Left I on the News

Indications are that the U.S. is still trying to find a country like El Salvador (first reported here back in September) to which to deport terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, rather than take the too-obviously hypocritical step of releasing him into the United States itself. They are refusing to extradite him to Venezuela, remember, because of the "likelihood" of his being tortured there. And why did the court conclude that? Because a man named Joaquin Chaffardet, described by the Miami Herald as "a Venezuelan lawyer and Posada ally," testified that Posada would likely be tortured in Venezuela, and the government called no witnesses to rebut that claim.

Now just who is Joaquin Chaffardet? In an article appearing in Granma yesterday, Jean-Guy Allard follows up on a subject we discussed here back in October -- Posada's record as a torturer (and murderer) back when he was a key figure in DISIP, the Venzuelan political police. His co-worker at the time? Joaquin Chaffardet! And after Posada left DISIP, he started a private investigation company. His partner in that company? Joaquin Chaffardet! And just what was that company? Why, it was the one described in that New York Times article from October, 1976 that I recently reprinted here, the one in which a phone rang with a cryptic message shortly before an explosion aboard a Cubana airliner killed 74 people, and which was raided the next day by Venezuelan police, a raid which took Posada and five associates (one of them quite possibly Chaffardet, although I can't find any evidence of that) into custody for the bombing. Chaffardet is also, as it turns out, someone who was indicted but not convicted of organizing the prison break which sprung Posada from a Venezuelan jail in the first place!

That's the Chaffardet on whose testimony the U.S. is refusing to extradite Posada to Venezuela.

Yesterday's Granma article, by the way, follows up on that earlier story, and informs us that the Venezuelan victims of Posada's torture and murder have now gathered documentary evidence, and are considering filing suit against him in U.S. courts. Interesting development.