Fidel Castro directed a vast protest march past the US mission in Havana, leading many thousands of cheering Cubans who carried signs equating US President George Bush with Adolf Hitler and accused the United States of preparing to free one of the hemisphere’s worst terrorists.
The government-sponsored march coincided with a US court deadline evidence to be filed in the case of Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative and anti-Castro militant held on immigration charges at a detention centre in El Paso, Texas. His lawyers are seeking his freedom as US immigration authorities seek his deportation.
Castro called Posada a “repugnant character” as well as a terrorist as he spoke to a sea of cheering Cubans along the coastal Malecon highway.