EL PASO, Texas | The U.S. government rested its much-watched perjury case against a former CIA agent from Cuba on Thursday — after an 11-week parade of 23 witnesses — and the defense immediately began presenting its version of key events.
Luis Posada Carriles, 83, is an anti-communist militant considered a nemesis of former Cuban President Fidel Castro. He was born on the communist island but now is Public Enemy No. 1 there, featured on propaganda billboards.
Mr. Posada spent decades working to destabilize leftist governments throughout Latin America and was often supported by Washington. He now faces 11 counts of perjury, obstruction and immigration fraud, however, after sneaking into the U.S. in 2005 and undergoing citizenship hearings in El Paso.
Prosecutors say he lied about how he made it into the country and about having a false Guatemalan passport. They also accuse him of failing to acknowledge under oath that he masterminded a wave of explosions at some of Cuba’s finest hotels and Havana’s iconic Bodeguita del Medio restaurant in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist and wounded about a dozen other people.
Stipulated facts read just before the prosecution rested contained details about Mr. Posada’s links to the U.S. government that were not divulged previously.
The CIA first made contact with Mr. Posada in 1961, before he indirectly participated in the doomed Bay of Pigs invasion. He was a paid asset from 1965 to 1967, and then again from 1968 to 1974.
For two years after that, the CIA had intermittent contact with Mr. Posada, but in 1976, he signed a secret agreement terminating his agency employment. It is still unclear how much he was paid for his years of service.
In 1976, Mr. Posada was arrested in Venezuela for planning the bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people. He was acquitted by a military court but escaped from prison while still facing a civilian trial. He later helped the U.S. government support Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
Also stipulated was that in 1993, the CIA contacted Mr. Posada in Guatemala to warn him that the Cuban government was planning to assassinate him. The white-haired defendant speaks with a pronounced slur after being shot in the face during an attempt on his life in Guatemala in 1991.
Mr. Posada and three others were arrested in Panama in connection with a plot to kill Mr. Castro during a summit there in 2000. They were pardoned by Panama’s president in 2004.
The FBI contacted Mr. Posada after his release from prison and warned him that Cuban authorities were again planning to kill him. He turned up in the U.S. the following March, prompting the current charges against him.
Once those facts were in evidence, Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Reardon said the United States “at least for now, will rest.”
The defense called its first witness Thursday, and plans to have about nine others testify. It is presenting a combination of arguments, including attempts to discredit top prosecution witnesses while also presenting its own version of the events in the case.
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