Feds: Cuban Terrorist's Case Was Wrongly Dropped

NEW ORLEANS — An American judge improperly dismissed immigration fraud charges against an anti-Castro terrorist suspected of plotting the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner, a government lawyer told a federal appeals court yesterday.

Prosecutors are appealing the dismissal of charges that Luis Posada Carriles made false statements as part of his bid to become a naturalized American citizen. Mr. Posada is a Cuban-born citizen of Venezuela, where he is wanted for alleged involvement in a 1976 airliner bombing that killed 73 people. He denies any wrongdoing.

In dismissing the immigration charges last year, a U.S. district judge, Kathleen Cardone, in El Paso, Texas, said federal authorities engaged in trickery and deceit by using a naturalization interview to build a criminal case against Mr. Posada.

Federal prosecutors argued yesterday before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans that Judge Cardone should not have taken the case out of a jury's hands. A lawyer for the Department of Justice's national security division, John De Pue, said Judge Cardone went too far in tossing out the entire transcripts of the interview.