuba’s intelligence service, who had travelled in 1998 to Miami to spy on the activities of the Cuban exile community that has been systematically carrying out bombing attacks in Havana but were “not there to spy on the Government of the USA”.

Primary plotters

Among the anti-Castro Cuban emigres said to have been involved in the terrorist bombings in Havana were Luis Posada Carriles, now known to have been one of the masterminds of the Cubana plane tragedy off Barbados on October 6, 1976. Another was Orlando Bosch. Both were to be beneficiaries of protective political care in the USA.

Condemnation of the unfairness of court trials of the ‘Cuban Five’ and conditions they have had to endure, including 17 months of solidarity confinement, denials of visitations by family members and access to relevant documents, have been lodged by a variety of sources.

Among them would be the United Nations Human Rights Council; National Lawyers Guild of the USA; members of the European Parliament and other national parliaments; eight Nobel laureates; the US actors group co-chaired by Danny Glover and Ed Asner and, now, the appeals from Caribbean citizens for freedom of the political prisoners.

Over the past three decades, successive US administrations have been consistent in ignoring international and domestic pleas on behalf of the ‘Cuban Five’. Washington has also contemptuously given a deaf ear to calls — including from Caricom governments and organisations — for the trial of Posada Carriles for his documented involvement in the bombing of the Cubana tragedy in which all 73 people onboard perished, mostly Cubans and also including 11 Guyanese and five North Koreans.

For many years since that unprecedented tragedy in Caribbean airspace, there have been calls by the governments of Cuba and Venezuela, as well as Caricom, for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.

Specifically identified for extradition to face a court trial has been Posada Carriles who had acquired Venezuelan citizenship before his involvement as one of the primary plotters of the Cubana disaster and other escapades in terrorism against Cuba.

But, like Posada Carriles, Bosch continues to enjoy sanctuary in the USA — the superpower that never fails to remind the world of its commitment to democracy and the rule of law.

Long before Barack Obama wrote his name into 21st century history as the first-ever African-American President and raised hopes for “fundamental changes” in how America conducts business at home and abroad, Caricom governments had appealed, in the name of justice and human decency, for Posada Carriles to face trial. No such luck.

On the contrary, since 1988, in the face of the decision by a US judge for his deportation as a terrorist, “unfettered by law and human decency”, Bosch was to be taken into Uncle Sam’s protective political care — thanks to a Presidential pardon received from George HW Bush, then occupant of the White House.

Disclosures of the terroristic activities of both Bosch and Posada Carriles as agents of the CIA working with the anti-(Fidel) Castro community of Cuban exiles have been accessed from records of the CIA and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

US hypocrisy

Today, therefore, as the people of Barbados and the rest of Caricom join Cuba in silent remembrance of the victims of the Cubana tragedy, it would be difficult to ignore the double standard, the sheer political hypocrisy, of ‘Uncle Sam’ in its selective execution of bilateral extradition treaties.

The classic example, best known by Jamaicans, and too recent for the entire Caricom region to ignore, is the extradition case involving Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, currently a prisoner of the USA on charges of drug trafficking and gunrunning.

This internationally publicised extradition that resulted from extreme pressure by Uncle Sam, has posed tremendous problems for the authorities in Kingston with current debate on its ultimate impact on the longevity of the Bruce Golding administration.

Yet, in sharp contrast, and with no intent to rationalise criminality, it is quite relevant to again observe the utter hypocrisy of the USA in how it responds to extradition cases.

Currently, while the people and Government of Jamaica are coping with the consequences of uprooting, on Uncle Sam’s demand, ‘Dudus’ Coke from his Tivoli Gardens stronghold and extraditing him for trial in America, there continues to be open contempt by US authorities for the requested extradition by both Cuba and Venezuela of Posada Carriles — if not Bosch as well — for involvement in the Cubana tragedy 34 years ago today.

There needs to be a response from the “time-for-change’ President Obama to revisit the cases of the two Cuban emigres being protected in America and known to be integrally linked with the Cubana tragedy as agents of the CIA.