He worked for the Venezuelan secret police for several years. Then, in 1976, he and Miami pediatrician Orlando Bosch were arrested following the midair bombing of a Cubana airliner that killed all 73 people aboard.

But in 1985, Posada escaped from prison. He turned up a year later in El Salvador, where he worked for an unauthorized Nicaraguan contra resupply network overseen by then-National Security Council staffer Oliver North.

In 1997, he first admitted and then denied masterminding the bombing attacks on several Havana hotels and restaurants that catered to foreign tourists, who provided needed currency to cash-strapped Cuba.

Three years later, Posada and three Miami exiles were arrested in Panama after Castro, visiting for a heads-of-state summit, alleged at a news conference that they were plotting to kill him. The four claimed they were trying to help a Cuban general defect.

The Cuban militant suspected of plotting to kill Fidel Castro plans to seek asylum in the United States in hopes of avoiding prosecution in Venezuela for allegedly blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976, according to a lawyer who will represent him.

Luis Posada Carriles, 77, whom Castro has described as ``the worst terrorist in the hemisphere,'' is also wanted by Cuba and could face execution if he were extradited there.

Benefiting from the murderous tolerance granted in the United States to the same individuals who were being fought against by the five anti-terrorist Cuban patriots still unjustly imprisoned by imperialist justice, Posada has illegally returned to US territory with no problem. CSC