U.S. Probes 1997 Cuba Hotel Bombings

A television shows the word "terrorists," in a small museum dedicated to evidence that Cuban authorities said they found against Luis Posada Carriles and others in Havana, Thursday, May 10, 2007. For Cuban officials enraged by a U.S. judge's decision to release their archenemy, the evidence collected after numerous 1997 Havana hotel bombings is a stinging reminder that the 79-year-old militant has never been tried in those attacks or other violent acts he's accused of. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) (Gregory Bull - AP)

After escaping a Venezuelan prison, he wound up in El Salvador where he took part in the Iran-Contra arms operation run by Lt. Col Oliver North.

Posada once acknowledged involvement in the Havana hotel bombings _ telling The New York Times that "we didn't want to hurt anybody" _ but now denies any link to those attacks or the jetliner explosion.

The federal probe in New Jersey has the most potential to put Posada behind bars in the United States.

"Follow the Newark grand jury," advised Phil Peters of the Lexington Institute, a pro-democracy think tank near Washington. "The immigration charges were always a sideshow," Peters wrote in his blog.

Justice Department officials won't discuss the secret proceedings. But in a 2005 affadavit, a Miami-based FBI agent said the Havana bombings probe turned up records detailing $19,000 in wire transfers from New Jersey to a "Ramon Medina" in Guatemala and El Salvador between 1996 and 1998. Posada has said he had a Salvadoran passport in that name.

During the 1999 Cuban trial of two Salvadorans in the bombings, prosecutors said Posada organized and financed the attacks, recruiting the bombers in Central America and paying about $4,500 for each mission. Both were given the death penalty, but were later spared and remain in prison.

Cuban-American members of Congress were furious when they learned the latest FBI visit to Cuba, complaining to the Justice Department that any evidence gathered by communist authorities would be suspect.

"By asking a state sponsor of terrorism for `evidence' regarding terrorism, the Bush administration Justice Department demonstrates a shockingly profound ignorance of the nature of terrorism, of its origins, and its state sponsors," Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement.

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Associated Press writer Curt Anderson contributed to this report from Miami.