I could have killed that son of a bitch!

photo by Dada

This is the El Paso County Courthouse--one of the two courthouses between which El Paso Border Peace Presence's weekly anti-war vigil takes place each Friday at noon. The other is the U.S. Federal Courthouse directly across the street from this one, and that's the one that was the scene of yesterday's pretrial hearings for anti-Castro terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, bomber of Cuban hotels and alleged mastermind of the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner which killed 73 people.

Nearly two years ago I stood staring at the pictures of six young women and six young men, all members of the 1976 Cuban National Women's and Men's Fencing Teams who were aboard that airplane. Pictures of those twelve, all on the doorsteps of their prime, were outside the local Border Patrol Headquarters as part of a display by protestor's there that day . But those young people, all victims of that terrorism are dead now. They have been for over 30 years. And it all happened so sudden and unexpectedly when their plane was blown from the the sky.

While looking over the display of the victims of that ill-fated flight back then, I spoke with Roseanne Nenninger and Sharon Persaud, sisters who had both come long distances to witness the hearing of the man allegedly responsible. Each had a deep, personal interest in Luis Posada Carriles, center of that day's hearing. That's because their young brother who was on his way to medical school in Cuba that day and was also on that flight.

I blogged about the George Bush conundrum, "If you harbor a terrorist, you are a terrorist" back then. But the hearing on Luis Posada Carriles wasn't about his involvement in blowing 73 innocent people out of the sky or our nation's harboring him from Cuban and Venezuelan justice for his terrorist activities. It was about whether Carriles was in this country legally or not. Yesterday's pretrial hearing was a continuation of that process.

But that's where yesterday's experience gets interesting. That's because, as the noon peace demonstration was winding down and we turned to head off to lunch, we were confronted with a small group of "suits" approaching which I came to realize were Luis Posada Carriles' legal team with a couple of U.S. Marshals mixed in for Carriles' security perhaps.

As I stepped aside to allow this group to pass, I realized the *star* among them was this fragile, white haired 79 year old terrorist returning from lunch. And being as we were on a narrow sidewalk as they passed, I literally brushed shoulders with Carriles. Seriously, we bumped into each other and I immediately realized, had I been a person of his ilk, I could at that moment, then and there, have killed that son of a bitch!

But I'm not, but if I were at least he would have departed this existence with a full meal and a full life. And that's something he deprived many, many others from in their sudden, premature departures from this Earthly plane.