Cubana Airlines Passenger Killer Was a Washington Protégé

On Tuesday, lawyer Jose Pertierra, who represented Venezuela's government for the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles, revealed that this terrorist acted under Washington’s tutelage when he murdered 73 passengers of the Cubana flight CU-455 in 1976.

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Pertierra pointed out that Posada Carriles, who was a Venezuela's citizen, was never tried because he kept secrets about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which could have implicated the U.S. government in terrorist operations.

On October 6, 1976, the terrorists Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo detonated C-4 bombs in a Cubana de Aviacion aircraft, which instantly killed 57 passengers from Cuba, 11 from Guyana and 5 from North Korea.

After being captured, they pointed Posada Carriles as the intellectual perpetrator of the attack, which led to his detention in Venezuela. However, he escaped from prison to the U.S. before being condemn.

The international law states that if the evidence shows the alleged guilt of the accused, he should be detained for extradition purposes or be tried for aggravated homicide under the U.S. law, which never happened.

A few weeks after the escape and despite being an Interpol code red fugitive, the CIA hired Posada Carriles to work on the operation Contra at the military base in Ilopango, El Salvador. This U.S.-financed operation promoted terrorist attacks against the government of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in Nicaragua. 

"Posada Carriles was a CIA agent and his own defense attorney said that everything he did in Latin America, he did it on behalf of Washington," Pertierra said.

Despite the efforts made by the governments of Venezuela and Cuba to seek justice and prosecute the terrorist, he lived as a free man in Florida until his death in 2018.