"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
She never renounced political violence and terrorism as methods of struggle
Cuba’s Foreign Ministry announced earlier today: “On September 25,
2025, U.S. citizen Joanne Deborah Byron, ‘Assata Shakur,’ passed away in
Havana, Cuba, as a result of health ailments and her advanced age.” Her
full name was Joanne Deborah Byron Chesimard, and she was a terrorist
who escaped justice in 1979 while serving a life term for the murder of a
New Jersey State Trooper.
The People’s Forum described her in a social media post as an “Anti-racist activist & freedom fighter.”
What happened in 1973?
Troopers
Werner Foerster and James Harper arrested Joanne Chesimard and two of
her associates on the New Jersey Turnpike on May 2, 1973, for a motor
vehicle infraction. Unbeknownst to the troopers, all three subjects were
carrying semi-automatic weapons and had fake identities. Chesimard
opened fire from the front passenger seat, injuring Trooper James Harper
in the shoulder. Chesimard got out of the car and kept shooting at both
troopers until Harper’s return fire wounded her as she fled for cover.
Trooper
Harper fatally injured James Coston, the passenger in the back seat,
who also fired at the troopers. Trooper Werner Foerster and Clark
Squire, the driver of the vehicle, were fighting hand-to-hand. After
suffering serious injuries to his right arm and abdomen, Foerster was
killed by roadside execution with his own military weapon. The jammed
firearm belonging to Chesimard was discovered beside Foerster.
Forty
years after the cold-blooded murder of this New Jersey state trooper,
the fugitive convicted of the killing, Joanne Chesimard a.k.a. Assata
Shakur, was named a Most Wanted Terrorist by the FBI, apparently the
first woman ever to make the list, on May 2, 2013.
Chesimard
was an active, prominent member of the Black Panther Party and later
the Black Liberation Army, which was described as one of the most
violent militant organizations of 1970s. During this same time, the
Black Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the murder of several
police officers throughout the United States. On May 2, 1973, Chesimard
and two accomplices were stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike by Troopers
James Harper and Werner Foerster for a motor vehicle violation. All
three subjects possessed fictitious identification, and, unbeknownst to
the troopers, all three were armed with semi-automatic handguns. From
the front passenger seat, Chesimard fired the first shot, wounding
Trooper James Harper in the shoulder. As Harper moved for cover,
Chesimard exited the car and continued to fire at both troopers until
she was wounded by Harper’s return fire.
The rear seat passenger,
James Coston, also fired at the troopers and was mortally wounded by
Trooper Harper. Trooper Werner Foerster was engaged in a hand-to-hand
combat with the vehicle’s driver, Clark Squire. Foerster was severely
wounded in his right arm and abdomen and then executed with his own
service weapon on the roadside. Chesimard’s jammed handgun was found at
Foerster’s side.
The three assailants returned to their car and
drove down the road approximately five miles before abandoning the
vehicle. Within half an hour, Chesimard was arrested by New Jersey State
Troopers. Coston was found to have died near their vehicle, and Squire
was found 40 hours later within a mile of their car.
Chesimard and
Squire were charged, convicted, and sentenced for the murder of Trooper
Werner Foerster, as well as on additional charges. Squire remains in
jail. In 1979, Chesimard escaped with help from a coalition of radical,
domestic terror groups who took two guards hostage during an armed
assault at the facility where she was being lodged. She later fled to
Cuba. Since this time, she has been classified as a federal fugitive and
the subject of an unlawful flight to avoid confinement warrant.
Domestic terrorist who attacked U.S. Capitol broke Chesimard out of prison in 1979
Some
more details on her escape. On November 2, 1979, Joanne Deborah
Chesimard was broken out from Clinton Correctional Facility for Women by
members of the Revolutionary Armed Task Force under the direction of
the Black Liberation Army. Leftists over social media have celebrated
the escape of this individual on the anniversary of her escape with the
hashtag #AssataShakurLiberationDay.
She is not the only American woman to have links to Cuba and terrorism against the United States. Marilyn Buck engaged in terrorist actions including murdering three police in 1981 and bombing
the U.S. Capitol in 1983 to protest the invasion of Grenada. Buck also
helped to break Joanne Chesimard out of prison. Buck died of uterine cancer at home at age 62 on August 3, 2010. The Cuban government’s official media refer to her as an “activist and former political prisoner.”
The
accusation of “violence” or “terrorism” no longer has the negative
meaning it used to have. It has acquired new clothing; a new color. It
does not divide, it does not discredit; on the contrary, it represents a
center of attraction. Today, to be “violent” or a “terrorist” is a
quality that ennobles any honorable person, because it is an act worthy
of a revolutionary engaged in armed struggle against the shameful
military dictatorship and its atrocities.
Who was Werner Foerster, the man Chesimard was found guilty of murdering?
Werner Foerster served two years and 10 months with the New Jersey State Police, and left behind his wife Rosa Charlotte Heider Foerster, and his 3 year-old son Eric. Prior to working for the police he had been a welder. Werner was just 34 years old. Both Werner and Rosa were German immigrants.
Werner Foerster with his son Eric
Today, let us remember Chesimard’s victims, and the sad fact that she
evaded justice thanks to the dictatorship in Havana - that also
advocated for the terrorism and political violence - leading to blood
shed on American soil.
Mahsa Amini was beaten to death by morality police in Iran.
Morality police in Iran beat Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, to death for not complying
with Tehran's hijab regulations. Mahsa was arrested on September 13, 2022 badly beaten, left in a coma, and she died three days later on September 16th.
Mass protests erupted in Iran, the Iranian regime periodically shutdown the internet and carried out massacres,
and executions against demonstrators over the past three years. The world has
not forgotten, and songs continue to be sung by artists in remembrance
of Mahsa Amini.
The previous time this happened in Iran was in 2019, when the Mullahs killed 1,500 people,
and I didn't know about it.
This time the suppression was successful, but the Iranian diaspora ensured that the repression was not repeated without worldwide attention and condemnation.
On the third anniversary of Mahsa Amini's untimely death global rallies are planned to ensure that the barbarity of the Islamic regime in Iran is not forgotten.
Global rallies are being organized to mark the 3rd anniversary of Jina #MahsaAmini’s death at the hands of the regime and to support the ongoing Woman, Life, Freedom revolutionary movement, the Iranian people’s fight for freedom, democracy, and human rights. Find a rally in your… pic.twitter.com/5sETrgVrqT
Dear friends of freedom reading this blog entry, please amplify these Iranian voices, let your elected representatives know that you are
watching, and that this is unacceptable.
This has been going on for far too long in Iran, and the terror tactics have been copied elsewhere with Iranian help.
Neda Agha-Soltan and Génesis Carmona shot in the head.
Note to Western policy makers: the regime's in Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela are not your friends.
Cuba and Iran have regime's with different ideological formations. Cuba
has a communist dictatorship run by the Castros since 1959 and Iran has a
Islamist regime run by the mullahs since 1979.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani meets with General Raul Castro (2016)
Robin Wright referred to Cuba and Iran
as "melancholy twins" in The New Yorker in 2015. They are both state sponsors of terrorism, and Iran has been linked to a mass killing of Jewish people in Argentina.
Venezuela is an off shoot of the Cuban revolution and shares both its anti-Americanism and warm relations with Tehran.
They do not hide their intentions, even if they lie about it afterwards.
The lateFidel Castro visited Iran
on May 10, 2001, four months before the September 11, 2001 attacks,
where he was quoted by the Agence France Presse at the University of
Tehran stating that "Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with
each other, can bring America to its knees." ... "The U.S. regime is
very weak, and we are witnessing this weakness from close up."
Eleven years later on January 12, 2012 in Havana, Cuba the controversial president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declared "Our
positions, versions, interpretations are alike, very close. We have
been good friends, we are and will be, and we will be together forever."
Iran's Ahmadinejad with Fidel Castro and Klansman David Duke
Even closer to home, the
relationship between the Iranian regime and white supremacists such as David Duke and anti-Semites such as Louis Farrakhan should not be forgotten.
Iran sought out asymmetric means to
achieve maximum damage against Israel through their proxies Hamas and Hezbollah killing over 1,200 in Israel on October 7, 2023, sparking a terrible war that continues today. Tehran's decades long alliance
with Cuba cannot and must not be ignored at such a time of ongoing peril.
Martin Luther King Jr. was right: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
On this day in 1975 in New York City: Havana-backed Puerto Rican terrorists, the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN), placed a bomb in Fraunces Tavernand exploded it at 1:29pm killing four, and wounding over 50 at the historic tavern.
In November 2017, recently freed Puerto Rican terrorist Oscar Lopez Rivera traveled to Cuba where he was honored by the dictatorship.
In the audience where members of the WASP network, including Gerardo Hernandez, who had been convicted of murder conspiracy for his role in the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down, and had his sentence commuted by Obama in 2014.
One of the men responsible for this terrorist bombing eluded, and still eludes justice, harbored by the communist dictatorship in Cuba.
The FALN bomb maker, William Morales, fled U.S. custody, following a shoot out in Mexico, he ended up in Cuba where he continues to be harbored by the dictatorship today, a fugitive from American justice.
Bearing witness. Survivors, family members of victims of 1975 Fraunces Tavern FALN bombing, and law enforcement that pursued terrorists gather to continue to seek & demand justice. pic.twitter.com/8qdYzUy8Bw
Today bore witness as survivors, family members of the victims of the 1975 Fraunces Tavern FALN bombing, and law enforcement that pursued terrorists gathered to continue to seek and demand justice.
Family, friends, and law enforcement gathered at Fraunces Tavern
They gathered together in the space in the Fraunces Tavern where the bomb had exploded killing Alejandro, Frank, James, and Harold, and injured over 50 others.
At 1:29pm they held a moment of silence outside of the Fraunces Tavern, and held a press conference demanding justice for the victims.
Mahsa Amini was beaten to death by morality police in Iran.
Morality police in Iran beat Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, to death for not complying
with Tehran's hijab regulations. Mahsa was arrested on September 13, 2022 badly beaten, left in a coma, and she died two years ago today on September 16th.
Mass protests erupted in Iran, the Iranian regime periodically shutdown the internet and carried out massacres,
and executions against demonstrators over the past two years. The world has
not forgotten, and songs continue to be sung by artists in remembrance
of Mahsa Amini.
The last time this happened in Iran was in 2019, when the Mullahs killed 1,500 people, and I didn't know about it. Images of nonviolent marches have dwindled, but some continue to appear, as have tales of the price protestors paid for their bold resistance. Their suppression was successful at the time, but let us do our part to ensure that the repression does not happen again without worldwide condemnation.
Please share the messages, videos, and hashtags of this Iranian freedom
movement that is also calling out democracies for falling short in
their solidarity.
Congress must strengthen our ability to fight authoritarian regimes’ efforts to attack and kidnap dissidents on US soil. | @AlinejadMasih https://t.co/8hdMbNFvnI
Listening to these Iranian activists take to task the Biden
Administration for enabling the Iranian oppressors gives me a sense of deja vu.
Dear friends of freedom reading this blog entry, please amplify these Iranian voices, let your elected representatives know that you are
watching, and that this is unacceptable.
This has been going on for far too long in Iran, and the terror tactics have been copied elsewhere with Iranian help.
Neda Agha-Soltan and Génesis Carmona shot in the head.
Note to Western policy makers: the regime's in Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela are not your friends.
Cuba and Iran have regime's with different ideological formations. Cuba
has a communist dictatorship run by the Castros since 1959 and Iran has a
Islamist regime run by the mullahs since 1979. However they have two things in common:
a profound anti-Americanism that portrays the U.S. as the great Satan,
and a fossilized revolutionary tradition that systematically denies
human rights to their respective peoples.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani meets with General Raul Castro (2016)
Robin Wright referred to Cuba and Iran
as "melancholy twins" in The New Yorker in 2015. They are both state sponsors of terrorism, and Iran has been linked to a mass killing of Jewish people in Argentina.
Venezuela is an off shoot of the Cuban revolution and shares both its anti-Americanism and warm relations with Tehran.
But beyond their similarities they also have a shared strategic outlook that is hostile to Western democracies.
The lateFidel Castro visited Iran
on May 10, 2001, four months before the September 11, 2001 attacks,
where he was quoted by the Agence France Presse at the University of
Tehran stating that "Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with
each other, can bring America to its knees." ... "The U.S. regime is
very weak, and we are witnessing this weakness from close up."
Eleven years later on January 12, 2012 in Havana, Cuba the controversial president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declared "Our
positions, versions, interpretations are alike, very close. We have
been good friends, we are and will be, and we will be together forever."
Iran sought out asymmetric means to
achieve maximum damage against Israel through their proxies Hamas and Hezbollah killing over 1,200 in Israel, sparking a war that threatens to engulf the region. Tehran's decades long alliance
with Cuba cannot and must not be ignored at such a time of peril.
Iran's Ahmadinejad with Fidel Castro and Klansman David Duke
Even closer to home, the
relationship between the Iranian regime and white supremacists such as David Duke and anti-Semites such as Louis Farrakhan should also be closely examined.
Martin Luther King Jr. was right: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Therefore:
I
stand in solidarity with Iranians standing up for their freedom. They
are facing off against the terrorist regime in Tehran that is
indiscriminately murdering protesters.
I pledge to continue to amplify their voices and will use the following hashtags.
“Fidel Castro helped the M-19 in many of its interventions in Colombia.
It must even be said that M-19 troops were trained in Cuba, which
separated the Cuban government from the Colombian government. Relations
were broken,” said Gustavo Petro, a former member of the terrorist group M-19, and today president of Colombia, in 2016.
Terrorism is a fundamental aspect of Castroism. Fidel Castro, and his
fellow revolutionaries, seized power in 1959 through domestic
terrorism. Throughout the 1950s, Castro’s July 26th Movement carried out
numerous bombings that terrorized and killed Cuban citizens.
The Cuban dictatorship has a track record of sponsoring international
terrorism over its entire 65 year rule. This 2024 short documentary “Terrorism: The Cuban Connection”
offers some highlights, and this CubaBrief will highlight a few
episodes that focus on the United States, Europe and the role played by
Cuban diplomats, resulting in their expulsion from France and the United
States.
The Failed 1962 Black Friday Plot
Elsa Montero Maldonado and Jose Gomez Abad, a husband and wife team,
Roberto Santiesteban Casanova, an attache at the Cuba Mission to the
United Nations in New York City, diplomats who in reality were State
Security agents, along with Antonio Sueiro and Jose Garcia Orellana,
plotted to murder large numbers of New Yorkers in a planned terrorist attack on the Friday after Thanksgiving in 1962, detonating 500 kilos of explosives inside Macy’s, Gimbel’s, Bloomingdale’s and Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal.
Cuban diplomats Elsa Montera Maldonado and Jose Gomez Abad, a husband
and wife team at the Cuba Mission in NYC.
Havana would go on to redouble its efforts to improve its capacity to
promote and carry out terrorist attacks around the world. The
Tricontinental Conference, held in Havana from January 3-16, 1966,
and the establishment of the Organization for the Solidarity of the
Peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America OSPAAL sought to support and
train terrorist groups worldwide, including in the United States.
Havana would go on to have “successes”.
One of them was a young Venezuelan named after the Soviet Union’s
founding leader, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, also known as Vladimir Lenin.
Ilyich Ramírez Sánchez (age 17) attended the 1966 Tricontinental Conference. Afterwards, Ilyich spent the summer at Camp Matanzas,
a guerrilla warfare school run by the Cuban DGI. Following a string of
terrorist attacks across Europe, he picked the alias “Carlos.
Nan Robertson in a special to The New York Times on July 11, 1975 published the article “FRANCE EXPELLING 3 CUBAN OFFICIALS” that reports on the link between Cuban diplomats and Carlos the Jackal.
“France expelled three high‐ranking Cuban diplomats today
in connection with the worldwide search for a man called Carlos, who is
believed to be an important link in an international terrorist
network.” […]”The French Interior Ministry said that investigators were
convinced that the terrorist network had been helped significantly by
the intelligence services of “certain nations.”[…] French authorities
have also said that Carlos may have been directly involved with a siege
at the French Embassy in The Hague last September and a grenade attack
the same month on Le Drugstore on the Left Bank here, in which 3 persons
were killed and 22 wounded. France expelled three high‐ranking Cuban
diplomats on July 10, 1975. ”The Cubans, according to the French
Interior Ministry, were “constant visitors” to the Paris hideout of
Carlos”. The Cuban diplomats on whom expulsion orders were served today
were Raul Rodriguez Sainz, 32 years old, first secretary for cultural
affairs; Pedro Lara Zamora, 33, deputy cultural attache, and Ernesto
Reyes Herrera, 32, the chief of protocol. André Mousset, spokesman for
the Interior Ministry, added that the Carlos affair was looking more and
more like an “international terrorist plot.”
FALN Terrorists backed by Cuba, and the bombing campaign in New York City
Six months earlier on the other side of the Atlantic another group of
Puerto Rican terrorists linked to Havana carried out an act of terrorism
that claimed the lives of New Yorkers.
The FALN was responsible for the January 24, 1975 explosion at Fraunces Tavern, which killed
Alejandro Berger ( age 28), James Gezork (age 32), Frank Connor (age
33), Harold H. Sherburne (age 66) and wounded over 60 others.
Zach Dorfman’s June 8, 2017 article “How Fidel Castro Supported Terrorism in America” published in The Wall Street Journal
reveals: “the FALN was started in the mid-1960’s with a nucleus of
Puerto Rican terrorists that received advanced training in Cuba. . . .
After their advanced training in Cuba they returned to Puerto Rico and a
wave of bombings and incendiary incidents struck the [latter] island.
Within the last few years they have shifted their activities to the
mainland. . . . It is believed that they have maintained close links and
may in fact work closely with Cuban intelligence operatives.”
Furthermore Mr. Dorfman reported that “[a]ccording to court
documents, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, who is believed to have helped co-found
the FALN, told an undercover NYPD officer in 1983 that he had received
explosives training in Cuba. And the FBI estimated that by 1973, roughly
135 Puerto Rican militants had received “extensive instruction in
guerilla war tactics, preparation of explosive artifacts, and
sophisticated methods of sabotage” from Fidel Castro’s intelligence
services.”
Cuban backed American terrorists carried out attack on the U.S. Capitol in the 1980s.
Windows blown out by bomb placed in the U.S. Capitol in 1983 to protest rout of Cubans in Grenada
The Castro regime aided and abetted American
terrorists that attacked and bombed the U.S. capitol, and then doubled
down when one of those terrorists died. Radio Havana Cuba, official
media of the Castro regime, published in 2010 an article titled “Political Activist Marilyn Buck Dies at 62” in which it referred to Marilyn Buck as an “activist and former political prisoner.” In reality she was a terrorist who bombed the U.S. Capitol in 1983 to protest the Grenada Invasion.
“At two minutes before 11 o’clock in the evening on
this day in 1983, a thunderous explosion tore through the second floor
of the U.S. Capitol’s Senate wing. Since the area was virtually deserted
at the time, there were no casualties. Minutes before the bomb went
off, a caller claiming to represent the “Armed Resistance Unit” warned a
Capitol switchboard operator that a bomb had been placed near the
chamber — purportedly in retaliation for the recent U.S. military
actions in Grenada and Lebanon. The force of the device, hidden under a
bench outside the Senate chamber, blew the hinges off the door to the
office of Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the minority leader. It also
damaged five paintings, particularly a stately portrait of Massachusetts
Sen. Daniel Webster. (The blast tore away Webster’s face and left it
scattered across the floor tiles in one-inch canvas shards. Senate
officials recovered the fragments from debris-filled trash bins. Over
the coming months, a conservator painstakingly restored the painting to a
credible, if somewhat diminished, version of the original.) The blast
also punched a hole in a partition that sent a shower of pulverized
brick, plaster and glass into the Republican cloakroom behind the
chamber. Although the explosion caused no structural damage to the
Capitol, it shattered mirrors, chandeliers and furniture. Officials
placed the damage at $250,000.”
“After a five-year investigation, in May 1988 FBI
agents arrested seven members of the ‘Resistance Conspiracy’: Marilyn
Jean Buck, Linda Sue Evans, Susan Rosenberg,
Timothy Blunk, Alan Berkman, Laura Whitehorn and Elizabeth Ann Duke.
They were charged with executing the Capitol bombing as well as
triggering similar blasts at Fort McNair and the Washington Navy Yard.”
Marilyn Buck pleaded guilty in 1988 to the 1983 bombing of the United
States Capitol. Her story is put into context in a long piece published
in Politico by William Rosenau titled “The Dark History of America’s First Female Terrorist Group,” which exposes connections to the Cuban dictatorship.
The WASP Network
In 1996 the Cuban Wasp Spy network located in South
Florida provided information to Havana that led to the shoot down of two
civilian planes in international airspace killing four engaged in the
search and rescue of rafters and boat people. This act of state
terrorism was widely condemned.
The WASP Network (La Red Avispa) was made up of over forty officers and agents,
four escaped to Cuba when the FBI began rounding them up in 1998. Ten
were captured, and five of them pleaded guilty and cooperated with the
prosecution and became unpersons in Cuba. The Wasp Network engaged in
espionage: targeted U.S. military facilities, planned to smuggle arms and explosives into the United States, infiltrated two non-violent exile groups,
and carried out numerous other activities to sow division, shape public
opinion, meddle in U.S. elections, and provided information for Operation Scorpion that led to the extrajudicial killings of Armando Alejandre, Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales on February 24, 1996. Operation Scorpion was a Cuban intelligence operation
of the Castro regime that sought to destroy Brothers to the Rescue
using MiG fighters to shoot down their planes in an act of state
terrorism carried out over international airspace.
This network also gathered personal information
of American military personnel “compiling the names, home addresses,
and medical files of the U.S. Southern Command’s top officers and that
of hundreds of officers stationed at Boca Chica Naval Station in Key
West.”
The spies had received instructions from Havana to burn down an airport hangar, sabotage planes, first terrorize with messages that he was “nearing execution,” then send a mail bomb to kill a CIA agent living in Bal Harbour identified as Jesus Cruza Flor.
On September 12, 1998, the largest Cuban spy ring ever
uncovered in the United States, was broken up by the FBI. Ten suspects
were charged as Cuban spies. The Cuban dictatorship has spent decades
trying to whitewash this history.
WASP network spies captured in 1998.
Cuba was taken off the SSOT list in 2015 for political reasons, and returned to it on 2021 for continued bad action.
Cuba was taken off the list of state terror sponsors
in 2015 when the Obama Administration, responding to demands of Raul
Castro, conducted a politicized review to remove the offending state.
Six years later in January 2021, Cuba was returned to the list.
The U.S. State Department at the time cited the
following four reasons for re-designating the Cuban dictatorship as a
sponsor of terrorism.
1. “Cuba has refused Colombia’s
requests to extradite ten ELN leaders living in Havana after the group
claimed responsibility for the January 2019 bombing of a Bogota police
academy that killed 22 people and injured more than 87 others.”
2. “Cuba also harbors several U.S.
fugitives from justice wanted on or convicted of charges of political
violence, many of whom have resided in Cuba for decades. For example,
the Cuban regime has refused to return Joanne Chesimard, on the FBI’s
Most Wanted Terrorists List for executing New Jersey State Trooper
Werner Foerster in 1973; Ishmael LaBeet, convicted of killing eight
people in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1972; Charles Lee Hill, charged
with killing New Mexico state policeman Robert Rosenbloom in 1971; and
others.”
3. “Cuba returns to the SST list
following its broken commitment to stop supporting terrorism as a
condition of its removal by the previous administration in 2015. On May
13, 2020, the State Department notified Congress that it had certified
Cuba under Section 40A(a) of the Arms Export Control Act as “not
cooperating fully” with U.S. counterterrorism efforts in 2019.”
4. “In addition to the support for
international terrorism that is the basis for today’s action, the Cuban
regime engages in a range of malign behavior across the region. The
Cuban intelligence and security apparatus has infiltrated Venezuela’s
security and military forces, assisting Nicholas Maduro to maintain his
stranglehold over his people while allowing terrorist organizations to
operate. The Cuban government’s support for FARC dissidents and the ELN
continues beyond Cuba’s borders as well, and the regime’s support of
Maduro has created a permissive environment for international terrorists
to live and thrive within Venezuela.”
Backing Hamas supporters and their violent protests in the United States
This CubaBrief is focusing on instances of terrorism
carried out in the United States by groups supported by the Cuban
dictatorship, and has not touched on Havana’s extensive involvement in
terrorism in Latin America and in the Middle East, but their support for
Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas has had an impact in the United States.
Protests in some cases have turned into riots where, for example,
American flags were taken down from Union Station in Washington DC and
replaced with Palestinian flags, while Cuban flags were seen in the
crowd.
In a formal statement
released on October 7, 2023, the same day of the terror attacks, the
Cuban Foreign Ministry blamed Israel and its “accomplice,” the United
States, for the violence. In doing so, it continued to spread a false
narrative that originates in Soviet-era anti-Israel propaganda.In
this case Havana was blaming the victims of a terrorist attack that
murdered 1,200 and kidnapped hundreds of others perpetrated by their
longtime ally Hamas.
On October 8, 2023, one day after Hamas terrorists massacred 1,200 people in southern Israel, militant leftists organized a protest in Times Square
to celebrate the killings as an act of resistance and waved signs with
anti-Semitic slogans and images. The Center for a Free Cuba took notice of this protest at the time, and how official Cuban media was promoting it. On October 11, 2023, The People’s Forum (TPF) issued a statement defending their October 8th rally in Times Square, doubling down on their support for the terrorist attack.
The group’s
co-executive director, Manolo De Los Santos, is a longtime researcher at
the Marxist Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and was
“based out of Cuba for many years,” where he “worked toward building
international networks of people’s movements and organizations,”
according to his biography at the anti-Israel group Black Alliance for
Peace. In July 2022, Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, received De
los Santos and executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for
Social Research, Vijay Prashad with the aim of “elaborating a new
consensus, based on theory and according to the different experiences of
social movements and countries, on the path of socialism.”
On January 24, 2024 Manolo De Los Santos spoke the quiet part out loud
at The People’s Forum in New York City: “When we finally deal that
final blow to destroy Israel. When the state of Israel is finally
destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most
important blow we can give to destroying capitalism.”
Biden State Department’s wrong steps on Cuba
Despite this, the Biden State Department removed Cuba from the list of countries not cooperating in the fight against terrorism
on May 15, 2024. On the same day Joseph Connor, whose father Frank
Connor was murdered in a 1975 terrorist attack in New York City by a
Cuban backed group, wrote to Secretary Antony Blinken
requesting that one of the terrorists involved in the bombing, who is
currently harbored by Havana, be returned to the United States to face
justice. Four months later, and Mr. Connor has not received a response.
The reason given by Vedant Patel,
the principal deputy spokesperson at the State Department on May 16,
2024 “that the circumstances for Cuba’s certifications as not fully
cooperating country have changed from 2022 to 2023” does not stand up to
scrutiny. Patel cited “Cuba’s refusal to engage with Colombia on
extradition requests for National Liberation Army members supported
Cuba’s NFCC certification for 2022.”
What change took place? Not the behavior of the Cuban dictatorship.
The Colombian terrorists harbored by Havana were not extradited. The new duly elected president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, a past member of the terrorist group M-19
in Colombia with close ties to the Cuban dictatorship, ordered his
attorney general to suspend the arrest warrant “against 17 ELN
commanders, including those whose extradition Colombia had previously
requested from Cuba.” There is also a bit of historical irony. Cuba was first placed on the state sponsor of terrorism list in 1982
when Havana was implicated supplying weapons to the M19 terrorist group
from profits raised from trafficking narcotics. Patel also cited that
“the U.S. and Cuba resumed law enforcement cooperation in 2023,
including on counterterrorism.” First, the phrase “law-enforcement dialogue” is inaccurate.
In Cuba, there is no rule of law. “To keep power, the dictatorship
maintains a repressive security apparatus that murders nonviolent
dissidents extrajudicially. This is not ‘law enforcement.’ The Cuban
dictatorship is a transnational threat, and legitimizing it does not
enhance U.S. advocacy for human rights.”
What has that meant in practice?
Giving legitimacy to the Cuban dictatorship through
this sham “law enforcement cooperation” led Cuban officials meeting with
their American counterparts to accuse the United States of “supporting
people in Miami plotting ‘terrorist’ actions against Cuba.” Biden administration officials rejected these claims,
but the actions of Havana could not be described as a good faith
effort, or a reason to cite the dictatorship as fully cooperating in
anti-terrorism efforts. Much less grant them access to secure facilities
that are of great importance to America’s infrastructure.
Former top Cuban Communist Party official granted parole arrives in South Florida through Miami International Airport.
On August 16, 2024, Manuel Menéndez Castellanos, a one time top official in Cuba’s communist party in Cienfuegos, who represented the Cuban dictatorship in international forums,
and was given several awards by the regime, arrived in South Florida
through Miami International Airport. The former high ranking communist
official arrived in Miami through the Cuban Reunification Parole
Program.
U.S. Senators send letter to Secretary Blinken over the high
risk to national security posed by recent expansion of nonimmigrant
visas (NIV) to Communist Cuba
Despite this lapse, the Biden Administration announced that starting on August 19, 2024 would “expand its visa services to facilitate cultural and educational exchanges between” Cuba and the United States.
On September 5, 2024, Senator Rick Scott joined Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Ted Cruz “in sending a letter
to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, raising concerns over the
high risk to national security posed by the Biden-Harris
administration’s recent expansion of nonimmigrant visas (NIV) to the
communist Cuban regime.” In this letter they point out concerns of this opening to Cuba,
a state sponsor of terror (SSOT). ” Given the risks associated with
allowing agents of an SSOT to enter the country, it is unclear how the
U.S. might benefit from these NIVs.” They also ask some critical questions
including, “Has the U.S. government expanded NIVs to the other
SSOTs—Iran, North Korea, and Syria? If not, does it plan to do so? Why
or why not?”
Some commemorating Fidel Castro's birthday, such as the Cuba Solidarity Campaign in the United Kingdom, assert that "For
more than 65 years the Cuban Revolution has been an inspiration to
people around the world for its achievements in health, education,
internationalism and more.
Hasta Siempre, Comandante." Debated one of their leaders in 2017, and exposed his totalitarian orientation when he claimed North Korea was also a democracy.
This brings up a thought-provoking exercise. What would have
happened if the 65-year old communist dictatorship in Cuba had never come to
be? If Fidel Castro had never been born? Let us look at Cuba's pre-1959 and post-1959 and imagine "what might have been?"
The economy
In 1959 in terms of per-capita GDP Cuba was second to Chile and was
doing better than Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and Panama. Under communism. Cuba lagged well behind the other four countries. It would be fair
to say that in economic terms, despite billions in Soviet and Venezuelan subsidies that the past six and a half decades have been a disaster for Cuba.
Death count in Cuba
Firing squad in Cuba.
Tens of thousands of Cubans would still be alive today if Fidel Castro had never been born. In 1987, historian R. J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii reported that credible estimates of the Castro regime's death toll ran from 35,000 to 141,000, with a median of 73,000." Rummel made a career out of studying what he termed "democide," the killing of people by their own government.
Democracy restored in a post-Batista Cuba
Cuban diplomats pushed for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948
Many of the July 26th movement's leaders, who put in a lot of hard work fighting in the field and persuading Washington to impose an arms embargo on Fulgencio Batista in the spring of 1958, really desired the restoration of democracy in Cuba. Much like the vast majority of Cubans did. For this reason, Fidel Castro lied systematically throughout the 1950s and into 1960, insisting he respected democracy and civil freedoms while denying being a communist.
Fidel Castro carried out the consolidation of power and established a communist totalitarian dictatorship as he paid lip service to civil rights and imprisoned his fellow countrymen who had warned that communists were infiltrating the revolution as traitors.
The Castro
dictatorship early on began, with the assistance of the KGB, assisting
drug trafficking networks improve their ability to get more drugs into
the United States to strike at American youth. The Havana Cartel documentary provides an overview of these practices to the present day.
Havana hosted terrorists from Africa, the Americas, and Asia at the Tri-Continental Conference on January 3rd through 16th in 1966.At the Conference, Fidel “Castro insisted that ‘bullets not ballots’ was the way to achieve power.” Hemaintained “‘conditions exist[ed] for an armed revolutionary struggle.’
The Cuban dictatorship created the Organization for the Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAL) to coordinate terrorist groups worldwide.
Havana then established terrorist training facilities in Algeria, Libya, and Cuba.
This had devastating effects on Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America; the United States was not immune.
Terrorists attack on U.S. soil killing Americans
The Puerto Rican terrorist group, Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional
Puertorriqueña, (FALN), from the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s,
carried out more than 130 bombings, including in the United States.
This group was started in the mid-1960s and received
advanced training in Cuba. This information is taken from Zach Dorfman’s
article “How Fidel Castro Supported Terrorism in America: ‘FALN was
started in the mid-1960’s with a nucleus . . . that received advanced
training in Cuba,’” published in The Wall Street Journal on June 8, 2017.
The FALN was responsible for the January 24, 1975 bombing of the historic Fraunces Tavern in New York City which killed
Alejandro Berger (28), James Gezork (32), Frank Connor (33), Harold H.
Sherburne (66) and wounded 63 others.
The same Puerto Rican terrorists were also responsible for a bombing spree in New York City
in August 1977 that killed Charles Steinberg, (age 26),
injured six, and forced the evacuation of 100,000 office workers; and
the purposeful targeting and maiming of four police officers, among many
other crimes.
Without Fidel Castro this terrorism international most likely would not have been brought into existence.
Installing and maintaining tyranny in Venezuela
Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro
If Fidel Castro had never been born then Hugo Chavez would not have had a mentor and the assistance of the Cuban secret police to take over Venezuela
and turn it into the dictatorship it is today with Chavez's successor Nicolas Maduro, a Cuban mole, and tens of thousands of Cuban "advisers" torturing, jailing, and killing Venezuelans who want to live in freedom, and the ongoing crisis threatening the region.
Human rights in Cuba
If Fidel Castro had never been born then Cubans would not be going to prison for not sufficiently mourning the dictator's death in 2016, or worse yet providing a negative assessment of the regime he created. Thousands of men and women would not have spent decades in Cuban prisons for their political beliefs, and over 1,100 today.
There are also great concerns about the Cuban educational system today. First the issue of a system of education being transformed by the Castro dictatorship into a system of indoctrination and
secondly following the collapse of Soviet subsidies the material
decline of the entire system along with shortages of teachers.
Without
Fidel Castro intervention Cuba was on track to having a first class
education system without sacrificing civil liberties. Now it has neither.
Healthcare
The
Castro regime in the past failed to report Dengue (1997) and Cholera
(2012) outbreaks in Cuba. Jailing those who warned the world of the
threat. In 2017 the Cuban dictatorship failed to report thousands of Zika virus cases.
On November 29, 2018 The New York Times reported
that the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a division of the
World Health Organization (WHO) "made about $75 million off the work of
up to 10,000 Cuban doctors who earned substandard wages in Brazil." A
group of these Cuban medical doctors are now suing PAHO for the organization's alleged role in human trafficking.
This also raised questions on the relationship between PAHO, Cuba and reporting not only on outbreaks but the healthcare statisticsthat present the regime in a positive light.
Without
Fidel Castro, Cuba would be another normal country that would be
reporting health statistics that were accurate because there would be
both an independent press and civil society to keep the government
honest. Both were destroyed by Fidel Castro and his regime.
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