Terrorist Might Ultimately Find Safe Haven in US
Terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, confessed mastermind of multiple acts of terror in the Western Hemisphere, might ultimately find safe haven in the United States after an immigration judge said he could qualify for a form of US protection

After three days of hearings, which legal experts and relatives of victims of Posada Carriles´ actions have called a farce, Judge William Lee Abbott said Wednesday that lawyers of the Cuban born terrorist had "made a prima facie (apparent) case," alleging their client could be subject to torture if deported to Venezuela.

Therefore, he would be inclined to grant him a kind of protection known as deferral of deportation under terms of the Convention Against Torture, referred to in legal jargon as CAT.

Under deferral, the immigration judge orders the foreign national deported but then automatically defers the removal on the ground that he is "more likely than not" to be tortured if deported.

Posada Carriles´ lawyer in El Paso, Matthew Archambeault abruptly withdrew his application for asylum, under the allegation that his client might have been forced to reveal "sensitive information" that would have been embarrassing to the United States.

Such a move came after Archambeault and the lead prosecutor of the Department of Homeland Security, Gina Garrett-Jackson, struck an apparent compromise, according to the Miami Herald.

In a total shift of position, Garrett-Jackson said Wednesday in court that "we have serious and weighty concerns about the notion of a removal to Venezuela".

Garrett-Jackson´s posture in court Wednesday departed from her initial position Monday, the day the hearing began, when she did not object to Judge Abbott´s decision to designate Venezuela as the country to which Posada would be deported were he to lose his petitions and all appeals.

When Judge Abbott asked Garrett-Jackson on Wednesday if she disagreed that Posada has made a "prima facie" case against deportation to Venezuela, she replied: "No opinion."

Judge Abbott set Sept. 26 as the date for the government to start its case.

And unless the immigration legal officer changes his mind, the confessed mastermind of the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 that killed 73 people off Barbados, the bombing of hotels and restaurants in Cuba in 1997 that killed one person, and the lead conspirator to assassinate Castro in Panama in 2000, will stay in the United States.