A US judge warned Luis Posada Carriles, wanted in Venezuela for bombing a Cuban airliner, that he would seek deportation to Venezuela if he had entered the United States illegally.

Venezuela has asked that the United States extradite Posada Carriles, a hardline opponent of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, in connection with the 1976 attack against the Cubana jet that left 73 people dead.

<##IMAGE##>The United States has so far balked on Caracas" request. The Cuban-born Venezuelan"s hearing in El Paso, Texas, focuses on immigration charges that he entered the United States illegally through Mexico in March. He was arrested in May after emerging in Miami.

Posada Carriles, who was trained by the Central Intelligence Agency to participate in the botched Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, is seeking political asylum in the United States.

Judge William Abbott said he would recommend sending him to Venezuela if he were to be deported.

He was already tried once in Venezuela and acquitted for the 1976 bombing, but he fled prison in 1985 as a high court mulled whether to confirm his acquittal.

Cuba also wants Posada Carriles for bombings of two Havana hotels in 1997, one of which killed an Italian tourist. Posada Carriles admitted in a 1998 New York Times interview that he had plotted the bombings, though he later retracted the statement.

In 2000, Panama convicted and sentenced Posada Carriles to eight years in prison for trying to kill Castro at a summit in the Central American country, but he was pardoned in 2004.

2005 AFP