Cuba’s Granma newspaper says Luis Posada Carriles’ lawyers are trying to use a legal loophole to prevent the court from hearing key evidence in his case. Posada, the alleged mastermind of both the 1976 bombing of Cubana Airlines Flight 455 and also the 1997 Havana hotel bombing campaign, is scheduled to go on trial at […]

In this, the first of a three-part video from Cubavision, Salvadoran Francisco Chavez Abarca talks about—and reenacts—a number of his missions to Cuba to plant bombs at tourist facilities during the mid-1990s: For more on who Chavez Abarca is and the story of his involvement in the 1997 hotel bombing campaign, check out The Gordito […]

On September 27, 2005, an American immigration court turned down alleged Cuban terrorist Luis Posada Carriles’ request for political asylum in the United States. Blood on the floor at the Copacabana. The following day, however, the same judge ruled Posada couldn’t be deported because he might face “torture” in Venezuela, which had requested his extradition […]

On September 10, 1997, Cuba officially announces the arrest of Raúl Cruz León, a Salvadoran mercenary, in connection with the bombing that killed Fabio Di Celmo. But there’s more the Cubans don’t announce… The day before—at the direction of his Cuban interrogators—Cruz León telephoned Francisco Chávez Abarca, the Salvadoran who’d hired him for the bombing […]

Havana September 4, 1997 5:30 p.m. Copacabana explosion site It had been a good day. Four bombs. At $2,000 a bomb, that was $8,000. Not to forget the thousand Gordito still owed him from the last trip. Cruz León would be able to pay off his debts and have plenty left over for other, better […]

Today’s edition of CBC Radio’s flagship current affairs show, The Current, focused on the recent arrest of Francisco Chavez Abarca in Venezuela. Chavez Abarca, who is wanted in connection with a deadly 1997 terrorist bombing campaign aimed at targeted Cuba’s fledgling tourist industry, has been extradited to Cuba where he is being questioned about his […]

My goal in writing “Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection” is to stick to the facts, reconstructing key events of the case in order to produce an in-the-moment narrative that will help readers understand the true story of what really happened even as it entertains them. But whose facts? Whose truth? Those are […]

I was in Montreal recently to interview Livio Di Celmo, the brother of Fabio, a 32-year-old Italian-Canadian who was killed in a September 4, 1997 bombing that was part of a larger terrorist campaign anti-Castro militants were then waging against Cuban tourism. The alleged mastermind of that campaign—as well as the 1976 bombing of a […]

Francisco Chavez Abarca Francisco Chavez Abarca—the Salvadoran man arrested at Caracas International Airport on Thursday (July 1, 2010) and accused of plotting to “provoke violence and destabilization” in the lead-up to Venezuela’s legislative elections in September—was one of the keys player in the 1997 Havana hotel bombing campaign orchestrated by anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles. […]