Defense rests in Cuban ex-CIA agent's perjury case

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Defense rests in Cuban ex-CIA agent's perjury case
By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press – Fri Apr 1, 8:24 pm ET

EL PASO, Texas – Attorneys for an elderly ex-CIA agent accused of lying to U.S. immigration authorities about his alleged role in deadly 1997 bombings in Cuba rested their case Friday without calling their client as a witness.

Luis Posada Carriles' attorneys called just eight witnesses in eight days — barely a third of the 23 people federal prosecutors summoned to the stand during the first 11 weeks of the oft-delayed trial. Prosecutors plan to call at least one rebuttal witness Monday, with closing arguments to follow.

Posada's face is plastered on propaganda billboards throughout his native Cuba, where he is considered former President Fidel Castro's longtime nemesis for the decades he spent trying to destabilize Castro's regime and other communist governments in Latin America. For much of that time, he had Washington's support.

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Prosecutors charged Posada with 11 counts of immigration fraud, obstruction and perjury, because they say he lied during citizenship hearings in El Paso about how he made it into the country and about having a Guatemalan passport with a false name. They also say Posada failed to acknowledge planning a wave of 1997 bombings at Cuban luxury hotels and a top tourist restaurant in Havana between April and September 1997 that killed an Italian visitor and injured about a dozen other people.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110402/ap_on_re_us/us_cuban_militant