U.S. Detains Cuban Militant

Under growing international pressure, U.S. authorities Tuesday detained a Cuban exile accused by Fidel Castro's government of masterminding a 1976 airliner bombing that killed 73 people, a friend said. He had been seeking asylum in the United States.

Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative and Venezuelan security official, was taken into custody by the Department of Homeland Security, friend and benefactor Santiago Alvarez told The Associated Press.

The U.S. government had no immediate comment.

Posada, 77, is wanted by Venezuela for escaping from prison in 1985 while awaiting a prosecutor's appeal of his second acquittal in the bombing of a Cubana Airlines jetliner near Barbados. His whereabouts had been unknown until he surfaced in Miami in March and sent word that he was seeking asylum.

Castro has demanded Posada's arrest by U.S. authorities for his alleged role in the airliner bombing and other anti-Castro violence. That demand was echoed by thousands in protests in Havana on Tuesday.

"Down with terrorism!" the 78-year-old Castro shouted in brief comments before leading the march outside the U.S. Interests Section. "Down with Nazi doctrines and methods! Down with the lies!"

Not far behind the Cuban leader in the march were relatives of the Cubana 455 bombing victims carrying oversized photos of their lost loved ones.

Walking with them was the elderly father of Italian tourist, Fabio di Celmo, who died in one of a string of hotel bombings in the 1990s earlier claimed by Posada in a New York Times interview, reports CBS News Producer Portia Siegelbaum.

Recently declassified FBI documents link Posada to the plane downing and suggest he was working for the CIA until just a few months before it occurred.

Siegelbaum reports those documents, released under the Freedom of Information Act, also show linkage between Posada and another Cuban exile, Orlando Bosch and the terrorist bombing in Washington, D.C. that took the lives of exiled Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and his American assistant Ronnie Moffet.

A Department of Homeland Security official said last week that Posada has applied for asylum in the United States. To be eligible for political asylum, he must prove that he has a well-founded fear of persecution in his native country, said the official, who asked not to be named.

U.S. officials had said they are not actively seeking Posada because there were no American warrants for his arrest, and expressed doubts as recently as last week that Posada was even in the United States.

Venezuela recently approved an extradition request and Castro has made numerous televised speeches calling Posada a terrorist and accusing the United States of a double standard on terror. The United States and Venezuela have an extradition treaty.

"The majority of Americans would never be in favor of harboring a terrorist," said Wayne Smith, a former U.S. envoy to Cuba who now heads the Cuba program at the Washington-based Center for International Policy. If the United States were to grant asylum, Smith added, "we will be seen as hypocrites and as being against terrorism only when is suits our purposes."

In an interview with CBS News, Cuba's National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcón said Posada's presence in the U.S. raises a lot of questions

Posada Carriles meets "the classical definition of an international terrorist", Alarcón charged, referring to the 1989 U.S. Justice Department report that links the Cuban exile to 16 episodes of attempted kidnappings and assassinations, as well as bombings. "These episodes occurred in the United States, Spain, the Caribbean, and Central and South America," so that Posada is wanted by various governments and not just Havana, added Alarcón.

"Is the Homeland Security Department recognizing that it is possible for terrorists move around without being identified," Alarcón asked. "Is that something to be applauded? Or should it be a source of deep concern for Americans? "

"This is a no win for Washington," says CBS News foreign policy analyst Pamela Falk, who is also an asylum expert. "Posada doesn't qualify for asylum in the United States and he embarrasses Homeland Security because of his entrance and it confirms Castro's allegations about threats from Washington," she concluded.

Posada and three others were pardoned last August by Panama's president for their role in an alleged assassination plot in 2000 against Castro during a conference in Panama. Posada was also connected to a series of 1997 bombings of tourists sites in Cuba, one of which killed an Italian tourist.

In his first media interview since arriving in the United States earlier this year, Posada again denied involved in the airliner explosion in a story published Tuesday by the Miami Herald.

"They accused me of being the intellectual author of fabricating a weapon of war and of treason to the homeland. No one saw me make a bomb," Posada said Wednesday in a two-hour interview at a luxury condominium in Miami. "Sincerely, I didn't know anything about it."

But he refused to confirm or deny playing a role in a series of 1997 bombings targeting Cuban tourist sites, including one that killed a young Italian tourist. "Let's leave it to history," he told the Herald.