El PASO – A United States district judge has rejected a request from the man accused of bombing a Cubana airliner off Barbados to throw out evidence against him by the Cuban government.
United States District Judge Kathleen Cardone, of federal district court here, has turned down Luis Posada Carriles’ request, and kept his scheduled January 10 trial date here.
Posada, who was the alleged mastermind behind the 1976 bombing of the Cubana airliner off the coast of Barbados, is charged with lying under oath during immigration procedures about his role in a dozen 1997 bombings of Havana hotels.
He’s not charged with the bombings, which killed an Italian tourist.
Judge Cardone denied a motion by Posada’s Miami lawyer, Arturo V. Hernandez, to throw out 6 200 pages of evidence gathered by the Cuban government and submitted in the case by US prosecutors.
Hernandez argued that he received the documents in November, although prosecutors had them in March 2007. He repeatedly asked for a copy, beginning May 2009.
Posada, who lived in Venezuela and El Salvador much of his exile life, was detained after he turned up in Miami in 2005.
Hernandez has filed another motion, asking Judge Cardone to reject a December 3 prosecution request to take depositions in Cuba from two El Salvador citizens, Francisco Antonio Chavez Abarca and Otto Rene Rodriguez Llerena, jailed in Havana for the bombings.
Cuban authorities charged that in June 1976, Posada and Orlando Bosch participated in the “creation of the terrorist coalition named CORU in the Dominican Republic”.
They alleged Posada was behind the October 6, 1976, bombing of the Cubana airliner in midair off the coast of Barbados, killing all 73 passengers on board. (CMC)
