When America's Ally Is A Terrorist

By SIOBHAN MORRISSEY
Miami – Sat Aug 23, 5:00 pm ET
Original Source Time.com
Courtesy Of Yahoo News

Ever since Luis Posada Carriles was smuggled into the U.S. three years ago, he's become an international poster boy for double standards in the war on terror. But a federal appeals court may now prompt the Bush Administration to follow its own post-9/11 principles.

When Posada was detained after sneaking into the United States from Mexico in 2005, the U.S. could have extradited him to Venezuela to face charges in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner that killed all 73 persons aboard. He denies involvement, but declassified FBI documents implicate him in the crime. (A questionable military trial in Venezuela had acquitted Posada of the bombing charge and he was in jail awaiting a civilian retrial when he escaped from that country in 1985.) This time, federal prosecutors opted to try him on charges of lying about how he got into the U.S. Even so, Posada was released last year after a federal judge in El Paso, Texas, dismissed his case in part because of poor translation during Posada's interview with immigration officials. The decision left many legal experts shaking their heads.

Since then, the 80-year-old Cuban exile has lived with relatives in Miami, a free man - prompting critics to call it hypocritical for the U.S. to give Posada a pass while sentencing Osama bin Laden's driver, Salim Ahmed Hamden, to 66 months in prison this month for providing material support to al-Qaeda.

"By any reasonable definition, [Posada] is a terrorist," says Dennis Jett, a former U.S. ambassador to Peru and now a professor at Pennsylvania State University's international affairs school. "He may not be a threat to the U.S., but he is to the people he's [allegedly] been attacking."