Cuba Tells US, Don’t Panic

By Circles Robinson

HAVANA TIMES, Jan. 4 – Cuba’s official daily Granma called Monday the Obama administration’s new airline travel security measures “anti-terrorist paranoia.”

The new measures put into place include a compulsory body and luggage search of passengers coming from 14 countries on Washington’s list of what it considers “state sponsors of terrorism.”

These include Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, and others not yet specified, noted the Cuban daily.

The US government is under fire for airport security breaches that occurred over the holidays including one that allegedly could have led to a bomb going off on a commercial airliner.

Cuba is the country in the America’s that has been the victim of the largest number of terrorist attacks including the bombing of a Cubana Airlines plane that killed 73 persons back in 1976.

The attacks against the island and its leaders were mostly plotted from safe havens in Miami.

While maintaining strict security measures at its airports, Cuba does not practice mandatory body or luggage searches, relying on x-ray equipment, metal detectors and selective searches.

While ordinary US citizens are forbidden by their government from visiting Cuba without special Treasury Department permission, numerous charters carrying Cuban-Americans – now exempt from the prohibition – travel between the US and Havana daily.