Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Relatività del terrore

Oldie, but goldie...
Namib
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http://www.ciponline.org/cuba/opeds/who%20is%20a%20terrorist.htm
Who is a terrorist?
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
By Wayne S. Smith
May 31, 2002
President Bush's speech in Miami on May 20 was new evidence that he is
determined at all costs to win the votes of the hard-line exiles. Whatever
policies and actions they want, he will try to give them. But that has
serious implications for the credibility of his war on terrorism. He
describes for us, for example, a Manichaean world in which there are the
good guys and the bad guys, the "terrorists." And as he has said over and
over again, anyone who supports a terrorist, anyone who harbors a terrorist,
is a terrorist.
But if we go by that definition, there may be terrorists right in the Bush
family. In 1989, for example, the first President Bush went against the
advice of his own Justice Department and canceled the deportation of
arch-terrorist Orlando Bosch. Shortly thereafter, he set him free. Bosch was
a Cuban exile who had been convicted in the U.S. of terrorist activities and
spent four years in prison. Released in 1972, he then violated parole and
fled to Latin America, ending up eventually in Venezuela, where in 1976 he
was imprisoned for masterminding the bombing of a Cuban airliner with the
loss of 73 lives, including
virtually the entire Cuban fencing team.
The hard-line exiles in Miami loved it. In 1983, the Miami City Commission
declared a "Dr. Orlando Bosch Day," apparently to honor him for his acts of
terrorism.
Released from Venezuelan prison under strange circumstances in 1987, Bosch
returned to Miami in 1988 without benefit of a visa and was almost
immediately arrested for his earlier parole violation. The Immigration and
Naturalization Service began proceedings to deport him. As the associate
attorney general put it in 1989: "For 30 years, Bosch has been resolute and
unwavering in his advocacy of terrorist violence."
This was not an idle statement. The Justice Department had information
linking Bosch to more than 30 acts of sabotage and violence in the United
States, Puerto Rico, Panama and Venezuela. As the associate attorney general
pointed out: "The security of this nation is affected by its ability to urge
credibly other nations to refuse aid and shelter to terrorists....We could
not shelter Dr. Bosch and maintain that credibility."
The logic was unassailable, but , unfortunately, the case was not decided on
the base of logic. Miami congresswoman Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen and the usual bevy of hard-line Cuban exiles weren't going to
have it. They lobbied unrelentingly for Bosch's release. Among those in the
forefront of the lobbying effort was Jeb Bush, then managing Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen's election campaign.
In the face of all this pressure, coming even from his own son, the first
President Bush decided it was politically expedient to harbor a terrorist.
Bosch was released and still lives freely and unrepentant in Miami.
And the case of Orlando Bosch is not an isolated one.
Ros-Lehtinen has also urged the release of Valentine Hernandez, whose
principal crimes were the murder of other exiles -- exiles who dared to
advocate a dialogue with the Castro government. But Ros-Lehtinen thinks he
should go free. And neither she nor Gov. Bush, by the way, have ever backed
away from their support of Orlando Bosch.
And then there is the case of Luis Posada Carriles, who along with Bosch
master-minded the 1976 bombing of the Cuban airliner. He, too, spent time in
a Venezuelan prison, but escaped in 1985 and turned up in Central America
working in Oliver North's secret Contra operation, along with Felix
Rodriguez, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal with close ties to then
Vice President Bush.
In 1998, Posada Carriles acknowledged in an interview with The New York
Times that he had directed the bombing of a number of hotels in Havana the
previous year which had resulted in the death of an Italian tourist. Though
Posada Carriles confessed his culpability, no charges were ever filed
against him in the U.S. Today, he is in prison in Panama, accused of
involvement in a recent assassination plot against Fidel Castro.
These elements in Florida who have helped to harbor terrorists are President
George W. Bush's closest political allies in the state. Indeed, some months
ago, he nominated Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's chief of staff, Mauricio Tamargo,
for an important position in the federal government. And Otto Reich, one of
the hardest of the hard-line Cuban-Americans and a close associate of the
Cuban American National Foundation, has been appointed assistant secretary
of state for Latin Americans affairs. Roger Noriega, formerly of Sen. Jesse
Helm's staff, is now our ambassador to the OAS. In short, those who have
condoned
terrorism now seem to be running our Latin American policy.
President Bush's admonition should be rephrased, now to read: "Anyone who
has harbored a terrorist we don't like, is a terrorist. But anyone who
harbors terrorists we do like is OK. In fact, we may have a place for them
in our administration!"

Bosch was released and still lives freely and unrepentant in Miami.
Se non ha commesso reati in USA e non ci sono prove per la sua
estradizione, e' piu' che doveroso che viva libero.
Ma per il Prode Namib le brigatiste rosse che hanno pagato la loro pena
non sono piu' tali, mentre invece quelli come Bosch lo sono per tutta la
vita.
-Stefano