Magistrate: Cuban Militant Should Be Able To Leave Jail

EL PASO, Texas (AP) – A federal magistrate has agreed that an anti-Castro Cuban militant should be able to leave a federal immigration jail while he waits to be deported.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Norbert Garney has ruled that Luis Posada Carriles should be set free from the El Paso immigration detention center where he has been held since his arrest on immigration charges last year, Posada’s El Paso lawyer, Felipe D.J. Millan, said Monday.

Millan said the ruling will now go to a federal district judge. Millan anticipates that Posada could be set free in about 30 days if Garney’s ruling is upheld as he anticipates.

Posada was arrested in Miami last year on charges that he illegally crossed into Texas from Mexico.

The 78-year-old Cuba native and naturalized Venezuelan citizen is wanted in Venezuela on charges that he plotted the deadly 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner from Caracas.

Last year an immigration judge ruled that Posada should be deported but said he could not be sent to Cuba or Venezuela because of the fear that he could be tortured.

During a brief hearing in federal court Monday, Posada asked Garney to let him return to Miami, where his wife and children live, until the U.S. government can find another country to send him to.

Federal authorities have been trying since October to find a country that would accept Posada. Canada, Guatemala, Mexico, Costa Rica and El Salvador have all rejected formal requests.

Posada, a former CIA operative and U.S. Army soldier, has applied for U.S. citizenship. That application is pending, Millan said.

By ALICIA A. CALDWELL Associated Press Writer

(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

AP-NY-09-11-06 1944EDT