Terrorist Threats on Cuba … Originating from the US

Washington still refuses to act to prevent small, far right-wing Cuban groups in Florida from planning terrorist attacks on the island.

On May 6, 2014, Cuban authorities announced the arrest of four people residing in Miami, under the suspicion of planning terrorists attacks on the island. Jose Ortega Amador, Obdulio Rodrigues Gonzales, Raibel Pacheco Santos and Felix Monzon Alvarez have traveled to Cuba from Florida and “have admitted that they were planning to attack military installations in order to promote violent actions.”*

The Havana government accused three other Miami residents with heavy criminal records of being the masterminds of the terrorist project: “[The four prisoners] also declared that these plans were organized under the aegis of terrorists Santiago Alvarez Fernandez Magnina, Osvaldo Mitat and Manuel Alzugaray, who live in Miami and foster tight relations with the infamous terrorist Luis Posada Carriles.”*

Since 1959, Cuba has been subjected to an intense terrorist campaign orchestrated by the CIA and Cuban expatriates, from the United States. In total, close to 7,000 terrorist attacks have been perpetrated against the island since the successful revolution. They have cost the lives of 3,478 people and have forever changed the lives of 2,099 others.

At the beginning of the 1990s, with the ensuing of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of tourism in Cuba, there has been a new surge of terrorist attacks against hotel infrastructure in Havana, perpetrated by the Cuban far-right wing of Miami, in order to stem tourism to the island and sabotage this vital sector of the moribund Cuban economy. The violent acts have created dozens of victims and cost the life of an Italian tourist, Fabio di Celmo.

The authors of the terrorist acts are still in Miami, where they enjoy total impunity. Luis Posada Carriles illustrates this issue perfectly. A former police officer under the Batista dictatorship, he became a CIA agent after 1959 and participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion. He is responsible for the assassination of 73 people, including the murder of the entire junior fencing team that had just won the Pan-American games.

The culpability of Posada Carriles is indisputable: He has openly admitted his terrorist inclinations in his autobiography entitled “Los Caminos del Guerrero,” and openly recognized authorship over the 1997 terrorist attack on the Cuban tourism industry in a New York Times interview on July 12, 1998. Besides, FBI and CIA archives, respectively declassified in 2005 and 2006, state his involvement with terrorism against Cuba.

Posada Carriles has never faced a court trial for his crimes. On the contrary, Washington always protected him by refusing to try him for his actions or extradite him to Cuba or Venezuela, where he has also committed crimes. This reality contradicts the White House’s war on terrorism.

In 1997, Cuba proposed to the U.S. a discrete collaboration regarding the war on terrorism. The Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who had friendly relationships with both Fidel Castro and Bill Clinton, was the messenger. The Cuban government invited two FBI agents to Havana to hand in documents regarding the illegal activities of certain organizations based in Florida. In fact, Cuban intelligence services had sent some of their agents to Florida, but instead of neutralizing the perpetrators of terrorist attacks, in 1998, the U.S. government decided to arrest five Cuban agents with harsh terms of imprisonment, ranging from 15 years to two life-long sentences. Many international organizations decried the trial, and three of the convicted — Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero and Ramon Labanino — are still behind bars.

Meanwhile, in order to justify its hostile policy of anachronistic and cruel economic sanctions, which affect all Cuban social strata and prevent the normalization of any bilateral relationship, Washington does not hesitate to put Cuba on the list of countries that promotes international terrorism, on the pretext that members of the ETA (a Basque separatist organization) and FARC (Colombian guerrilla group) dwell in Cuba … with the complicity of the Spanish and Colombian governments. Besides, Washington admits it explicitly in its report: “The government of Cuba supported and hosted negotiations between the FARC and the government of Colombia aimed at brokering a peace agreement between the two.” The U.S. admits that “there was no indication that the Cuban government provided weapons or paramilitary training to terrorist groups,” and that “ETA members in Cuba were relocated with the cooperation of the Spanish government.”

Washington also justifies the inclusion of Cuba on the terrorist country list because of the political refugees dwelling on the island who have been wanted by the U.S. since the 1970s and ’80s. Nevertheless, none of these people have been accused of terrorism.

The 33 countries that are members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) have unanimously rejected the inclusion of Cuba on the terrorist country list — a real slap in the face for Washington. In a statement made public on May 7, 2014, the Community expressed its “total opposition to the composition of unilateral lists that accuse nations of allegedly ‘supporting and sponsoring terrorism,’ and exhorts the U.S. government to put an end to this practice” that gives cause to the “reprobation” of the “international community and U.S. public opinion.”*

For more than half a century, Cuba underwent violence orchestrated from the United States, first by the CIA and henceforth by the Cuban far-right wing. The impunity bestowed upon small, violent groups and the imprisonment of Cuban agents under harsh sentences for foiling no less than 170 terrorist attacks against the island illustrates the double standard of the U.S. in the war on terrorism, and casts a shadow of doubt on Washington’s credibility in this fight.

*Editor’s note: The original quotation, accurately translated could not be verified.