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HAVANA - He has not appeared in public for more than eight months, but today ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro was back in his familiar role as chief critic of the American government.
A front-page editorial column in the Communist Party newspaper signed by Castro denounced US authorities for planning to free a CIA-trained Cuban exile accused of masterminding the mid-air bombing of a Cuban airliner 30 years ago.
Castro railed against the Bush administration for harbouring Luis Posada Carriles, whom he called a terrorist and a monster.
Posada Carriles, 79, was arrested in Florida in 2005 for entering the United States illegally and is being held in Texas on immigration charges. A US District judge ruled last week in El Paso that he should be freed on bail until his trial.
He remains behind bars in New Mexico at the request of federal prosecutors. The trial is due to begin May 11.
Castro said the United States was protecting Posada Carriles by charging him for minor immigration offenses while ignoring his record of violence against Cuba.
"Not a single word has been said about his countless victims, his bomb attacks on tourist facilities in recent years or dozens of his plots financed by the US government to eliminate me physically," Castro wrote.
Castro's editorial was read on Cuban television and prompted a news conference by relatives of the victims of the 1976 Cubana airliner bombing that killed all 73 aboard, including Cuba's junior fencing team.
"We demand that the government of the United States stop protecting the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles," they said in a statement read out by Iliana Alfonso, whose father died in the plane downed off Barbados.
They called on the United States to bring Posada Carriles to justice for the plane bombing or extradite the Cuban-born Venezuelan national to Venezuela to stand trial.
Posada Carriles, who was trained by the CIA in explosives before the failed 1962 Bay of Pigs invasion against Castro, was arrested in Caracas in 1976 in connection with the downing of the airliner, but fled a high-security prison in 1985.
Venezuela, communist Cuba's closest ally, has requested his extradition from the United States.
Castro has not been seen in public since he underwent emergency intestinal surgery that forced him to hand over power temporarily to his brother, Raul Castro, on July 31. Cuban officials insist he is recovering and will resume office.
Still apparently too weak to give one of his legendary speeches, the 80-year-old revolutionary has taken to writing editorial columns to bait his ideological nemesis the United States.
Published by the newspaper Granma as "Reflections of the Commander in Chief," the first two blasted as "genocidal" US President George W Bush's plans to use food crops for biofuels, saying they will increase hunger among the world's poor.
Posada Carriles has been a political problem for the Bush administration because his activities are viewed as terrorism by his opponents. But he is a hero to many in the politically powerful Cuban exile community in Florida.
The US government tried to find another country to take the anti-Castro militant, but none would accept him. He was indicted in January on seven counts of immigration fraud.
Posada Carriles was jailed in Panama for a plot to assassinate Castro during an Ibero-American summit in 2000, but was pardoned by outgoing president Mireya Moscoso in 2004.
He is also accused of plotting a wave of bomb blasts in Havana hotels in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist.
- REUTERS
