Suspect Stirs Memories of Attack in Cuba
By VANESSA ARRINGTON
The Associated Press
HAVANA - In the decades since terrorists blew up a Cuban airliner over the Caribbean Sea, Carlos Cremata has alternated between sadness, anger and even hope that his father had somehow survived. Eventually he came to terms with his hatred of the attackers. Now all the old feelings are rushing back as Luis Posada Carriles, the man Cuba accuses of masterminding the 1976 bombing that killed 73 people, including Cremata's father, seeks asylum in the United States.
The Cuban-born Posada, who left the island after the 1959 revolution and has spent much of his life trying to overthrow President Fidel Castro, sneaked across the Mexican border in March to request asylum, according to his lawyer, Eduardo Soto.
Castro has launched a marathon of speeches on the case, demanding that the United States extradite Posada to Venezuela, where he holds citizenship and is wanted in the bombing. Alternately, Cuba would like to see him handed over to an international tribunal in a neutral country.
Speaking to a May Day gathering of hundreds of thousands of Cubans on Sunday, Castro called Posada "the most famous and cruel terrorist of the western hemisphere." He said the case "shows the world the immense hypocrisy, the lies, the immoralities and the cynicism" of the U.S. government, which labels Cuba a terrorist state.
He, and many Cubans, question how a country that beefed up border controls after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks could let Posada slip through, and how a U.S. president who built his platform on fighting terrorism could remain silent on the militant's reported presence in Florida.
The U.S. government has not commented publicly on the Posada case. An official who refused to be identified said the government would likely want to detain him and try to deport him.
For Cremata, the politics have brought back old feelings. He said it was "a slap in the face" last year when former Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso pardoned Posada, then serving a sentence for his role in an alleged plot to kill Castro at a summit in Panama.
Posada has denied involvement in the airline explosion, and was acquitted twice in Venezuela in connection with the attack. But he escaped from prison in 1985 while awaiting a prosecutor's appeal. He once acknowledged - and later denied - overseeing the bombings of Cuban hotels in 1997.
Cremata has little doubt that Posada is responsible for the airliner attack, and he wants justice.
"It's simply for him to be tried, and the terrorist acts condemned, so that no other person has to go through this most terrible suffering," Cremata said.
Cremata said his father, who was a navigator for Cubana airlines, was a hardworking yet playful man deeply devoted to his wife and three sons.
"My father had no idea - he wasn't in a war, holding a weapon," Cremata said. "It's exactly the same as the worker who went out on Sept. 11. My father was just going to work, a peaceful employee of an airline."
Cremata, who was just 16 when the bombing occurred, remembers hearing someone speak of "seven survivors." That has fueled a fantasy that his father isn't really dead, but instead has taken on a secret identity fighting terrorism aimed at toppling the Cuban government.
"They never found his body," Cremata said. "Just his identity card, and his keys."
Along with Carlos Cremata Sr., the passengers aboard the airliner that exploded off Barbados included several dozen young Cubans returning to Havana after sweeping a regional fencing competition, as well as some Koreans and other foreigners.
"We have never been able to understand the reason for the attack," Cremata said. "Those who did this are not human."
Cremata has dedicated his life to children, founding and directing a theater group that embraces shy as well as handicapped youths.
"In my heart there is hate, but I am not multiplying it," Cremata said. "I live among children, and the only thing we do on stage is spread love, optimism and happiness."
May 2, 2005 4:44 PM