Federal prosecutors have accused the lead attorney for Luis Posada Carriles of trying to mislead the court by claiming the U.S. government delayed delivery of documents that could exonerate the Cuban exile militant of responsibility in a string of Cuban tourist site bombings in 1997.
In a written motion filed this week, the prosecutors say that Posada’s attorney, Arturo V. Hernandez, is seeking a mistrial by raising issues that have no direct bearing on the current case, which centers on whether Posada lied about his alleged role in the bombings and how he sneaked into the United States.
Hernandez alleges that the prosecution failed to advise the jury that a key Cuban government witness against Posada, state security Lt. Col. Roberto Hernandez Caballero, was also a counterintelligence agent in Havana.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone, who is presiding over the trial, halted the case for a week until next Tuesday, saying she needed more time to consider the mistrial motion.
At the heart of the complaints filed by Posada’s attorney is a declassified FBI report quoting an unidentified informant inside Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior as saying in 1997 that the bombings were the work of Cuban intelligence services. The prosecutors called that an attempt to point the finger away from Posada and toward the Cuban regime and labeled it “conjecture.’’
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