Posada's attorney says he'd face torture if sent to Venezuela

Posted on Tue, Aug. 30, 2005


Posada's attorney says he'd face torture if sent to Venezuela

By ALFONSO CHARDY
achardy@xxxxxxxxxx

EL PASO - Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles will be turned over to
Cuba if he is extradited to Venezuela in connection with a 1976 airliner
bombing, the first witness in Posada's U.S. asylum hearing said Tuesday.
''I don't have the slightest doubt, once returned, Mr. Posada would be sent
immediately to Cuba,'' Joaquin Chaffardet, Posada's longtime friend and a
Caracas lawyer, told immigration judge William Abbott.
The Cuban government wants to try Posada for a series of hotel bombings and
has said he could be executed.
In Venezuela -- now a Cuban ally -- Posada was acquitted of the 1976 Cuban
jet attack that killed 73 people. He left the country before the government
exhausted its appeals to retry him. Posada denies involvement in the case.
On Monday, Abbott designated Venezuela as the country to which Posada would
be deported if he loses his bid for U.S. asylum and any subsequent appeals.
Posada was born in Cuba, but later became a naturalized Venezuelan.
Department of Homeland Security prosecutor Gina Garrett-Jackson told Abbott
her agency would not send Posada to Cuba but did not object to Venezuela.
Chaffardet testified Tuesday that Posada could not receive a fair trial in
Venezuela because Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has undue influence over
Venezuela's judicial system.
Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel and Venezuelan Ambassador
Bernardo Alvarez have said Venezuela will not turn over Posada to Cuba.
Cuban leader Fidel Castro has indicated that Cuba is not seeking Posada.
Chaffardet also claimed Tuesday that Venezuelan authorities likely would
torture the exile militant because ``all political detainees in Venezuela
have been subjected to torture.''
Venezuelan authorities insist Posada would not be tortured.
Posada, 77, has been held here since U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement officers detained him in southwest Miami-Dade County May 17 --
about two months after sneaking into the United States.
A square-jawed man with a thick mustache, Chaffardet, the first defense
witness, has known Posada since the late 1960s when the exile militant went
to work for the Venezuelan intelligence service, DISIP, in Caracas.
Posada and Chaffardet served together as intelligence officers in DISIP and
later jointly operated a private investigation firm. When Posada was
imprisoned in Panama in connection with a 2000 alleged plot to assassinate
Castro, Chaffardet became his lawyer in Caracas.
Chaffardet sought to convince Judge Abbott that Posada would be tortured if
returned to Venezuela by repeatedly citing cases of prominent detainees
routinely tortured.
Chaffardet cited the case of three former Venezuelan police officers accused
of killing a prominent Venezuelan prosecutor, Danilo Anderson, who was
widely perceived as loyal to Chavez. Anderson was killed last year as he was
driving in Caracas.
Chaffardet said the detainees told a court in Caracas that they had been
tortured while in detention.
''They were kept blindfolded for 10 or 15 days, causing infection to the
eyes,'' Chaffardet said. ``They were beaten. They were injected iodine into
their urinary tract through the penis.''
Posada's lead attorney, Matthew Archambeault, read into the record a passage
in the 2004 State Department human rights report on Venezuela that seemed to
corroborate Chaffardet's testimony.
''Lawyers for the three accused the police of torturing the three men after
illegally detaining them,'' Archambeault read. ``The torture allegations
included the use of electric shock, sensory deprivation, and psychological
torture. A judge ordered an investigation into the allegations of torture,
but no arrests had been made by year's end.''
On Monday, Archambeault offered as additional evidence a Feb. 18 ruling by
Miami immigration Judge Neale Foster when he suspended the deportation to
Venezuela of two former Venezuelan national guard lieutenants accused of
bombing two diplomatic missions in Caracas.
Foster wrote that the lieutenants' case was ``replete with evidence that
Venezuela uses torture of criminals under arrest and torture of dissidents
who oppose the government.''
Garrett-Jackson objected to admission of Foster's ruling, saying the case is
on appeal. Abbot said he would take the issue under advisement.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/12515653.htm


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