4 anti-communists were convicted of trying to kill Castro in 2000

02:26 PM MST on Monday, August 30, 2004

By TRACEY EATON / The Dallas Morning News

HAVANA – Cuba broke diplomatic relations with Panama on Thursday after the country freed four die-hard anti-communists accused of plotting to blow up Fidel Castro.

Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso pardoned the Cuban émigrés just days before her successor, Martin Torrijos, takes office Tuesday.

Cuban officials on Thursday called it "a repugnant and traitorous act" and said Ms. Moscoso was "an accomplice and protector" of terrorists.

The four, linked to years of anti-Castro attacks, left Panama by plane early Thursday and were headed to Miami, according to a Panamanian radio report that couldn't be immediately confirmed.

Luis Posada Carriles, Gaspar Jiménez, Guillermo Novo and Pedro Remón had planned to assassinate Mr. Castro at a summit in Panama in 2000, prosecutors said. In April, they were sentenced to seven to eight years in prison.

Cuban officials said Thursday they would hold responsible any country that grants entry to any of the four and allows them to commit further crimes against Cuba.

Officials also expressed frustration that even as terrorism continues to capture worldwide attention, many people forget that more than 3,000 people have been killed in attacks against Cuba since the 1959 revolution.

The diplomatic spat may not last long because the incoming president, son of the late Panamanian ruler Gen. Ricardo Omar Torrijos, is considered a Castro ally. Even so, Cubans are deeply offended that Panama freed the four prisoners.

Mr. Posada Carriles, 76, the suspected ringleader of the Panama plot, is a former CIA operative who was born in Cienfuegos, Cuba. He left the island soon after Mr. Castro took power and has spent much of his life trying to topple the socialist revolution.

He was jailed in Venezuela for his alleged role in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger airliner that killed all 73 people aboard. He denied the charges, escaped from prison disguised as a priest in 1985 and settled in El Salvador.

From Central America, Mr. Posada Carriles has admitted, he organized a string of hotel bombings in Havana that killed an Italian tourist in 1997.

In 1998, he told The New York Times that his efforts were supported financially by the Cuban American National Foundation, a powerful lobbying group in Miami. The foundation denied the charge, and Mr. Posada Carriles later backed off his claims.

In November 2000, he and the three other exiles were arrested in Panama and accused of plotting to use 30 pounds of explosives to assassinate Mr. Castro as he spoke to a large crowd.

They were convicted on lesser charges ranging from endangering public safety to carrying false documents.

Cuban authorities sought the men's extradition, promising they wouldn't receive the death penalty or jail time of more than 20 years. But the four remained in Panama, denying the plot and saying they were in the country to help a Cuban general get political asylum.

All four men are at least 60 years old – "old geezers," as author Saul Landau once called them. That is why he couldn't understand why they had brazenly journeyed to Panama to allegedly "whack" the Cuban president "instead of starting their own anti-Castro AARP chapter."