**ARTURO V. HERNANDEZ**

**ATTORNEY AT LAW**

**DATE OF TESTIMONY: THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2007**

**[OPENING STATEMENT OF ARTURO V. HERNANDEZ BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS, HUMAN RIGHTS AND OVERSIGHT]{.underline}**

Members of the subcommittee, my name is Arturo V. Hernandez, thank you
for this invitation and opportunity to address you on the important
issues that comprise the focus of this hearing. I appear before you
today in order to present a needed counter balance to the rhetoric and
misinformation that has emanated from Cuba and Venezuela and their
acolytes in our country on the subject of my client, Luis Posada
Carriles. As you may be aware, I am an attorney who specializes in
federal criminal defense. It was in that capacity that I came to be
involved as lead counsel in the defense of Luis Posada Carriles. He was
charged by indictment in El Paso, Texas, in a seven count indictment
alleging, in sum and substance, that he had made false statements during
the course of his application for naturalization. After five months of
litigation, and on the eve of trial, United States District Court Judge,
the Honorable Kathleen Cardone, dismissed all charges against him.

In dismissing all charges against him the Court stated: "....this Court
will not set aside such rights, nor overlook Government misconduct
because Defendant is a political hot potato. This Court's concern is not
politics; it is the preservation of criminal justice."

As a result of the Judge's ruling, Mr. Posada Carriles was conditionally
released back to his community in Miami, Florida. This entire matter is
now under appeal by the Government and is before the Fifth Circuit Court
of Appeals. Today Mr. Posada lives quietly in Miami, Florida, awaiting
the conclusion of the appellate process, where he is joined by his wife,
his children and grand children, all of whom are United States Citizens
for many years.

Members of the subcommittee, Mr. Posada Carriles is now almost 80 years
old. His is the story of a man's singular mission to combat Castro's
violent revolutionary communism in all its manifestations and
permutations wherever it has reared its ugly head and at whatever
personal cost to him. His individual struggle against communism was in a
very real sense the often unobserved struggle of our hemisphere to avoid
the sovietization of Latin America as part of the great ideological and
strategic contest between the United States and the Soviet Union known
as the "Cold War". Mr. Posada Carriles, who served as a second
lieutenant in the US Army and volunteered to fight in Vietnam, was a
valiant soldier in the Cold War on behalf of the interests of the United
States and Venezuela during the decades of the 1960's through the
1980's, and , it is no exaggeration to suggest that more than a few
South American and Central American countries owe their democracies to
the sacrifices incurred by men and women such as Mr. Posada Carriles.

It is a point of historical irony that a terrorist nation such as Cuba
that systematically trained and armed entire armies of terrorist over
four decades resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
innocent civilians, should now be heard on the international stage
accusing Mr. Posada Carriles of being a terrorist and the United States
of hypocrisy in the war on terror.

These voices over and over again repeat the accusation that Mr. Posada
Carriles was involved in the downing of the Cubana Airliner flight 455
over the ocean near Barbados in 1976. The true facts of this tragedy,
however, refute their contention. No American jury would convict Mr.
Posada Carriles on these facts. The forensic evidence alone proves that
he is innocent. The metal chards found imbedded in the bodies of the
victims, showed that the explosion came from the cargo hold, a secure
area of the aircraft that Mr. Posada Carriles would not have had access
to, and not from the bathroom area as the prosecution contended during
the trial.

Forensic examinations conducted by British Government laboratory
"Lararde", and a forensic expert named Eric Newton, failed to confirm
the chemical signature of the explosives the prosecution contended had
come from the bathroom.

Those are just some of the multiple reasons why a Venezuelan military
tribunal after a full trial and over three years of investigation,
acquitted Mr. Posada Carriles of all charges. It is further the reason
why, after a seemingly endless round of reviews, the Venezuelan civilian
prosecutors recommended that the verdict of acquittal be affirmed.
Despite this recommendation, Mr. Posada Carriles was not released from
custody and served nine years of prison waiting for the Court's reviews
to conclude. When it became apparent to him that the legal process was
being subverted by the influence of pro Castro elements within the
government of Venezuela, he decided to escape from prison.

In the final analysis, the historical record is clear that Cuba has
stood for years as a poisonous dagger aimed at the side of the United
States. Mr. Posada Carriles, as an ally of the United States, does not
deny that he confronted Cuban rebel insurgencies in Venezuela and in
other countries in defense of their democracies. It would be unfair,
years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, to look back now and sort
piecemeal through the events of those decades, the decades of the cold
war, and isolate persons and events without respect to the times in
which they occurred.

There is always the danger that in a time of war against terrorism that
the moniker of "terrorist" can become so flexible that it loses all
meaning. Mr. Posada Carriles is not and has never been a terrorist. His
life long ambition has been to bring democracy and freedom to his place
of birth, Cuba. He has been throughout his life a staunch ally of the
United States. To many in the Cuban American community he is a hero. He
is now simply an old man, who tried to do his duty, as he best saw that
duty, and to live out the remaining days of his life in peace.

What may not reasonably be denied is that Cuba and Venezuela are
purposely manipulating the case of Mr. Posada Carriles, as an instrument
of their foreign policy that seeks to undermine the legitimate goal of
the eradication of terrorism. Their desire is not to seek justice
against an accused terrorist, but rather to satisfy a base need to
retaliate against a hated enemy. Cuba's government, and increasingly the
government of Venezuela, answer to no law, domestic or international, or
any convention or treaty. They respond only to the will of its
dictators. There is no doubt, members of the subcommittee, that neither
Cuba or Venezuela would hesitate to torture and kill Mr. Posada Carriles
if he were ever to fall into their hands. That is why after a full
evidentiary hearing before a United States Immigration Judge, the Court
determined that Mr. Posada Carriles was a removable alien, but ruled
that he could not be removed to either Venezuela or Cuba because of the
likelihood that this 80 year old man would be subjected to torture and
certain death.

**[CONCLUSION]{.underline}**

The great scientist Galileo once observed that to accuse a man of heresy
is simple, all you need is a tongue. There have been no shortage of
tongues in the case of Luis Posada Carriles. But what there has not been
is credible evidence of wrongdoing. Most of the allegations found in the
declassified materials are over three to four decades old and are based
on dubious double hearsay from unidentified sources. The truth of the
matter is that Mr. Posada Carriles does not present a threat to anyone
but he especially does not represent a threat to the United States -- a
country that he loves and has sought to protect throughout his entire
life.

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