MIAMI, March 31 (UPI) -- Luis Posada Carriles, a notorious opponent of the Fidel Castro regime in Cuba, may be coming out of hiding to seek asylum or permanent residency in the United States.
Persistent reports with unidentified sources have placed him in or near Miami seeking an attorney who can prevent him from being extradited to Venezuela. Authorities there have charged him with blowing up a Cuban jetliner in Barbados in 1976.
Posada, 77, is known in Cuba as an arch-terrorist who not only sabotaged the plane, resulting in 73 deaths, but was charged with an attempt on Castro's life.
Known as "Bambi" by his admirers, Posada escaped from jail in 1985 while awaiting trial for the plane bombing and was pardoned of the Castro attempt by the Panamanian president.
Santiago Alvarez, a Miami developer and a close friend of Posada, has declined to disclose whether the fugitive is in south Florida. But he acknowledged he talked to three lawyers about his friend Wednesday.
"I cannot tell you if I have seen him or have not seen him, if he is here or is not here," Alvarez told The Miami Herald.
"What I can tell you is that I am signing a contract with a lawyer to represent him in case it is true that he is here and that he will present himself to Immigration," Alvarez said.
FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela and Carlos Castillo, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office, said they have not heard from Posada. An unidentified official with the Department of Homeland Security said the agency is "working closely with our law enforcement partners and we're looking into the matter."
Two other media agencies in Miami have been quoted by Granma International, published by the Cuban government, as saying Posada has surrendered to U.S. authorities.
If Posada has arrived in south Florida after years of hiding in Latin America, he could possibly qualify for residency under the government's wet-foot, dry-foot policy.
Under the policy, Cuban refugees who make it to U.S. soil are usually allowed to remain. Those who are intercepted at sea are taken back to Cuba.
If the United States allows Posada to remain in the country, it would open the government to charges of harboring a terrorist, particularly from Cuba and Venezuela. They both have specific grievances with Posada and have a policy of antagonism toward the United States.
It also comes at a time when there is considerable sentiment in the United States to restore trade relations -- and in some quarters political relations -- with Cuba.
Those feelings are not shared, however, in the Miami Cuban community, which reveres Posada although he never lived in south Florida.
The situation is a reminder of the virulent ill will that flows from Cuba toward the U.S. government and back to the Cuban government by Miami Cuban-Americans.
About the most negative things the Cubans can say about anyone is that he is connected to the CIA or to the Miami-based Cuban-American National Foundation. Both charges are leveled at Posada.
Granma said the most recent Posada crime was organizing a plot to assassinate Castro in 2000 during the 10th Ibero-American Summit in Panama City, Panama.
Posada and three others were sentenced to seven years in prison but Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso granted amnesty the day before she stepped down last summer in what Granma called "an unprecedented act (that) qualified as unconstitutional."
"Global justice is mourning," said the Cuban national news agency AIN.
The agency calls Posada "one of the cruelest terrorists of the Western Hemisphere."
Most sources say Posada was a member of the 2506 Brigade that conducted the Bay of Pigs invasion, but there are conflicting reports on whether he took part.
Granma said Posada was trained by the CIA and the U.S. Army in military tactics, espionage, sabotage, explosives handling, demolition and firearms.
"His list of evil deeds includes participation in plans to assassinate Cuban officials in Chile and another to try and kill President Castro when he visited that South American country in 1971," Granma said.
Granma, along with The Miami Herald, said Posada was involved in a series of bombings at tourist locations in Cuba in 1997. Posada admitted masterminding the half-dozen bombings and suggested the action had been financed by Jorge Mas Canosa, the late founder of the Cuban American National Foundation.
Posada told The New York Times that he received $200,000 from Mas Canosa, a statement that Posada later denied.
Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez Herrera said his country has an extradition agreement with the United States but did not say if it would be implemented.
U.S. officials said Posada was on a watch list, but Alvarez said it was not likely he entered the country at an airport or another port where there is a checkpoint. He said it is more likely he crossed a border.
Posada was last seen by the public in Honduras. The Cuban government asked Honduras to arrest him and extradite him to Cuba, but Posada disappeared before a decision could be announced.
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