Cuba Arrests Four Miami Cubans in “Terrorist” Plot

HAVANA TIMES — Cuban authorities informed Wednesday on the arrest of four Cuban-Americans who had come to the island from Miami, accusing them of planning “terrorist acts” in the country, reported dpa news.

The four Cuban-Americans,  José Ortega Amador, Obdulio Rodríguez González, Raibel Pacheco Santos and Félix Monzón Álvarez were arrested on April 26, said the Ministry of Interior in a statement published today in the official press.

“The detainees recognized their intention to attack military installations with the aim of promoting violent actions,” said the ministry. According to the communiqué, three of the four accused had traveled to the island from mid-2013 to plan the attacks.

The Interior Ministry also linked the four with the leaders of the radical Cuban exile groups in the U.S., which in past decades have supported efforts to overthrow the Castro government by force.

US government officials have yet to comment on the detentions; nor have they confirmed if the four arrested are US citizens.

“We don’t have the details at this time,” said State Department spokesperson Jen Peski, who added that contact with the government of Raul Castro on the case is still forthcoming.

Hundreds of thousands of Cuban Americans travel each year to the island to visit relatives, despite restrictions involving the US embargo imposed on Cuba for decades.

President Barack Obama signed in 2009, a relaxation in the travel ban on Cuba, especially for Cuban Americans, which has boosted the flow of visitors between the two countries without diplomatic relations since 1961.

The travel ban still applies on ordinary individual US citizens who need special Treasury Department authorization to visit Cuba.

Washington and Havana are at odds ideologically since shortly after the triumph of Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959. Traditionally Cuba accuses United States of promoting the overthrow of his government.

The White House in 1961 funded a notorious attempt to oust Fidel Castro with an invasion by Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs, on the southwest coast of Cuba. A further escalation a year and a half later brought a serious nuclear crisis in the Caribbean, waged between the United States and the Soviet Union in the framework of the Cold War.

Anti-Castro exiles have carried out numerous armed actions. In 1976 a group perpetrated a terrorist attack on a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people. Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative who resides in Miami, is widely considered responsible for the bombing.

The MININT claimed that the masterminds in Miami of the attacks to be carried out by the four detainees in Cuba are are Santiago Alvarez Fernandez Magriña, Osvaldo Mitat y Manuel Alzugaray, linked to Posada Carriles.