Cuban exile Posada cleared of lying to US authorities

A jury in El Paso, Texas on Friday acquitted anti-Castro activist Luis Posada Carriles on 11 counts of perjury and immigration fraud following a three-month trial that focused on the octogenarian's sordid past, including his role in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner.

The jury took three hours to clear Posada, who is wanted by Cuba and Venezuela, at the conclusion of a high-profile trial that brought many Cuban exiles and pro-Castro activists to the West Texas city where he was originally indicted in 2005.

Emotional defense lawyers Arturo Hernández, Felipe Millán and Rhonda Anderson hugged the 82-year-old after US District Judge Kathleen Cardone read the jury's verdict. US prosecutors, who argued that Posada lied on how he entered the United States in 2005 and about his role in a string of hotel bombings in Havana in 1997, said theywere "disappointed" by the ruling.

"I feel happy,'' said Posada at a news conference afterwards. "I am supremely grateful to the United States

of America, to the fairness with which I've been judged, to the jury that absolved me, and what happened here

should serve as an example for justice in my country, Cuba,

which is unfortunately in the hands of a dictator.''

Posada's lawyer Hernández said his client will return to Miami to live with his family and do what he loves best: paint.

The governments of Cuba and Venezuela have demanded that Washington hand him over. "Luis Posada Carriles is a fugitive terrorist who has fled Venezuelan justice," the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Posada, a Cuban national with Venezuelan citizenship, fled Caracas after he was charged with the bombing of

a Cubana de Aviación airliner, on a flight from Barbados to Havana, which left 73 people dead.