AN APPEAL TO FRIENDS OF CUBA Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit A CALL TO CUBA'S FRIENDS On his arrival in the Republic of Panama to participate at the 10th Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government on November 17, President Fidel Castro publicly denounced a new Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) plan to assassinate him. He identified the leader of the group involved in the assassination attempt as Luis Posada Carriles, a well-known international terrorist of Cuban origin. Relevant information was supplied to the Panamanian security forces enabling them to apprehend this criminal and his accomplices a few hours later. Once again, the enemies of the Revolution have shown that they have no scruples about using political assassination as a means of achieving their nefarious objectives. Once again, it was not only the leader of the Cuban Revolution whose life was endangered, but the lives of all the participating heads of state, their delegations and, according to the latest news received, the lives of around 1,000 students at Panama University who were due to meet with them. The terrorists were found to have in their possession a diagram gof the university campus and 20 kilograms of high-powered C4 plastic explosive. Luis Posada Carriles' criminal record is extensive and shameful. He is linked to numerous assassination attempts on Comrade Fidel and has been behind many attacks on Cuban missions and officials in other countries. He was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and led several different terrorist groups in perpetrating crimes. He was the mastermind behind the most monstrous crime of all: the explosion of a Cubana airliner in full flight, with 73 passengers on board. Among these were the entire Cuban junior fencing team, returning home after winning all the gold medals at the Central American Games in Venezuela. He was imprisoned for this outrage, but escaped from a Venezuelan prison thanks to material and financial support from the CANF and the CIA. Since that time, he has been living in Central America and played a major role in financing and supplying the Nicaraguan contras. Working under the orders of Oliver North and receiving a salary from the U.S. State Department, he played an important part in the activities later revealed in the Iran-Contra scandal. With the support of the CANF, he has been linked to various assassination attempts on Fidel at all the Ibero-American summits. He was also responsible for the placement of bombs in 1997 in various Cuban tourist hotels and installations, for which he used El Salvadoran and Guatemalan mercenaries. These crimes resulted in the death of an Italian tourist and numerous injuries. A person with such a horrific history of criminality and terrorism cannot go unpunished. The time has come for him to be tried and sentenced. He must not be allowed to escape justice once more. For this reason, the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples calls on all Cuba solidarity organizations, on the many millions of friends of the Cuban Revolution, on all the world's honest men and women, to mobilize in order to prevent such impunity. Luis Posada Carriles and his accomplices must be extradited to Cuba. Cuban justice has the right to judge his crimes because they were committed against the Cuban people and the majority of his victims were Cubans. We give an absolute guarantee that a fair trial will take place and agree to the participation of an international tribunal, so that his repugnant genocidal crimes can be judged. We call for a mobilization of public opinion. The united force of our peoples must not allow complicit decisions to be made over these crimes. The Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples 21 November 2000 ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= rhc-eng-14711 2000-Nov-22 03:11:19