Terrorist Suspect Nabbed in Venezuela

By Circles Robinson

HAVANA TIMES, July 5, — A close associate of Miami based anti-Cuba terrorist leader Luis Posada Carriles was arrested as he tried to enter Venezuela with a false passport on an undisclosed mission.

Francisco Chavez Abarca, an El Salvadoran citizen, was taken into custody last Thursday as he tried to enter Venezuela at the Caracas airport.

President Hugo Chavez (no relation) said that his intelligence services detected the presence of the suspect accused of setting off bombs in Havana in 1997 and at a Cuban tourism office in Mexico.

“I’m sure this man didn’t come here for tourism,” said President Chavez.  “He came here to place bombs, to see how to hunt an objective that has a price: my head.”

Posada, a long time CIA operative, is wanted in Venezuela and Cuba for his key role in the 1976 bombing of a commercial Cuban airliner that killed 73 passengers and crew as well as numerous Havana hotel bombings in the 1990s and other attacks abroad against Cuban personnel abroad.

The United States refuses to extradite Posada and has allowed him to enjoy freedom in Miami while he awaits an immigration trial for illegally entering the country.