Panama recalls Fidel Castro's report of terrorist plan

 HAVANA, Cuba, Jun 25 (ACN) Panama’s daily La Estrella de Panamá looked back on Cuban Revolution leader Fidel Castro’s denunciation of terrorist plans in 2000 to kill him and thousands of students and social activists.

The article, by lawyer and historian Jaime Flores, evoked Fidel's presence in 10th Ibero-American Summit, themed "United for children and adolescents, the base for justice and equity in the new millennium", on November 17 and 18.

In his view, that meeting would have been an ordinary event had it not been for the Cuban leader’s statements to the journalists gathered at the University of Panama about a plan set in motion by the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles to blow up the facility with C4 explosives during Fidel’s meeting with members of student and popular movements, an act sure to have killed hundreds, if not thousands.

The following day, the author adds, the National Police arrested long-time criminals Posada Carriles and his mates Pedro Crispín Remón, Guillermo Novo Sampoll and Gaspar Jiménez, all of whom were prosecuted and found guilty by a court of law. However, then-president Mireya Moscoso, who was about to finish her term of office, took no heed of Cuba’s and Venezuela’s requests for the extradition of the terrorists and granted a pardon instead.

The transcendence of those events and Fidel's courage to denounce the assassination plans were highlighted in the same place, 23 years later, by Fernando Gonzalez, Hero of the Republic of Cuba and president of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, who remarked that Fidel was always noted for facing danger head-on and dealing decisively with any situation, which characterizes the will of the Cuban people to stand up to Washington's hostile policies.