CODEPINK calls on Cong. Ros-Lehtinen to condemn attacks on CODEPINK in her district : Miami IMC

CODEPINK: Women for Peace condemns the violent climate in Miami perpetrated by certain sectors of the community and calls on Cong. Ros-Lehtinen to denounce violence and attacks against those with differing viewpoints.

On Saturday, January 12, six CODEPINK members peacefully tried to gather signatures calling on the FBI to arrest a known terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles, who is living freely in Miami. Before the women could even park their vehicle outside the Versailles Restaurant, they were attacked by a violent mob. The FBI and Miami- Dade police, despite previous guarantees, failed to provide the group with protection.

“Miami is supposed to be part of the United States, not a city of anarchy controlled by violent mobs,” says CODEPINK member Tighe Barry, who was driving the CODEPINK vehicle when it was attacked while police stood by.

The group wants to discuss the Congresswoman’s involvement in the release from Panamanian jails of four persons involved in terrorist acts, in particular Jose Posada Carriles, a known terrorist who entered our country illegally and who is living openly in the Miami area. They also are very concerned that she tried to prevent FBI investigators from going to Cuba to obtain further information concerning Posada Carriles’ involvement in hotel bombings in Havana in 1997 that left an Italian tourist dead .

The group also wants to discuss the attack on their free speech rights. They claim that the Miami police, FBI, and elected officials are all colluding with the most undemocratic elements of the community who condone terrorist acts against civilians—as reflected by their support for Posada Carriles—and have no respect for free speech and free assembly. “We will ask the Congresswoman to condemn attacks against those who question why known terrorists are living openly in her city,” says CODEPINK cofounder Medea Benjamin, who received death threats after she denounced Posada Carriles on the Miami-based TV show Arrebatados. “We intend to return to Miami in the future to pursue this campaign and we want to be assured that this time, our safety will be protected.”

The group will also go at 9am to the Miami FBI office (16320 Northwest 2nd Avenue, North Miami Beach) to question the FBI about why they destroyed evidence pertaining to the Carriles case. They will also drop off signed cards asking the FBI to put Posada Carriles on the Most Wanted List and for our government to arrest or extradite this dangerous man to Venezuela, where he is a wanted on 73 counts of first degree murder for the bombing of a civilian airliner.

http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?list=type&type=344

CONTACT INFO:

Medea Benjamin (415) 235-6517
Nancy Mancias (415) 342-6409

Miami: terrorists provoke aggression against pacifists demanding Posada’s arrest

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD —Granma International staff writer—

• MIAMI is undoubtedly the only city in the world where terrorists, with the collaboration of the official press, can openly organize violent protests without the fear of police intervention.
This occurred once again last Saturday when, following an announcement on Radio Mambí by the leader of the Alpha 66 terrorist group and a notice in the press by notorious terrorists, dozens of sympathizers of murderer and torturer Luis Posada Carriles attacked a group of pacifist women who were demanding his arrest.
Representatives of the pacifist organization Codepink, who arrived in Miami from various cities in the United States, were the victims of acts of intimidation and a placard that they were carrying was destroyed, without any intervention by local police agents who were present at the event.
In the days leading up to the event, Alpha 66 leader Ernesto Díaz put out a call to demonstrate over the airwaves of Radio Mambí, a local station that constantly uses its federal radio license to give support to individuals linked to terrorism.
The Codepink activists traveled to Miami to demand that the FBI act with the same rigor against Posada Carriles and Cuban-American terrorists as it does with terrorists from anywhere else and that Posada should be put on the "Most Wanted" list.
Representatives from the women’s group had previously announced that they intended to visit the Versailles restaurant, the lair of the Miami terrorist mafia and, from that moment, began to receive a number of threatening phone calls.
Displayed on the Codepink vehicle that was attacked was a placard that said "Wanted by the FBI: Luis Posada for terrorism," showing Posada’s photo and the number of the FBI in Miami: (305) 944 9101.
Alpha 66 – the group that provoked the aggression – is a terrorist organization founded at the beginning of the 1960s under the direction of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), whose endless history of aggression against Cuba has been widely documented, both on the island and by the U.S. authorities themselves.
The murderous organization has its premises on an avenue in central Miami and, for close to 50 years, has benefited from total tolerance and, frequently, from the complicity of both the U.S. federal police and local agents.

THREE TERRORISTS SUPPORTED BY THE MAFIOSO PRESS

The Mafioso press in Miami also circulated another message to prevent Codepink’s presence, signed by individuals likewise identified with Alpha 66, who for months have been organizing events in support of Posada aimed at presenting his release as acceptable in the eyes of George W. Bush’s judicial apparatus.
This small committee, initiated by terrorist Santiago Alvarez, the main culprit behind Posada’s illegal arrival on U.S. territory, is headed by Nelly Rojas, an old accomplice whom the terrorist employs as a secretary, and by notorious terrorists Héctor Fabián and Reinol Rodríguez.
In any other part of the world, Nelly Rojas, a Venezuelan citizen residing in the United States with the indulgence of the immigration services and in the company of her husband Pedro Morales, would have already been detained for terrorism. Rojas has collaborated with Posada Carriles since the 1970s when the CIA agent joined the DISIP and murdered and tortured young Venezuelan revolutionaries under the name of Captain Basilio.
Rojas was an accomplice in the activities of CORU, the organization created by Posada, with Frank Castro, Orlando Bosch and other CIA collaborators. Together with other Venezuelans of Cuban origin such as Joaquín Chaffardet, Francisco "Paco" Pimentel, Salvador Romaní Orúe, Ricardo Koesling and her own husband – many of whom were linked to the Cuban-American National Foundation – she was constantly involved in violent conspiratorial activities.
In 1997, Rojas was kept informed of the campaign of terrorism against Cuba being developed by Posada, as has been demonstrated in the "Fatal Calls" article by Cuban journalist and investigator Reinaldo Taladrid, that was published on the island. She took part in the assassination attempt on President Fidel Castro on Isla Margarita, that was accidentally interrupted thanks to the U.S Coastguard’s interception of La Esperanza yacht.
Héctor Francisco Alfonso Ruiz, alias Héctor Fabián, another organizer of Saturday’s counter-demonstration, was an active member of a wide variety of groups encouraged by U.S. intelligence in the 1960s. He belonged to the Directorio Insurreccional Nacionalista, the Frente de Liberación Cubano, and in 1968, joined Poder Cubano directed by his friend Orlando Bosch.
Even the FBI knows how, in 1972, he participated in bomb attacks on four agencies that sent packages to Cuba; how in 1978, on behalf of CORU, he took part in an attack on the Rio Bobabo boat in Peru; and how, from Miami, he sent letter bombs to the Cuban embassies in Mexico, Canada, Argentina and Peru.
With respect to Reinol Rodríguez, a secret document dating back to August 16, 1978 (with reference No. 2-471) that has been declassified by the FBI, identifies him as head of the CORU in Puerto Rico and later of the so-called Anti-Communist Latin American Army (ELAC). The FBI is aware that he is the murderer of young activist Carlos Muñiz Varela, cowardly executed on April 28, 1979.
Among the professional demonstrators who attacked the Codepink activists were Miguel Saavedra, the Vigilia Mambisa chief and known collaborator of Congressman Lincoln Díaz-Balart, who is always willing to bring together his group of delinquents – many of them with a criminal record – to take part in public demonstrations. Díaz-Balart is notorious for having organized the interruption of the vote recount that gave George W. Bush the victory in the 2000 presidential elections.
The Codepink women’s group became famous last year when members interrupted an audience by Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s secretary of state. With respect to the Posada case, Codepink is also demanding that the U.S. government extradites him to Venezuela where he has been wanted by the judicial system since his escape from the prison in which he was being held for the attack on a Cubana airliner that was destroyed mid-flight in 1976 with 73 people on board.

EVERYTHING TO SAVE THE BUSH FAMILY’S TERRORIST

In a city like Miami, where hundreds of individuals have participated in terrorist attacks – frequently as mercenaries for the CIA – for the close to 50 years during which the U.S. has been carrying out its dirty war against Cuba, only one terrorist appears on the "Most Wanted" website of the local FBI.
That man is a Saudi called Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, wanted "in connection with possible terrorist threats" against the United States.
Luis Posada Carriles is strolling freely around Miami, awaiting a decision by the Appeals Court of New Orleans in a case that has been managed by the anti-terrorist judges of Bush’s Justice Department. Since his arrest the delaying tactics have been multiplied so that the most dangerous terrorist on the continent, a CIA agent with links to the Bush family, does not have to respond for his crimes.

Translated by Granma International

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2008/enero/lun14/Miami.html