–  a case of US double standard on extradition
THIRTY FOUR years ago today, terrorists blew up a Cubana passenger aircraft off Barbados, killing all 73 people on board, mostly Cubans but including eleven Guyanese and five North Koreans on their way to Havana. For many years since that unprecedented Cubana tragedy in Caribbean airspace, there have been calls by the governments of Cuba and Venezuela as well as CARICOM for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.
Specifically identified for a court trial has been the Cuban émigré, Luis Posada Carriles, who had also acquired Venezuelan citizenship before his documented involvement as one of the primary plotters of the Cubana disaster and other escapades in terrorism.
Another of the plotters, exposed for his notorious roles in terrorism and link with the CIA in the Caribbean-Latin Americas region, including Chile under President Allende, was Orlando Bosch.
Like Posada, who continue to enjoy sanctuary in the USA – the superpower that never fails to remind the world of its commitment to democracy and the rule of law.
Long before Barack Obama wrote his name into 21st century history as the first-ever African-American President and raised hopes for “fundamental changes” in how America conducts business at home and abroad, CARICOM governments had appealed, in the name of justice and human decency, for Posada to face trial.
But, as had happened years earlier, in the case of Posada’s compatriot in crime, Bosch, there has been no such move by the justice administration system in USA.

PRIMARY PLOTTERS
On the contrary, since 1988, in the face of the decision by a US judge for his deportation as a terrorist, “unfettered by law and human decency”, Bosch was to be taken into Uncle Sam’s protective political care – thanks to the Presidential pardon received from the elder George H.W. Bush, as then occupant of the White House.
Disclosures of the terroristic activities of both Bosch and Posada as agents of the CIA working with the anti-Fidel Castro community of Cuban exiles – have been accessed from records of the CIA and Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) themselves.  
Today, therefore, as the people of Barbados and the rest of CARICOM join Cuba in silent remembrance of the victims of the Cubana tragedy, it would be difficult also to ignore the double standard, the sheer political hypocrisy, of ‘Uncle Sam’ in its selective execution of bilateral extradition treaties.
The classic example, best known by Jamaicans, and too recent for the entire CARICOM region to ignore, is the extradition case involving Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, currently a prisoner of the USA on charges of drug trafficking and gun-running.
This internationally publicised extradition of a Jamaican drug lord, that resulted from extreme pressures by Uncle Sam, has posed tremendous problems for the authorities in Kingston with current debate on its ultimate impact on the longevity of the Bruce Golding administration.
Yet, in sharp contrast, and with no intent to rationalise criminality, it is quite relevant to note the utter hypocrisy of the USA in how it responds to extradition cases.
Currently, while the people and government of Jamaica are coping with the consequences of uprooting, on Uncle Sam’s demand, ‘Dudus’ Coke from his Tivoli Gardens stronghold and extradite him for trial in America, there continues to be open contempt by US authorities for the requested extradition by both Cuba and Venezuela, of Posada Carriles – if not Bosch as well – for involvement in the Cubana tragedy 34 years ago today.There needs to be a response from the ‘time-for-change’ President Obama to revisit the cases of the two Cuban emigres being protected in America and known to be integrally linked with the Cubana tragedy as agents of the CIA.