US Judge Orders Posada Released

US judge orders anti-Castro activist Posada released

Apr 6 04:31 PM US/Eastern

A federal judge Friday ordered that former CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles, wanted by Cuba and Venezuela for the deadly downing of a Cuban jet, be released pending a hearing on immigration fraud charges.

The ruling, made by a federal judge in Texas, does not necessarily mean Posada Carriles, 79, will leave jail immediately, since he could be arrested by immigration officials that have a deportation order for him.

The judge ordered the Cuban-born Venezuelan national released on a 350,000 dollars bail on condition that he remain confined to his Miami home and submit to "electronic monitoring," according to the text of the order by the federal court in El Paso, Texas.

Posada Carriles, a fierce opponent of Cuban President Fidel Castro, is accused of masterminding the downing of a Cuban jet off Barbados in 1976 in which 73 people were killed.

He was detained in Venezuela in 1976 and convicted in the case, but fled prison in 1985.

He was also sentenced to eight years' jail in Panama in a bomb plot to assassinate Castro during an Ibero-American summit there in 2000, but was pardoned by outgoing president Mireya Moscoso.

Posada Carriles was detained by US immigration officials in May 2005 for entering the United States illegally. He is currently held in a federal prison in the southwestern state of New Mexico.

US officials refuse to release Posada Carriles to Venezuela or Cuba, claiming he might be tortured. But they have also refused to free him, calling him a threat to national security.

Havana and Caracas accuse Washington of harboring a known terrorist.

US immigration authorities criticized the judge's release order, and said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials would arrest Posada Carriles.

"We are disappointed with the ruling. We remind you there is an immigration detainer pending against Mr Posada," the ICE spokesman Michael Keegan told AFP.

"This detainer means Mr Posada will remain in federal custody although he will be transferred from the custody of the US marshals to that of" the ICE.

Declassified US documents show that Posada Carriles worked for the CIA from 1965 to June 1976. He reportedly helped the US government ferry supplies to the Contra rebels that waged a bloody campaign to topple the socialist Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the 1980s.