CARACAS, Venezuela — Challenging the United States to make good on its pledge to hunt down terrorists, Venezuela on Thursday formally requested the extradition of a radical Cuban exile who is reportedly hiding in Florida and is wanted here in connection with an airline bombing that killed 73 people.
Accused bomber Luis Posada Carriles' April 13 petition for U.S. asylum has roiled Washington's already strained relations with Venezuela and sparked anger in Cuba, the target of the attacks blamed on him. The asylum request said Posada, 77, had managed to evade homeland security measures and slip into the U.S.
Posada is a Bay of Pigs veteran and collaborated with the Central Intelligence Agency in numerous attempts to depose Cuban President Fidel Castro. He is wanted in Venezuela in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner en route from Caracas to Havana. Many of the 73 victims were young Cubans returning from an athletics competition.
Acquitted twice in the case, Posada escaped from a Caracas jail in 1985 while an appeal was pending. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Ali Rodriguez said in an interview Thursday that his government had made a formal request through Interpol that Posada be extradited to face a new trial. Rodriguez dismissed U.S. officials' claims that they did not know where Posada was.
"Posada Carriles has a long history of relations with the security services of the United States. It would be difficult for him to hide," Rodriguez said.
However, U.S. officials repeated Thursday that they had no solid confirmation of the claim made by a Florida attorney that Posada was in the country. "We are following up on leads as we would normally do," said Barbara Gonzalez, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Miami. She refused to speculate whether Posada, if found on U.S. soil, would be allowed to remain.
On Tuesday, a State Department official suggested that Posada, as "someone who committed criminal acts," would not merit asylum. "We are a country that respects the rule of law," said Roger Noriega, the assistant secretary of State for Western Hemisphere affairs.
Posada is also wanted by Cuba in connection with a 1997 series of hotel bombings in which an Italian tourist was killed and a dozen other foreigners injured.
In a 1998 interview with a freelance journalist while in hiding, Posada acknowledged involvement in those attacks. He retracted the statement after his November 2000 arrest on charges of plotting to assassinate Castro that month at an Ibero-American summit in Panama.
