Powerful testimonies full of indignation were part of the first day of a public trial being held in Havana against Luis Posada Carriles and the government of the United States, reported the ACN news agency.

Expert witnesses, investigators and relatives of victims of the many violent acts organized by Posada, with the consent and backing of Washington, were asked to provide testimony at the Jose Antonio Echeverria Youth Center in the capital.

Rosalba Alvarez Garcia blamed "Comisario Basilio" —Posada’s code name when he worked for the Venezuelan secret police— for the death of her father Ramon Antonio Alvarez and other Venezuelan revolutionaries.

The first person to testify was Dager Aguilar, a Cuban Law student who has carried out a thorough study of the criminal profile of Posada. He called his recent release in the United States without charges a danger for Cuba and others.

Manuel Hevia Frasquieri, director of the Cuban State Security Historical Research Center, and Andres Zaldivar Dieguez, a staff researcher at the institution, centered their statements on the long history of subversive activities carried out by the White House against Cuba. They noted that in many cases Posada played a lead role.

Also providing testimony was Major Misael Fonte, an expert at the Central Crime Laboratory, and First Lieutenant Yohan Lopez, a criminal investigations instructor at the Ministry of Interior. They both detailed the role of Posada in the mid-flight sabotage of a Cuban airliner off the coasts of Barbados in 1976, killing 73 persons.

Meanwhile, Prensa Latina reported that the government of Nicaragua is working to formalize its extradition request to United States authorities for Posada for his role in Washington’s dirty war in Central America during the 1980s.

Venezuela has already requested Posada’s extradition, but the US has failed to abide by the valid extradition treaty with the South American nation.