Cuba outraged by US release of accused bomber

CUBA: The release from U.S. custody of an anti-Castro exile blamed for the downing of a Cuban airliner 30 years ago fanned angry anti-American sentiment in Cuba on Thursday. "Down with Imperialism. We demand justice. Long live Fidel," chanted several hundred students at a protest outside the U.S. diplomatic mission on Havana's waterfront.

The youths, carrying photos of the 73 passengers and crew who died in the plane bombing off Barbados in 1976, called for the extradition of militant exile Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela to stand trial.

The 79-year-old former CIA operative accused of plotting the mid-air bombing from Caracas was freed on bail from a U.S. prison in New Mexico pending trial on immigration charges.

"This is the most unjust thing the United States has done since the war in Iraq," said art instructor Aliesky Perez.

Caridad Rodriguez, lining up at Havana's Coppelia ice-cream parlor, said: "It's not right that Posada Carriles is walking free. He killed lots of people and should pay for it."

Cuba's communist authorities call the veteran Cuban exile the "bin Laden of Latin America" and say he was behind a wave of bomb blasts in Havana hotels in 1997 and plots to kill ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Castro, who has not appeared in public since emergency surgery more than eight months ago, accused Washington of harboring his nemesis in a editorial column last week that criticized U.S. hypocrisy in the war on terror.

"The infamy has been consummated. The Bush administration has freed the terrorist," a Cuban commentator said as state television broadcast images of Posada Carriles arriving at Miami International Airport on a private plane.

The Cuban-born Venezuelan national was freed on bail totaling $350,000 and must remain under house arrest at his wife's Miami home until his May 11 trial for immigration fraud.

Cuba says U.S. authorities are protecting Posada Carriles by prosecuting him on immigration charges and not terrorism.

The president of Cuba's National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon, said U.S. authorities were reluctant to put Posada Carriles on trial because of his past ties to U.S. intelligence services.

"Why don't they try him for terrorism? Because a trial against Posada Carriles would be a trial against Bush Jr. and above all against his father, who headed the CIA when Posada Carriles committed his worst crimes," he told reporters. referring to U.S. President George W. Bush and former President George H.W. Bush.

Meanwhile Venezuela accused the U.S. government of being an "accomplice" to a terrorist after Carriles was freed on bail, and vowed to mount a diplomatic and legal offensive for him to be tried in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner.

Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said Thursday that the 79-year-old's release from a New Mexico jail, despite a long-standing Venezuelan extradition request, leaves "naked before public opinion" the hypocrisy of U.S. President George W. Bush's government.

"The government of the United States could have acted in this case and didn't want to," Maduro said. "George Bush's government is an accomplice of this terrorist. It has protected him and today it has guaranteed his freedom, striking a blow against and mocking international law."

President Hugo Chavez demanded in a speech earlier that the U.S. extradite the ex-CIA agent.

"All of Venezuela lifts its indignant voice over the protection that the imperialist government of the United States continues to give to the father of all terrorists of all time in the American continent," Chavez told a crowd of supporters.

Havana, Caracas, Friday, Reuters, AP