Cuba: US has no right to call us terrorists



Convicted terrorist and mass murderer Luis Posada Carriles
remains protected by the United States 

Since the victory of the Cuban revolution in 1959, the United States has funded and instigated overt and covert attempts to undermine the island’s sovereign government. Over 3,000 Cubans have died as a result of US-backed terrorist attacks on the republic; the Miami Five remain incarcerated in the U.S for fighting terrorism and convicted terrorist Posada Carriles remains protected in Miami. Despite this, the U.S. government inexplicably and hypocritically continues to name Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.

The following article originally appeared in the Morning Star.

Havana has rejected its inclusion on the new US State Department terror blacklist.

The Cuban Foreign Ministry said on Saturday that the US government “has absolutely no moral nor any right to judge Cuba, which has an unblemished history in the fight against terrorism and has also been consistently a victim of this scourge.”

It accused the US of “political manipulation of such a sensitive issue as the fight against terrorism.”

The Foreign Ministry added that “the terrorist actions against Cuba which were organised, financed and perpetrated from the US territory, often with the complicity of the government itself,” have killed 3,478 Cubans and injured another 2,099.

It said the only reason Cuba had been included on the list “is to discredit Cuba and justify the economic embargo, which has been maintained for half a century.”

Syria, Sudan and Iran were also on the list of countries deemed by Washington to have “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.”

It was released last Thursday. 

At home with Cuba's public enemy number one

The following article was originally written for the BBC by Rob Walker. To read the article in its original format and watch an associated video click here.

Luis Posada Carriles is a Cuban militant, a former CIA operative, and to some, a mass murderer.

But at home in Miami, he proudly shows me a plaque from supporters dedicated to "Bambi", one of the half dozen noms de guerre he used in five decades of fighting Fidel Castro's Cuba.

Mr Posada is also quick to show me the scars he says that battle has left him. He takes my hand and presses it to the smashed right side of his face - the result of a 1990 assassination attempt in Guatemala.

"A bullet hit me in the jaw. Another one hit me in the chest and exited from my back," he said. "I was shot six times."

He says the attack was carried out on Mr Castro's orders, a charge Cuba denies. I ask him how many times he believes Mr Castro has tried to have him killed.

"That I know of, three," he says.

I ask: "And how many times how you tried to kill Fidel Castro?"

At this point, his lawyer intervenes and stops him from answering. Mr Posada smiles at me. He looks as though he is bursting to say more.