Over the years, Cuba’s communist dictator, Fidel Castro, has supported guerrilla insurgencies in Latin America and Africa, pinned medals on Cuban pilots who shot down civilian aircraft flying over international waters killing four men, executed Cubans caught fleeing his regime, imprisoned hundreds of political dissidents, and destroyed Cuba’s once vibrant economy and civil society. He gets away with all this because he is one of the greatest propaganda geniuses of our time.

In his latest skillful exercise in propaganda, Mr. Castro is painting the Bush administration and America as hypocritically harboring a terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles, a militant Cuban exile who slipped illegally into America across the Mexican border and applied for asylum.

Mr. Castro demands America extradite the 77-year-old Mr. Posada to Cuba so he can be tried for a series of Havana hotel bombings that killed an Italian tourist in 1997. On Tuesday, as Mr. Castro led hundreds of thousands of Cubans through Havana on a “march against terrorism,” Department of Homeland Security agents arrested Mr. Posada in Miami. At the same time, the department released a written statement that it “does not generally remove people to Cuba” or “to countries believed to be acting on Cuba’s behalf.” The latter was a reference to Venezuela, which has also asked for extradition in order to retry Mr. Posada for a 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73. Mr. Posada has long maintained his innocence of that bombing and has twice been acquitted in Venezuelan courts. He was, however, convicted in Panama in 2000 of charges stemming from a plot to kill Mr. Castro, then pardoned a year ago.

Ever the master of distraction, Mr. Castro began his newest campaign several weeks ago in Geneva while trying to thwart a vote by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on a resolution condemning his abuse of human rights. For weeks during the proceedings, Cuban diplomats denounced America and other democratic governments in unsavory terms. Then suddenly they began talking instead of “surprise developments.” When news services finally reported Mr. Posada’s application for asylum, Mr. Castro jumped on his notoriety by attempting to derail commission proceedings, but he failed and the resolution was adopted.

In much the same manner, Mr. Castro used the world’s distraction with the invasion of Iraq and toppling of Saddam Hussein to cloak his own arrests and jailing of 75 human rights activists, independent librarians, and democracy advocates.

Awesome as the sight of 100,000 people marching against “terrorism” is, such demonstrations are not difficult for totalitarian regimes to stage. Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini did it, and Mr. Castro is as good at it as any of them. He simply sends trucks to pick up workers at factories, students at schools, and housewives at the block committees for the defense of the revolution. The question the rest of the world should be asking is: Why the distraction? What is he hiding this time? The answer this week may have less to do with Mr. Posada than with the scheduled meeting today of several hundred dissident groups in Havana.

In a country that bans independent associations that will be a significant gathering – if Mr. Castro’s thugs don’t break it up or arrest all who attend.

Press pundits are already speculating that Miami’s “politically powerful” Cuban-American community is pressuring the Bush administration to grant Mr. Posada asylum even while telling the rest of the world it should have “no tolerance” for terrorists. Well, here are the facts: Cuban-Americans aren’t terrorists and don’t support terrorism. Cuban-Americans also know that Mr. Castro labels anyone who disagrees with him a CIA agent and terrorist. In this country, however, an alleged terrorist is not a terrorist until proven to be one.

Cuba’s democratic opposition is overwhelmingly peaceful. Its goal is to facilitate the transition to the rule of law and to re-establish respect for human rights in Cuba. It follows the examples of Vaclav Havel, Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas Gandhi, and others who dedicated their lives to the defense of political and human rights.

When in post-Castro Cuba, government archives finally are opened, Mr. Castro’s support of terrorists such as the Puerto Rican Macheteros, the infamous Carlos the Jackal, the Basque separatist group Euskadi ta Askatasuna, or ETA, and others will be documented. In the interim, Jorge Masetti, a former agent for Mr. Castro now living in Paris, has written an enlightening book, “In the Pirate’s Den” (Encounter Books). It is a dramatic story of Havana’s involvement in narcotics trafficking, the counterfeiting of American currency – and international terrorism. Mr. Castro’s days of distraction are numbered and dwindling.

Mr. Calzon is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington, D.C.