Anti-Castro Militant Drops His Request for Asylum in U.S.

An anti-Castro militant accused of illegally entering the United States withdrew his request for U.S. asylum Wednesday, and his lawyers said they would focus instead on trying to prevent his deportation to Venezuela.

Luis Posada Carriles says he will be mistreated if he is returned to Venezuela to face charges that he plotted the deadly 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner while he was in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital.

Attorneys for the U.S. and Posada have agreed that Posada should not be deported to Cuba. The Cuban government has said it will not seek Posada’s return but does support Venezuela’s extradition request.

Immigration Judge William L. Abbott has designated Venezuela, where Posada is a naturalized citizen, as the country where he should be sent.

Lawyers for the U.S. government have said they need more information before deciding whether to oppose Abbott’s decision. A hearing on the issue is scheduled for Sept. 26.

Matthew Archambeault, one of Posada’s Florida-based lawyers, has repeatedly cited international conventions against torture in his requests to keep Posada in the United States.

The lead attorney for the U.S. government, Gina Garrett-Jackson, acknowledged Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security had “serious concerns” about Posada’s claim that he would face torture in Venezuela. She didn’t elaborate.

The Venezuelan government has not commented publicly on Posada’s torture claims.

Archambeault told the judge that Posada, a onetime CIA operative, decided to withdraw his asylum request to avoid embarrassing the U.S. government.

Posada’s answers to government lawyers’ questions Tuesday could have stepped “in areas sensitive to the U.S. government and other ... governments,” Archambeault said.

Posada’s lawyer told the judge that Posada would seek deferral of any order sending him to Venezuela. That would allow him to stay in the U.S., without any specific legal status while the government found another country to send him to or while conditions in Venezuela changed.

The judge said Wednesday that he would consider granting such a deferral. But a final decision is not expected until at least the September hearing.

Posada, who was a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, was trained by the CIA to help in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, though his lawyers say he didn’t participate.

Abbott had said that Posada’s role in terrorist attacks, if any, would have been considered in his asylum case. Abbott had asked lawyers in the case to provide briefs on whether the attempt to topple Fidel Castro’s communist government constituted terrorism.

Archambeault said “we both punted” on that issue. The government, he said, pledged to steer clear of the issue.

Posada has been held in an El Paso detention center since shortly after his May arrest in Miami.