Reply #9: The Assasination Geezers [View All]

[Say_What]

Saul Landau, fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies who teaches at Cal Poly Pomona University details the terrorist acts and murders of Guillermo Novo. Saul also wrote the book, The Pre-Emptive Empire: A Guide to Bush's Kingdom

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Twenty two years ago, in the hallway of the Washington DC Federal Court Building, Guillermo Novo threatened me. So, when I read that on November 18, 2000 Panamanian cops had arrested him on an assassination charge, I felt the pleasant tingle of relief. Novo has reached the age--mid sixties--where his back goes out more than he does. Yet, instead of starting their own anti-Castro AARP chapter, he and three other rabidly Cuban geriatrics went to Panama to whack Cuba's president. The Cuban leader went to Panama for an Iberian Summit in the Fall of 2000 and Cuban security agents tipped off the Panamanians to search the car the group had rented. It contained 30 pounds of explosives and appropriate detonating material plus fingerprints that matched some of the defendants.

The four men (Guillermo, Luis Posada Carriles, Pedro Remon and Gaspar Jimenez) claim that Fidel had set them up for a frame. Their lawyers argued that the ever wily Fidel lured them to Panama because he knew that these old geezers shared common obsessions: they had all sworn to kill him and had participated in previous assassinations. They justified their lethal deeds as necessary steps in their holy war against the Caribbean demon.

Guillermo Novo reminds me of Jason or Freddy, except that his violence took place in real life and not in movies. I remember the cold chill of that morning in the courthouse hall in 1981. An appeals court had reversed on procedural grounds his conviction for eight counts of conspiracy to assassinate Orlando Letelier. At the new trial, the jury had just acquitted him and co-defendant Alvin Ross of conspiracy charges (Letelier, a former Ambassador and Cabinet Minister in the government of Salvador Allende, died along with Ronni Moffitt, his colleague at the Institute for Policy Studies, when a bomb planted under his car exploded on September 21, 1976).

The jury had also acquitted Ignacio Novo, Guillermo's younger brother, of aiding and abetting the conspiracy. The panel did convict Guillermo of lying to the grand jury about his knowledge of the murder plot. The judge ruled, however, that he had already served the time he would have been given.

http://www.counterpunch.org/landau09202003.html