Chavez: US harbouring 'terrorist' jet bomber

VENEZUELA: President Hugo Chavez accused US President George W. Bush of harbouring the convicted bomber of a Cuban airliner.

"I accuse the president of the United States of protecting an international terrorist," Chavez said.

"They have freed the father of all terrorists: the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles," Chavez said.

Posada Carriles, a former CIA agent, was released last week from a Texas jail, though Venezuela and Cuba want him extradited in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner, which crashed, killing all 73 persons aboard. "We have asked for his extradition for more than two years. We sent them the evidence. This gentleman was in prison (for the bombing) here and he escaped," Chavez said.

"Mr Bush: You are harbouring a terrorist, which makes you a terrorist," he said. Chavez echoed Bush's similar accusations after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States by Al-Qaeda, which he said was "harbored" by Afghanistan's government.

A fierce opponent of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Posada Carriles was released from jail in Texas on a 350,000-dollar bond pending the May 11 start of his trial on immigration charges, and immediately flew to his wife's home in Miami.

He was convicted in Venezuela in 1976 of masterminding the downing of the Cuban jet off Barbados, but escaped from prison in 1985.

He was sentenced to eight years' prison in Panama in a bomb plot to assassinate Castro during an Ibero-American summit in 2000, and outgoing Panamanian president Mireya Moscoso pardoned him four years later.

He was detained by US immigration officials in May 2005 for entering the United States illegally. US authorities have refused to extradite him to Cuba or Venezuela, expressing fears he might be tortured.

Caracs, Monday, AFP