document: Defense rests in Cuban ex-CIA agent 's perjury case Defense rests in Cuban ex-CIA agent 's perjury case -LRB- AP -RRB- EL PASO , Texas -LRB- AP -RRB- -- Attorneys for an elderly ex-CIA agent accused of lying to U.S. immigration authorities about his alleged role in deadly 1997 bombings in Cuba rested their case Friday without calling their client as a witness . Luis Posada Carriles ' attorneys called just eight witnesses in eight days -- barely a third of the 23 people federal prosecutors summoned to the stand during the first 11 weeks of the oft-delayed trial . Prosecutors plan to call at least one rebuttal witness Monday , with closing arguments to follow . Posada 's face is plastered on propaganda billboards throughout his native Cuba , where he is considered former President Fidel Castro 's longtime nemesis for the decades he spent trying to destabilize Castro 's regime and other communist governments in Latin America . For much of that time , he had Washington 's support . Posada sneaked into the U.S. in 2005 and sought political asylum , and then U.S. citizenship . Prosecutors charged Posada with 11 counts of immigration fraud , obstruction and perjury , because they say he lied during citizenship hearings in El Paso about how he made it into the country and about having a Guatemalan passport with a false name . They also say Posada failed to acknowledge planning a wave of 1997 bombings at Cuban luxury hotels and a top tourist restaurant in Havana between April and September 1997 that killed an Italian visitor and injured about a dozen other people . In 1998 interviews with The New York Times , Posada said he masterminded the blasts , explaining that they were meant to hurt tourism in Cuba but not kill anybody . He also said he was angry the attacks had not received enough media attention in the U.S. . He has since denied making those comments . The defense focused on attempting to discredit key prosecution witnesses , rather than telling Posada 's versions of events . Its final witness was Carlos Spector , an El Paso attorney who has handled about 500 immigration cases , including some high-profile ones involving Mexicans who have fled to the U.S. amid their country 's bloody drug war . Spector suggested U.S. authorities entrapped Posada simply by allowing him to go through immigration hearings . Posada was arrested in Panama in 2000 and imprisoned over a plot to kill Castro during a summit there . He was pardoned by the Panamanian president in 2004 , and turned up in the U.S. the following March . Spector testified that Posada was barred by federal statute from receiving U.S. political asylum or citizenship because his previous conviction in Panama meant he could n't demonstrate good moral character . All the other questions he was asked during the El Paso hearings , Spector said , including how he slipped into the country , what was his role in the 1997 Cuba bombings , and why he had a Guatemalan passport , were irrelevant . '' `` I do n't know why they got that far , '' '' Spector said , '' `` his case was dead on arrival . '' '' The defense has long claimed the U.S. government knew Posada would n't qualify for citizenship but went ahead with the interview anyway just to charge him with lying . It 's an argument that worked before . U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone threw out original perjury and immigration fraud charges against Posada in 2007 , chastising the government for using the immigration hearings to build a criminal case against him . That decision was overturned by an appeals court , however , and the case returned to Cardone in El Paso , where prosecutors added new charges of obstruction . Posada was denied political asylum and citizenship during the El Paso proceedings , but was n't forced to leave the country under the convention to prevent torture . A U.S. immigration judge ruled he could n't be sent to Venezuela or Cuba because he could be tortured , and no other nation would take him . Under cross-examination Friday , lead prosecutor Timothy Reardon stressed that Posada requested the citizenship interviews and , though he ultimately withdrew his application for asylum because of his Panamanian conviction , he did n't do so until after answering more than two days of questions voluntarily . The defense also showed a photograph of Posada in front of a Greyhound bus station , but provided no further information or details . Posada says he paid a people smuggler to drive him from Honduras through Mexico and over the Texas border to Houston in 2005 , where he took a bus to Miami . Prosecutors say he actually sailed on a friend 's yacht from the Mexican resort of Isla Mujeres directly to Miami , where he slipped ashore without contacting immigration authorities . A CIA operative until 1976 , Posada participated indirectly in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion . He later served as head of the Venezuelan government 's intelligence service and was arrested for planning the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people . He escaped from a Venezuelan prison while still facing trial , however . In the 1980s , he helped the U.S. funnel support to Contra rebels in Nicaragua . Since arriving in the six years ago , Posada spent about two years in immigration detention centers in and near El Paso -- but was released when Cardone threw out the first case against him in 2007 . He has been living in Miami since then .
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