Luis Posada Carriles

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“	It is sad that someone is dead, but we can't stop.	„
	~ Luis Posada Carriles after the attacks on hotels in Havana in 1997.

Luis Clemente Faustino Posada Carriles (February 15, 1928 - May 23, 2018) was a Cuban dissident leader and far-right international terrorist. He was a CIA agent from 1965 to 1974 and was directing different operations to overthrow Fidel Castro during the Cold War. Posada is a controversial figure even today, praised by Cuban dissidents for his struggle to overthrow Castro and hated by a large part of the Cubans on the island for his involvement in various terrorist attacks against Cuba.

Biography

Luis Posada Carriles was born in 1928 in the city of Cienfuegos in Cuba. After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, Posada joined opposition groups to the new government, for which the Argentine embassy gave him asylum as "politically persecuted", to later escape from Cuba.

After arriving in the United States, Posada became a member of "Operation 40", a secret CIA operation aimed at facilitating the Bay of Pigs Invasion, where Posada was asked to travel to Guatemala to train Cuban exiles. Posada would join the CIA in 1965 and would work in different operations to fight against left-wing groups in Latin America. In 1967 he was transferred to Venezuela to work with the secret services of that country. In 1971, he attempted a failed assassination attempt on Fidel Castro while he was visiting Chile.

In 1976, together with Orlando Bosch, he founded the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations, an organization that would be responsible for several terrorist attacks against Cuba. Posada played an important role in the US government's terror policy abroad, helping, for example, to train DINA members in Chile. He also collaborated with the Italian neo-fascist terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie, an active member of the Condor and Gladio operations. In this context, Posada and Stefano coordinated a series of global terrorist attacks during 1976 in Portugal, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Colombia, Puerto Rico, and the deadliest attack, the attack against Cubana de Aviación in Barbados.

Posada together with Bosch planned the attack against a commercial Cubana flight leaving from Barbados to Jamaica, for which they recruited the Venezuelans Hernán Ricardo Losano and Freddy Lugo to carry out the attack. When the plane was in the air over the sea, the mercenaries activated the bombs that blew up the plane, killing all 73 passengers on board. That same day, Posada and his collaborators were arrested in Caracas by the Venezuelan authorities and sentenced to prison for terrorism. In 1985 Posada would escape from prison and would escape abroad with the help of the Cuban American National Foundation.

After his escape, Posada lived in El Salvador, where he was appointed as acessor to the presidency and together with the controversial CIA agent Félix Rodríguez they planned a plan to confront the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, a plan that would be discovered and aborted. After that, Posada would help supply weapons to the Contras. In 1988 he would move to Guatemala, where he would integrate a paramilitary arm of the CANF called "Frente Nacional Cubano" that would dedicate itself to perpetrating terrorist attacks against Cuba. In 1997, after a series of terrorist attacks against hotels in Havana, the terrorists confessed that they had been recruited by Posada and that he had taught them to handle bombs and gave them the orders to attack the hotels, something that Posada himself would admit.

In later years, Posada faces justice on several occasions, including an extradition request by the Venezuelan government, however, at the end of his life he would manage to evade justice, living his last years in Florida. Posada passed away in 2018 due to throat cancer at the age of 90.