Terrorist Luis Posada Carriles Must Return to Panama

(Source: http://www.cubanews.ain.cu/2008/0702posadacarriles.htm/ ) HAVANA, Cuba, July 2 (acn) International terrorist Luis Posada Carriles must return to Panama to serve his sentence, indicated lawyer Jose Pertierra, who represents Venezuela judicially in this case. Pertierra is the lawyer who is handling Venezuela's demand for the extradition of Posada Carriles from the United States for the sabotage in mid air of a Cubana airliner that killed all 73 people on board in 1976, PL news agency reports.

The jurist recalled that the pardon granted by the Panamanian president at the time, Mireya Moscoso, is unconstitutional and therefore the sentence continues to be valid, he stressed.

In the opinion of the lawyer, the Cuban-Venezuelan criminal should be imprisoned in Panama instead of being free on the streets of the US city of Miami, Florida. He still had years to serve in Panama, he emphasized.

On June 30, the US Supreme Court of Justice declared unconstitutional the pardons granted by Moscoso to Posada and  three other terrorists of Cuban origin in 2004, at the end of her presidential term. 

The ruling of the judges was unanimous, and described as irregular the decrees through which Moscoso set these dangerous criminals free. Their processes should return to their original state before the presidential pardon.

Pertierra accentuated that this verdict means that the Panamanian government should issue an arrest warrant against the criminal, so that he returns to that country and continues to serve his sentence for a homicide attempt against Cuban leader Fidel Castro in the year 2000. 

The lawyer told Radio Nacional de Venezuela radio station: "we're interested in knowing if Panama is planning to issue an arrest warrant against Posada, because the pardon is illegal, and I assume that they will also ask INTERPOL to include him on the list of fugitives."