| June 21, 2001 Accused of spying for defending their
country from the Miami mafia’s terrorism
THE first of a series of roundtable
broadcasts, presenting information on the case of the five Cubans held prisoner and
unjustly charged with spying in the United States, made clear the reasons justifying those
young men’s behavior. It explained the principal actions taken against Cuba in the
’90s and the revelation of the capture in April of a team trying to infiltrate the
country, in order to carry out terrorist actions, including the destruction of the famed
Tropicana cabaret.
René González Schwerert.
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Ramón Labañino Salazar.
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Fernando González Llort.
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Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez.
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Gerardo Hernández Nordelo.
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As long as the United States has not taken
action regarding any of the events revealed, or condemned the criminals walking
Miami’s streets freely, Cuba has every right to gather information to defend the life
of its people, reiterated the panelists during the program, attended by President Fidel
Castro.
The five Cubans risked their lives in the
very entrails of the monster, to discover and reveal the anti-Cuban mafia’s terrorist
plans.
René Gonzalez, Ramón Labañino, Fernando
Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero and Gerardo Hernández were found guilty by a biased and
uninformed jury, under terrible pressure from the authorities, the mass media and the
poisonous atmosphere in Florida, and they could be sentenced for the rest of their lives
in hostile and inhumane prisons in the United States.
The panel recalled the difficult year of
1993, when the economic war was stepped up and a new stage began of violent actions
against industrial, social and especially tourism objectives.
Among the principal actions, which met with
total impunity and tolerance on the part of U.S. authorities, were the continuous
infiltrations on the part of mafia elements with abundant weapons and explosives, financed
by the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF). In all cases, those elements were
exonerated of responsibilities.
The panelists noted that in 1994, when the
Cuban economy touched bottom and then began its upturn on the road to recovery, more than
10,000 violent acts were registered, and incitement increased to leave the country
illegally.
They also denounced the utilization of a
small aircraft belonging to the U.S. State Department for spraying substance with the
damaging Thrips palmi blight on Cuban agricultural plantations.
Also on the list were 25 violations of Cuban
airspace and international norms by the terrorist organization Brothers to the Rescue,
including the serious incident in which two pirate planes were shot down on February 24,
1996, which was the pretext employed for the imposition of the Helms-Burton Act.
The roundtable discussion provided profuse
data on terrorist actions against the island between 1997 and 2000, and on the increase
and seriousness of those acts organized in U.S. territory and with the tolerance and
complicity of U.S. authorities.
It recalled in particular how throughout
1997, those unscrupulous elements, supported and financed by the CANF, planned the
planting of bombs in the Meliá Cohiba, Capri and Nacional hotels in Havana and the Sol
Palmera in Varadero, as well as in front of the Cubanacán offices in Mexico and the
Havanatur offices in the Bahamas.
They pointed out how on September 4 of that
year, explosives were set off in La Bodeguita del Medio restaurant and the Tritón,
Chateau Miramar and Copacabana hotels in Havana, and in the last of those places an
Italian tourist, Fabio Di Celmo, died as a consequence of the explosion.
They stressed that after an investigation of
these crimes, two Salvadoran citizens and three Guatemalans were arrested, and all of them
were linked to infamous counterrevolutionary Luis Posada Carriles.
In 1997, plans were made to assassinate
President Fidel Castro during the 7th Ibero-American Summit in Isla Margarita, Venezuela.
The conspirators were found with a cache of weapons, were tried in Puerto Rico and were
found not guilty.
Another assassination attempt on
Fidel’s life was planned for his visit to the Dominican Republic in August 1998, and
Posada Carriles was once again implicated in it.
Furthermore, the panel recalled the
penetration of Cuban territory by terrorist elements in April 1998, on the northern coast
of Matanzas province, and in May 1998, in the Santa Lucía region in Pinar del Rio
province.
TERRORIST PLAN TO DESTROY TROPICANA
It was also explained that a team of
terrorists trying to penetrate the country was captured on April 26 of this year along the
northern coast of Villa Clara province. Border Guard troops took prisoner Ihosvani Suris
de la Torre, Máximo Pradera Valdés and Santiago Padrón Quintero, all Cuban-born and
living in Miami, and backed by the counterrevolutionary organizations CANF, Alfa-66 and
Comandos F-4.
The program showed a videotape of a
telephone conversation between Suris, now detained, and his boss in Miami, Santiago
Alvarez, who openly recommended that the former be careful and continue with their
counterrevolutionary plans, among them the destruction of the famed Tropicana cabaret.
The long list provided by the panel included
the capture in Panama on November 19, 2000, of a group of counterrevolutionaries directed
by Posada Carriles himself, who planned to assassinate the Cuban president and put the
lives of hundreds of Panamanian students at risk, during the 10th Ibero-American Summit.
This case is not yet closed and Cuba is demanding justice. The Panamanian government has
denied Posada’s extradition to Cuba.
Between 1990 and 2001, Cuban authorities
learned of 16 plots to kill Fidel, eight conspiracies against the lives of other leaders
of the Revolution, and 140 terrorist acts.
The journalists noted that some of these
terrorist actions were frustrated, discouraged and blocked by the work of the
country’s state security and intelligence bodies, in collaboration with Cuban
patriots who risked their lives in the United States to obtain information on these
operations.
The analysis also included the reaction to
the terrorist actions in U.S. territory and against the people of that country, which
gives additional value to the attitude of the five detained compatriots and shows the
significance of their valiant message from prison.
The roundtable journalists reiterated the
innocence of those young men, saying that they had not committed any crime; what they did
was to save the Cuban and U.S. peoples from the vandalistic and terrorist actions of the
Miami mafia. |
