Castro leads extradition calls in Cuba

Accusing the US of hypocrisy in the war against terrorism, Fidel Castro today led hundreds of thousands of people past the American mission to demand the arrest of a Cuban militant who is living in Miami while Venezuela tries to extradite him for a deadly airliner bombing three decades ago.

Castro’s campaign against his old foe, Luis Posada Carriles, is the most intense media battle he has waged since the international custody struggle over young Cuban castaway Elian Gonzalez.

The size of the crowd rivalled those organised in 2000 to successfully press for Elian’s return to Cuba.

“This is not a march against the people of the United States,” said the 78-year-old Castro, differentiating between Americans and their government. “It is a march against terrorism, in favour of life and of peace.”

“Our country has been the object of the most ferocious war in history,” the Cuban president added in brief comments to the crowd, referring to long-standing US economic sanctions against the island and early US government plots to kill him.

Wearing his traditional olive green military uniform and cap, the Cuban president then walked six or seven blocks past the American mission without assistance, despite an accidental fall in October that shattered his left kneecap.

For more than four hours, huge rivers of people, many chanting and waving tiny Cuban flags, spilled from side streets onto the Malecon coastal highway running past the mission.

Posada arrived in the US in March and soon after requested political asylum. Venezuela last week formally requested Posada’s extradition in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people, including members of Cuba’s national fencing team.

A US Department of Homeland Security official in Washington confirmed last week that Posada had applied for political asylum. To be eligible, Posada must prove a well-founded fear of persecution in a country to which he could be deported, said the official.

US State Department spokesman Tom Casey last week declined to discuss Posada’s past, saying only the United States “has no interest in allowing anyone with a criminal background to enter the US”.

But Posada told The Miami Herald in an interview published today that he was not trying too hard to conceal himself in Miami because he was sure US authorities were not looking for him.

“Now I hide a lot less. People have recognised me in the market, at the doctor’s office, mostly older people,” he said in the interview – his first since crossing illegally into the US following a trip through Central America and Mexico.

Coinciding with the massive march in Havana, today’s publication of the interview was certain to enrage Castro, who accuses the administration of US President George Bush of hypocrisy for taking no action against Posada while waging a global war against terrorism following the September 2001 attacks on the US.

In his interview with the Herald, Posada again denied involvement in the airliner explosion.

“They accused me of being the intellectual author of fabricating a weapon of war and of treason to the homeland. No one saw me make a bomb,” the Herald quoted Posada as saying. “Sincerely, I didn’t know anything about it.”

But he refused to confirm or deny involvement in a string of 1997 bombings targeting Cuban tourist sites, including one that killed a young Italian tourist. “Let’s leave it to history,” he told the Herald.

Castro’s comments came as the opposition plans a rare mass gathering in Havana for Friday, bringing together dissidents from on and off the island.

It remains unclear if the Cuban government will allow the meeting. Castro made a cryptic reference to the opposition last night, saying the “mercenaries” would receive ”energetic and appropriate responses from the revolution”.