Atty argues for Cuban militant release

Government efforts to keep the aging anti-Castro Cuban militant Luis Posada Carriles in jail are "frivolous and merely for the purposes of delay," his defense attorney said Monday.

Posada was at the federal courthouse in El Paso last week signing bond paperwork that would have set him free when the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans granted a government request to continue holding him in an Otero County, N.M., jail.

The 79-year-old former CIA operative is wanted in Venezuela on charges that he was in Caracas when he plotted a 1976 bombing that killed 73 people aboard a Cuban jetliner. He has been jailed in the United States since May 2005, when he admitted sneaking into the country illegally from Mexico.

Rhonda A. Anderson, one of Posada's Florida lawyers, argued that the government is appealing an earlier order granting bond to "appease Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez's criticism and protests in response to the order granting...bail."

Anderson did not return a phone message seeking comment.

Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, said the government's filings speak for themselves.

In January, Posada was indicted on charges that he lied to federal immigration authorities in a bid to become a naturalized U.S. citizen. Federal authorities have charged that he lied about how he entered the country and several other details.

A deportation order is also pending, though an immigration judge has ruled that Posada cannot be sent to his native Cuba or Venezuela, where he is a naturalized citizen, because of fears that he will be tortured.