By Hernando Calvo Ospina on January 10, 2024
relatives of the victims of the terrorist bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976, photo: Bill Hackwell
I have verified that the Cuban government has sent to the International Criminal Police Organization, better known as Interpol, the Resolution of the Cuban Ministry of the Interior published in the Official Gazette of December 7, 2023. The police entity, of which 196 countries are members, received the “National List of persons and entities that have been subjected to criminal investigations and are wanted by Cuban authorities”.
The Resolution states: “To include in the National List those persons and entities that by virtue of Resolution 1373 of the United Nations Security Council, international law and the domestic legal system, have been subjected to criminal investigations and are wanted by Cuban authorities, due to their involvement in the promotion, planning, organization, financing, support or commission of acts carried out in the national territory or in other countries…”.
Specifying: “The Ministry of the Interior assures the existence of reasonable grounds or bases to include these persons and entities or organizations in the National Terrorist List, with duly documented evidentiary elements, which meet the designation criteria defined in the international and national standards mentioned in this Resolution…”
This includes persons who, since 1999, have committed terrorist acts, inside or outside the country, affecting citizens or properties. It also includes those who have made attempts against the life of the President of the Republic or other State officials. The names of those who have incited, organized or financed actions against peace and citizen security are detailed in the report.
With the exception of one person residing in Belgium, all of them live in the United States, particularly in Florida. Many of them have received, and receive, direct funding from the US State Department, but also from the CIA, which uses various entities and NGOs to deliver it.
In addition to countless interviews and articles on radio, TV and print media, mainly in Florida, many of these individuals have acknowledged their criminal and terrorist activities. Also, to this day, others incite them using the possibilities of penetration and propaganda provided by the internet, and calling themselves “opinion influencers”. The complicity and “blindness” of the U.S. authorities that should be in charge of repressing them, starting with the FBI, has always been astonishing and even hard to believe.
That first group, which they call ‘historical exiles’, many of those who served as mercenaries when an attempt was made to invade Cuba under U.S. orders, in April 1961, through the Bay of Pigs, joined the CIA, which specializes in sabotage and terrorism.
Being the clandestine war carried out by the Reagan-Bush father administration against the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, since the end of the seventies and during almost all the following decade, many of those who are in that list of “wanted” by the Ministry of the Interior of Cuba participated and mixed with cocaine trafficking, something totally endorsed by that government to finance the dirty war. This is very clear in the Kerry Report of the U.S. Congress: “the people who provided support to the contras were involved in drug trafficking… and elements of the contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers.
In addition to Hernández Calvo and Basulto León, in the field or in Florida: Santiago Álvarez Fernández Magriñá, Pedro Remón Crispín Rodríguez, Antonio Calatayú Rivera, Ramón Saúl Sánchez Rizo, Santiago Álvarez Fernández, Guillermo Novo Sampoll. It is worth mentioning Félix Ismael Rodríguez Mendigutía, who as a CIA officer transferred the order from Washington to assassinate Che Guevara after he was captured. He was one of the main men of the Reagan Administration’s National Security Council in the dirty war against the Sandinistas. Therefore, he was aware of the cocaine trafficking.
All of them are wanted by the Cuban authorities to be brought to justice.
In addition, their participation in terrorist organizations based in Florida is well documented in materials they themselves produced or that they mentioned in interviews with people they trusted.
In that long investigation I carried out in Florida, I also met directly the journalist Ninoska Pérez Castellón, who to this day continues to endorse terrorist actions against Cuba, and therefore is on the list mentioned in the official Cuban Gazette. Since then he was already part of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), an organization that Reagan helped to create to support the anti-Sandinista war and the end of the Cuban revolution. At that time Hernández Calvo was the second in command of the Foundation.
The Gazette mentions several organizations to which almost all of the above mentioned belong or belonged. Many of them have been considered terrorists by the FBI itself but remain untouchable. Among them are the Coordinadora de Organizaciones Revolucionarias Unidas, CORU (responsible for the mid-air bombing of a Cubana de Aviación commercial airliner in October 1976); Omega 7 (considered by the FBI as “the most dangerous terrorist organization in the United States”); and Alpha 66. I was invited several times to the training camps of the latter, and witnessed how they prepared terrorist attacks and assaults on coastal towns in Cuba. Alpha 66 has also been considered “terrorist” by the US authorities, however….
With the arrival and development of the internet, the violence against Cuba changed without changing the objective of violently ending the Cuban revolution. As Spanish journalist José Manzaneda said, in 2018 the U.S. State Department created “the Internet Task Force against Cuba” to carry out psychological and propaganda warfare within the Cuban population. The journalist Ignacio Ramonet adds that this war that takes place through social networks has been added to the economic blockade to try to destabilize the revolution from within. The Argentine sociologist Atilo Borón says that from those sites are launched “messages of hate” very well designed, “highly directed and very effective”, mainly towards the youth, so that they feel “indignant and humiliated”, and thus rise up against the government out of resentment. “A highly sophisticated propaganda system, attacking the population at all times,” says former UN rapporteur Alfred de Zayas.
And these messages loaded with permanent hatred are launched from Miami by those mentioned in the Gazette and whose detailed charges are in the hands of Interpol. Messages that incite internal violence, the assassination of State personalities, the destruction of common goods and all kinds of sabotage, such as the electro-energy system or the burning of plantations.
Among them are: Orlando Gutiérrez Boronat, Ana Olema Hernández, William Cabrera González, Michel Naranjo Riverón, Eduardo Arias León. Also on the list are Yamila Betancourt García, Eliecer Ávila, Liudmila Santiesteban Cruz, Manuel Milanés Pizonero, Alain Lambert Sánchez (Cuban Paparazzi), Jorge Ramón Batista Calero (Ultrack) and Alexander Otaola Casal.
The objectives pursued are the same as those of the so-called ‘historical exile’, only the method has changed. Both have one thing in common: they use terrorist methods.
As terrorists and traitors to the Homeland they have served, and have served, the interests of the United States for 65 years against the Cuban revolution. If they were to act in this way against the United States, they would not be spared life imprisonment or the death penalty, as has happened in many cases. Already the seriousness of receiving money from a foreign power, as mercenaries, to attack, destabilize or incite terrorist acts in France would lead them to about 20 years in prison. And Interpol would chase them even under the stones.
Hopefully, in the case of Cuba, the shadow of that tree called Washington, which protects, directs and finances them, will be overcome by Interpol in favor of the fight against international terrorism. As demanded by the United Nations itself.
Source Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English