Luis Posada Carriles

He was born in the city of Cienfuegos on 15 February 1928, the son of Luis and Dolores. He became a chemist in the sugar industry.

Stout build, approximately 6’3’’, green eyes, gray hair, Caucasian, scars on face.

Married to the Cuban Nievelina “Nieves” González Leyva, with whom he has two children, Jorge and Janet. In El Salvador, he had amorous relations with Helsie “Titi” Bosch, who passed away at the end of 1999.

Some of the main aliases he has used are:

The Hunter (referring to his reputation as an expert marksman), Ramón Medina, Ignacio Medina, Juan Ramón Medina, Ramón Medina Rodríguez, José Ramón Medina, Rivas López, Juan José Rivas, Juan José Rivas López, Julio César Dumas, Franco Rodríguez Mena.

In 1954, he moved to Havana and established ties to politicians who supported dictator Fulgencio Batista. He worked for the secret police from 1955 until the fall of Batista’s dictatorship. Starting 1957, he maintained links with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States.

Following the triumph of the revolution in 1959, he established ties to counterrevolutionary groups that were carrying out acts of sabotage in Cuba. He trespassed into the Argentinean embassy in 1960, alleging to be the victim of political persecution.

He left Cuba on 25 February 1961 with a safe-conduct, headed for Miami. A week later, under orders from the CIA, he joined the counterrevolutionary organizations that were preparing the Bay of Pigs invasion. From March to April 1961, he served as instructor of those who, in Guatemala, were preparing to infiltrate Cuba via the Bay of Pigs to carry out acts of sabotage. He did not take part in the invasion, as the mercenary forces had been defeated before his ship arrived at the place of the invasion.

Following the defeat of the mercenary invasion, he joined the terrorist organization Cuban Nationalist Movement (CNM). This organization was involved in terrorist activities against the Cuban government in the United States, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.

He joined the US Army, where he received military training. He was trained at the notorious School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia.

In 1963, he was recruited as a CIA agent and became a naval instructor.

In 1964, he was the head officer at a training camp of the Revolutionary Junta (JURE), where Cuban-born terrorists were receiving training. Here, he was trained by the CIA in the use of explosives and in demolition techniques. He headed a CIA infiltration team that conducted anti-Cuba activities.

In the course of these years, he established ties to members of Alpha 66, Commandos L and the 30th of November Movement, among other organizations that carried out terrorist actions against our country.

In May 1965, the FBI reported that Posada Carriles was involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the Guatemalan government. A declassified CIA report dated June 1965 places him and Jorge Más Canosa in Veracruz, Mexico, where he attempted to blow up a Soviet ship.

At the end of the 1960s, he moved to Venezuela. In 1967, the CIA gave him a position in Venezuela’s Intelligence and Prevention Services Headquarters (DISIP), where he served as Head of Operations and had other tasks as CIA liaison. Using the pseudonym of “Commissar Basilio”, he took part in the repression of progressive Venezuelan and Latin American groups. He had Bosch join him in Venezuela to coordinate terrorist actions against Cuba with him.

Between 1967 and 1976, under orders from the CIA, he worked for the secret services of Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile and Argentina.

In June 1975, he created the Commercial and Industrial Research Agency (ICICA), which he used as front for his terrorist activities in countries in the region. The agency was closed after the bombing of a Cuban commercial plane in Barbados.

With Orlando Bosch, he founded the anti-Cuban terrorist organization named the Committee of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU). As an active member of this terrorist organization, he took part in the following actions:

22 April 1976: Involved in the bombing of Cuba’s embassy in Portugal, where two Cuban diplomats lost their lives.

1 July 1976: Places a bomb at the Costa Rica – Cuba Cultural Centre in Costa Rica.

9 July 1976: A bomb is placed in luggage carried by a Cubana flight in Jamaica.

10 July 1976: A bomb is placed in the Cubana Airlines branch office in Barbados.

11 July 1976: A bomb is placed in Air Panama branch offices in Colombia.
4 October 1976: CORU claims responsibility for the placing of a bomb in a television station in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which was broadcasting the Cuban film “The New School”.

Posada Carriles was identified as one of the masterminds (the other being Orlando Bosch) behind the midair bombing of a Cuban commercial plane off the coasts of Barbados, in which 73 people lost their lives. The two criminals were detained and tried in Caracas, as were Hernán Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, the men who placed the bomb in the plane.

He was held in a number of Venezuelan penal institutions from 1976 to 18 August 1985, when, after several attempts and with the aid of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), he managed to escape. During a shift change, he left through the prison’s main entrance. After spending 15 days in Caracas, he was taken to Aruba in a shrimp boat. From there, he flew to Costa Rica in a private plane and, subsequently, to El Salvador.

His “jailbreak” was financed by Más Canosa, who bribed the guards with $ 26,000 on indirect orders from the CIA. At the Tower Commission hearings on the Iran-Contra affair, it was revealed that Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, member of the US National Security Council, had directed this operation. Posada Carriles relocated to El Salvador, where he served at the Ilopango military base as advisor for the Nicaraguan contras, under direct orders from North, for nearly two years.

In an interview for a Venezuelan magazine held a few weeks after his prison break, Posada said that he was once again fighting the communists somewhere in Central America. Following this, he was interviewed by the Miami Herald and published an autobiography.

During the Iran-Contra affair, in October 1986, he joined a group of Venezuelan instructors that were training Salvadorian police officers in counterinsurgency and interrogation techniques. He relocated to Guatemala in 1988, where he worked as security adviser for the Guatemalan Telephone Company (GUATEL). During this time, he traveled frequently through Central America, especially to Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica and El Salvador. In these countries, he maintained close ties to military officers and businesspeople who offered him aid. He has also traveled to Miami, Spain, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Aruba.

In Guatemala in February 1990, he was gravely injured when unidentified gunmen shot him in the face. Following this incident, he received financial aid from the director of CANF, Alberto Hernández, who covers part of the hospital bill.

Following his recovery, he was relocated to San Pedro Sula, Honduras, where he stayed at a hotel, courtesy of his friend, the Cuban-born entrepreneur Rafael Hernández Nodarse.

During the 1990s, he maintained ties to Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo, also known as “Gasparito”, and to other terrorists, with whom he plotted the assassination of Cuba’s Commander in Chief on several occasions; he also aided a number of Miami-based organizations in the acquisition of weapons from Central America, weapons that were to be used in violent actions against Cuba.

In 1992, CANF sets up a “military wing” tasked with planning and executing terrorist actions against Cuba and its top officials. Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll and Luis Posada Carriles activiely participated in these activities. In 1993, this terrorist wing of CANF adopts the name of the Cuban National Front.

In January 1994, he plotted the assassination of the Commander in Chief (a plan financed by CANF) in Honduras, on the occasion of the inauguration of President Carlos Roberto Reina. In June, with the same objective, he travels with Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo to Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. The plan was to assassinate Fidel Castro as he toured the city with Nobel Prize for Literature Gabriel García Márquez.

In June 1995, he traveled to Costa Rica to blow up a Cuban ship. In December, with Ramón Orozco Crespo, he planned the blowing up of a Cuban facility.

According to a denunciation by Dr. Ramón Custodio, head of the Honduran Committee for Human Rights, in 1995,  working with a group of Honduran military officers, Posada Carriles placed a total of 41 bombs in Honduras.

In 1997, with aid from CANF, he organizes a terrorist group in Central America to carry out violent actions against our country, recruiting mercenaries from the region. The bombs begin to go off in April 1997: Chávez Abarca and Otto René Rodríguez Llerena, mercenaries recruited by Posada Carriles, are behind the bombings. 14 bombs were prepared, 8 of which were set off, 4 deactivated and 2 confiscated at the airport. These explosions resulted in one death, the wounding of several people and considerable material damage.

In a New York Times interview published on 12 and 13 July 1998, Posada Carriles admitted he had been behind the 1997 bombings. In this interview, he stated: “As you can see, the FBI and the CIA don’t bother me and I am helpful to them, whenever I can give them a hand, I do so”. With respect to the question of a troubled conscience, he said: “I sleep like a baby”. According to the newspaper, the FBI had knowledge of the plots against the Cuban tourism industry and did nothing. In reference to the death of Fabio Di Celmo, he said: “It’s unfortunate that someone died, but we can’t stop working. That Italian was sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time”.
In 1997, with CANF President Arnaldo Monzón Plasencia, he plotted the assassination of the Cuban Commander in Chief, a plan that was to be executed during the 7th Ibero-American Summit held in Isla Margarita, Venezuela. Counterrevolutionaries Nelly Rojas, Pedro Morales and Francisco Pimentel, among others, were involved in the plot and apparently offered him aid.

Explosives were also placed in the branch offices of Havanatour in Bahamas and Cubanacan in Mexico. He directly participated in a plot to assassinate the Cuban Commander in Chief during his visit to the Dominican Republic of August 1998, a plot that involved other Miami-based terrorists. That same year, he planned the bombing of a Cubana commercial flight departing from Havana to Central America.

In 1999 and 2000, Posada continued plotting various similar terrorist actions aimed at undermining the Cuban economy and Cuban assets abroad, purchasing explosives and other military supplies for this purpose.

For the action planned for the 10th Summit, he received direct instructions from Francisco “Pepe” Hernández and Alberto Hernández, with whom he held meetings in Central America. These meetings also saw the participation of terrorists Gaspar Jiménez and Antonio Iglesias, who contributed money from CANF for the purchase of weapons and explosives.

From August to October 1999, Posada traveled to Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama with false identity papers to prepare the action. In Costa Rica, he received financial aid and assistance to illegally introduce the purchased weapons by land into Panama. In Panama, he conducted the preliminary studies indispensable to the successful execution of the plan.

The day chosen was 17 November 2000, when Fidel Castro was to speak at the auditorium of the National University of Panama. On 5 November 2000, he entered Panama with a Salvadorian passport under the name of Franco Rodríguez Mena (one of his aliases) to organize the assassination.

On the 17th, Fidel Castro denounced the plot and announced the location of the terrorist group. Panamanian officers found explosives and arrested Posada, Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo, Pedro Remón and Guillermo Novo Sampoll. On 20 April 2004, he was sentenced to 8 years in prison, charged with threatening public safety and falsifying documents, not with attempted murder.

On 26 August 2004, then president of Panama Mireya Moscoso pardoned the four terrorists. In the early morning, extreme security measures are taken to transport them from El Renacer prison to Albrook airport, where they take a light aircraft to Tocumen airport.

There, they board a private jet headed for Hondures, where Posada Carriles gets off, the others continuing to Miami. Posada Carriles enters the United States in March 2005, his lawyers claiming he seeks asylum.

Currently, he is detained in El Paso, Texas, and is about to be released, taking advantage of the Convention Against Torture. The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela demands the extradition of the terrorist or that he be tried in the United States for the bombing of the Cuban commercial airplane.