Havana, Nov 13 (Prensa Latina) Cuba denounced Monday that the direct link between the case of terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and the arrest of the Cuban Five, now imprisoned in the US, was confirmed in an article published in Sunday´s Washington Post.

   In the article by journalist Ann Louise Bardach, reproduced in Cuban official Granma daily today, the order to destroy Posada´s file was given by Judge Ed Pesquera, son of Hector Pesquera, former chief of FBI in southern Florida who arrested the Cuban Five.

   The Cuban anti-terrorist fighters were arrested in 1998 in Miami after they had penetrated extreme anti-Cuban groups to learn their plans against Cuba. They were later sentenced to from 15 years of prison to double life imprisonment.

   Bardach revealed that two years ago Posada confessed to her that he had links with the Cuban-American National Foundation.

   In a subsequent article, she told how FBI agents went to her house in her absence with a warrant, to revise the documents she had on Posada Carriles because their files had been shredded.

   On Amy Goodman´s Democracy Now, Bardach revealed that the destruction of the original documents occurred in August 2003 when Posada was in Panama and the Panama attorney general was trying to obtain Posada´s criminal record from US authorities. The US Embassy only handed over photocopies of obsolete declassified documents.

   These documents had been destroyed in Miami, including a fax in which Posada had transmitted messages to some accomplices in Guatemala in 1997, complaining that the US media were reluctant to believe the reports about the attacks he was provoking in Havana.

   The fax was intercepted by Antonio Alvarez, a Cuban exile and businessman who shared space in Posada´s Guatemala office in 1997 and became alarmed about the situation. Alvarez told FBI agents in Miami, but as they did not do anything, Alvarez went to The New York Times.

   In her Post article, reporter Barach recalled that, according to her sources at the time, Hector Pesquera, then head of the Miami FBI office, showed little interest in the Posada case.

   “He liked to hang out with the hard-line politicians in Miami and refused his agents´ requests to tap (Orlando) Bosch´s telephones, a man known to be the godfather of the paramilitary groups,” Bardach said.

   The article demonstrated that the FBI did not act when Posada directed the attacks on Havana and sabotaged the legitimate attempts of Panama to bring him and his Miami accomplices to justice.

  By persecuting the Cuban Five who infiltrated these terrorist groups, Hector Pesquera was covering up and protecting his friends in the terrorist Mafia that financed and oriented Posada.

   These revelations in the influential Washington Post establish beyond doubt the innocence of the Cuban Five, whose freedom was demanded by a UN panel of attorneys, and who still remain imprisoned in the United States, Granma concluded.

(Prensa Latina)