Militant Foe of Castro Loses Bid for Freedom

A federal judge Wednesday denied a petition to free anti-Castro militant Orlando Bosch, whom the Justice Department is trying to deport as “Miami’s No. 1 terrorist.”

But U.S. District Judge William M. Hoeveler ordered that Bosch not be expelled while his attorneys exhaust their appeals of the extradition order, issued by the Justice Department in June.

Bosch, considered by some exiles a hero of the anti-Castro struggle, has been held at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center south of Miami since February, 1988, when he returned to the United States from Venezuela.

“This order concludes another chapter in the sad odyssey of Orlando Bosch Avila,” Hoeveler wrote in a 12-page ruling. “Once a hero of Cuban resistance to Castro’s communist takeover, his efforts became sullied by his extremes and eventually resulted in his imprisonment.”

Bosch was convicted of a 1968 bazooka attack on a Polish ship in Miami and fled the United States while on probation in 1974. He was later jailed for 11 years in Venezuela in the bombing of a Cuban airliner, killing 73 people.