Letters to the editor

The statements of outgoing Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso maintaining that the terrorists, one of whom detonated the bomb on a Cuban Airlines flight in 1976, causing the murder of 73 innocent victims including the Cuban Olympic fencing squad, would be "killed if they were extradited to Cuba or Venezuela," if not they were not pardoned, is yet another prime example of the double standards being exercised in the fight against international terrorism.

Even though the Venezuelan government had previously been labeled as part of the "axis of evil" by US spokesmen, the Chávez regime has always maintained a consistency of word and action in terms of international justice, human rights, national sovereignty and self-determination of nations, anti-terrorist policies and the fight against international drug traffickers. Thus, it was only logical for Venezuela not to recognize the puppet regime in Haiti after the kidnapping of Aristide and by extension to order the consequent withdrawal of its ambassador from Panama "for consultations" in the light of these "unpardonable pardons" and the implication that these terrorists would be killed if extradited to Venezuela.

These statements by President Moscoso appear calculated to ensure that the dirty media war on unsubstantiated human rights violations in Venezuela is continued in the international news media. No evidence of the violation of human rights has been proven against the current Venezuelan government and it should also be emphasized that Venezuela was the first American nation to abolish capital punishment in 1899 under then President Cipriano Castro.

The writer has no doubt --- even if there is no hard evidence so far --- that the Department of State had a hand in the decision to free these terrorists. No Central American country would dare take a decision of this kind which encourages terrorist acts by letting the criminals get off lightly, without the blessing of the US in the current anti terrorist climate.

Within hours of being pardoned these four criminals were on private jets on the way to unknown destinations and there are reports in the international news media that three of them were flown to Florida. There has been no amnesty or pardon for Al Qaeda (and the writer is not saying or implying that there should be), but to make matters worse, there appears to be the implication that the lives lost in the New York airplane bombings are somehow more "valuable" in human terms than the lives of top class Cuban athletes and the other innocent victims of the Cubana Airlines bombing.

This escape from justice and a Panamanian prison is coincidentally similar to the events of 13th September 2002, when all relations of the bin Laden family were flown out of the US to safe havens, after the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, as described by Michael Moore in his latest book "Dude, where's my country?" How can either of these events be justified within the framework of Bush's anti-terrorist doctrine? Without going into semantic acrobatics and put simply, the unjustifiable cannot be justified.

Along with other anti Cuban and Venezuelan terrorists groups reportedly being trained in Homestead and the Florida Everglades, Jeb Bush's state has been turned into a safe haven for terrorist activity in direct contradiction to his brother's declared "war on terrorism." Why hasn't the FBI cleaned up this threatening state of affairs in Florida as it did together with the ATF at the Davidian sect's ranch ("terrorist stronghold"?) in Waco, Texas? Could it be that in the dark mind of the current US administration, that these groups will somehow serve US geopolitical purposes in the region in the future? It all smells as a basis for the seeds of another dirty war as was waged in Central America in the 1980's against the Sandinistas, for example. Even Clinton used Tomahawk missiles to "punish" terrorist cells in Afghanistan and Sudan after the attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania but the Bush administration appears to be actively encouraging the establishment of terrorist groups on its own mainland.

To draw a logical conclusion from these events is impossible, since blatant contradictions in terms of justice and human rights are irreconcilable. However, within the framework and the cliché that the "US does not have friends, only interests", these events would appear to be unethically justifiable in the US's policy of "world domination" or the "IV World War," as has been mooted by renowned international analysts such as Chomsky and Petras, amongst others.

The US actions against international terrorism to safeguard innocent lives is, on the face of it, a noble task. Nevertheless, when contradictions of this kind emerge, it all reeks of incredible double standards. Has the Department of State condemned these pardons? Or will it issue a statement saying that it was a sovereign decision of President Moscoso? (Remember the furor in the US right wing press, when outgoing President Clinton pardoned Swiss white collar criminal, Marc Rich and the allegations that Rich had somehow paid for this privilege. Fox News, for example, has not condemned the decision to pardon these terrorists, but the long knives were out for Clinton in 2000!)

In either case, the US position as self-appointed world policeman and "international guardian of justice" needs to be clarified. These pardons are unjustifiable in terms of the Bush anti-terrorist doctrine and the application of international justice. If the Department of State does not condemn them on the basis that it was a "sovereign decision" of the Panamanian President, then this selective "non-intervention in Panama's internal affairs" also contradicts its actions in the Haitian coup against a democratically elected president, without mentioning the innumerable diplomatic statements and interventions into Venezuela's internal political situation, just to cite two recent examples.

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The old debate about using the t-word and much more in this issue's mailbox