June 27, 2002

Close your eyes and review the images of Sept. 11 you watched so repeatedly on TV. Imagine that you're trapped in one of the towers that are collapsing at a temperature that bends steel. Or imagine that you're a passenger in one of the airliner-bombs. Don't open your eyes. Pinch your skin. Acknowledge that you're a survivor of the horror that occurred. Now, picture in your mind the image of a terrorist and, next to him, a lawyer who takes part in the political defense – not just the juridical defense – of the murderer. Remain like that, with your imagination open and your eyes shut, and wonder what your reaction would be if the governor of your state were to propose that lawyer for a seat on the state Supreme Court.

Open your eyes. None of this is a trick of the imagination. It happened and continues to happen. A Cuban-American lawyer, Raoul Cantero, engaged in the political defense of a Cuban terrorist – Orlando Bosch – whom the Department of Justice, on the basis of CIA and FBI reports, declared guilty of terrorist acts inside and outside the United States. That same lawyer, Raoul Cantero, 41, is one of five candidates from whom Gov. Jeb Bush will pick a nominee for the Florida Supreme Court.

According to an article in The New York Times, Aug. 16, 1989, the reports from the U.S. intelligence agencies delivered to the
Department of Justice demonstrated that Cantero's ally, Orlando Bosch, was involved from 1961 to 1968 in 30 acts of sabotage in the United States, Puerto Rico, Panama and Cuba, including the dynamite bombing of at least three ships.

Bosch, who was found guilty by a U.S. court of some of those acts, was free on parole in 1972, when he fled from the United States to a Central American country where he established his new headquarters. From there, he resumed his terrorist activities.

The same CIA and FBI reports showed that Bosch was the intellectual author of the demolition of a Cuban commercial airliner
flying from Venezuela to Cuba with 73 passengers aboard. During a stopover in Barbados, two Venezuelan citizens placed two bombs in the plane before getting off. After they were arrested, they involved Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles – another Cuban with a long terrorist history in concert with Bosch and acting independently – as the organizers of the crime.

At present, Posada Carriles and other Cuban terrorists are under arrest in Panama, accused of organizing an attempt to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro during the Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government in November 2000 in Panama City. Had the conspiracy not been exposed, the terrorists would have detonated a bomb in a hall where Castro addressed hundreds of university students.

Use your imagination once again. Close your eyes and put yourself aboard the plane flying from Caracas to Havana, traveling with
the young members of the fencing team returning to their homeland after winning all the medals at a competition. See how those teenagers celebrate their first international triumph. They're returning home. They're thinking about their parents' embrace, their parents' pride in the medals won. They laugh, sing, joke. The adults aboard the plane –you're with them in your imagination – and several Guyanan youths who are going to Cuba to study smile at the joy of the young athletes. The laughter, the songs, the jokes are interrupted by one explosion, then another.

Open your eyes. You're no longer in the plane. You won't have to listen to the screams, see the torn flesh and broken dreams, feel how the plane falls burning to the sea while the flames devour the passengers. There are no survivors.

Few bodies are rescued. As in the World Trade Center, dozens of mothers don't even get the consolation of burying their children.

Bosch returned to the United States in February 1988 and immediately was arrested for violating his parole. Because of this, and
because the Department of Justice deemed him a threat to security, deportation procedures are begun. Several months later, on Jan. 23, 1989, an "Inadmissibility Proceeding" is issued, signed by the Acting Assistant Attorney General, Joe D. Whitley, which orders his deportation from the United States. Among other reasons, the decision states that Orlando Bosch "has formed and directed organizations among whose purposes are precisely the deeds considered to be the motive for hisinadmission, by virtue of 8 U.S.C. 1182 a) 28). For years, he has personally supported terrorist attacks abroad, as well as bombings and acts of sabotage and has participated in them. There is no serious information that indicates that Bosch has renounced terrorism in the service of the cause to which he has devoted his life."

During the entire judicial process, Mr. Raoul Cantero acted as Bosch's attorney, but once the inadmissibility proceeding was
instituted, he became an adviser to the campaign launched by the Cuban-American far right against the Justice Department's decision to deport the terrorist.

This is not to question the legal defense that Mr. Cantero may have rendered Orlando Bosch or any other defendant in a courtroom. Under our laws, every accused person has the right to a defense, but this is a political relationship. Once the process was over, he didn't act as a lawyer who defends a client in court but actively participated in a battle of public pressure and politics that included hunger strikes and support from the communications media. He participated in a campaign designed to justify the acts of Orlando Bosch on the basis of a double standard that defined as a patriotic act something that really is terrorism, whenever and wherever the enemy can be attacked. Acts as repugnant as the events of Sept. 11 can become a heroic feat if they're perpetrated against the right target. That's exactly Osama bin Laden's defense.

Participating with Raoul Cantero in this campaign, to a greater or lesser degree, were Jorge Mas Canosa, the late chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who was a state senator at the time but who already was preparing her promotion to federal Congresswoman; the current governor, Jeb Bush; and the Republican Party of Florida. The strategy was clear: promote a political alliance with the Cuban-American far right by defending one of its "heroes," a "freedom fighter." No matter what terrorist acts he has committed, no matter how much innocent blood was spilled. Bosch is a bitter enemy of Castro and any crime against the Cuban people can be presented as a struggle for democracy, even the blowing up of an airliner full of teenagers, athletes as young as 16 and 17.

The campaign in favor of Orlando Bosch succeeded. Then-President Bush I understood the political importance of the alliance sought by his party and his Floridian son and in 1991 granted a presidential pardon, despite Bosch's long history of terrorist acts and overruling the objections of the FBI and the Department of Justice. Orlando Bosch now lives comfortably in Miami, where he continues to plot acts of terrorism against Cuba.

If anyone thinks that the passing of years has softened Bosch, that the acts of Sept. 11 have made him and his defenders more prudent, that someone is wrong. The statement in the Justice Department document directing the terrorist's deportation to the effect that "There is no serious information that indicates that Bosch has renounced terrorism in the service of the cause to which he has devoted his life" continues to be true.

According to The Miami New Times of Dec. 12, 2001, Orlando Bosch admitted to reporter Kirk Nielsen that on a recent date he had smuggled explosives into Cuba. Those who supported him continue to consider him a defender of democracy.

This is the man with whom Raoul Cantero associated himself politically, the man he considers a freedom-loving patriot. That's the
sense of justice that Cantero could carry to the Florida Supreme Court if eventually he is appointed.

Jeb Bush's strategy is now clear: to strengthen the alliance created with the Cuban far right with a view toward the gubernatorial
election in November and, long range, toward Bush II's re-election.

The governor is not alone in his predilection for Cantero. The same people who defended Bosch also support the appointment. They have not lost the habit of supporting terrorists.

Now, while Florida Governor Jeb Bush thinks about alliances and influences, and weighs the pros and cons before deciding on a nominee for the Florida Supreme Court, close your eyes again. Relive the terrible moments of Sept. 11. Try to imagine the scene aboard the planes-turned- projectiles that crash into the Twin Towers and think about the victims trapped in the buildings. Think again about the Cuban teenagers ripped apart by the bombs aboard a commercial airliner that never reached home.

Open your eyes. Return to reality but continue to imagine. See Raoul Cantero invested as a Florida Supreme Court Justice, the highest judicial body in the state. And imagine the kind of justice he will impart.

Precisely to defend justice and to be consistent in the struggle against terrorism, days ago we called for a campaign of telephone calls. We citizens and the institutions of civilian society must act; this is not an act under political banners – though its consequences may be –but an act on the basis of the most elementary ethics. It is also the participation of citizenry and its institutions for the purpose of preserving to the utmost the immunity of the judicial power in the face of any contamination that may pervert its independence.

Our first call, directed at the media, already has been heard. They have opened their eyes. On June 20, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel and The Miami Herald responded by publishing articles on the subject. The chain of information, in addition to communication, in addition to participation, the basis of the informative democracy in which we believe, was efficient.

The topic is already in the public domain, with the exception of Governor Bush's office, where they say they've received only about 10 phone calls, which is ridiculous. But even if that were so, I remind the reader that to a genuinely democratic politician a single call about the possibility of placing on the state Supreme Court a man with possible strong links to a terrorist would be enough to make him pause. Maybe in the governor's office the right thing to do is a question of numbers. And that's where we're heading. We call on all those who agree with us to phone the governor or send him a fax.

And, finally, close your eyes again. Can you imagine the Governor of New York proposing someone like Raoul Cantero for his
state's Supreme Court? Of course not; this is possible only in Miami. And we all know why.

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Francisco Aruca is director of Radio Progreso Alternativa, Babel's Guide and the electronic weeklies Progreso Semanal and ProgresoWeekly.

The governor's phone number is 305-348-6870; his fax number is 850-487-0801.