Anti-Castro Militant Case at the Fifth Circuit

The government seems to be serious about going after a foe of Fidel Castro who plotted the bombing of a Cuban Airliner. He allegedly lied on a naturalization application.  Michael Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press:

A U.S. judge improperly dismissed immigration fraud charges against an anti-Castro militant suspected of plotting the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner, a government lawyer told a federal appeals court Wednesday.

Prosecutors are appealing the dismissal of charges that Luis Posada Carriles made false statements as part of his bid to become a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Posada is a Cuban-born citizen of Venezuela, where he is wanted for alleged involvement in a 1976 airliner bombing that killed 73 people. He denies any wrongdoing.

U.S. prosecutors say he was taken into custody after he illegally entered the U.S. from Mexico in 2005.

In dismissing the immigration charges last year, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone in El Paso, Texas, said federal authorities engaged in trickery and deceit by using a naturalization interview to build a criminal case against Posada.

Cardone also ruled that transcripts of Posada’s April 2006 interview couldn’t be used as evidence in the criminal case. The judge said the interview was tainted by a translator’s mistakes interpreting for Posada.

Federal prosecutors argued Wednesday before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans that Cardone should not have taken the case out of a jury’s hands. John De Pue, a lawyer for the Department of Justice’s national security division, said Cardone went too far in tossing out the entire transcripts of the interview. Click here for the rest of the story.

bh