Cuba claims to have foiled a terrorist project organized from the US

Cuba has foiled a “terrorist project, organized and financed from the United States”, announced the Ministry of the Interior on Sunday in a press release published this Sunday, July 7 in the state daily Granma.

According to this press release, the investigation, carried out by the “specialized organs” of the Cuban Ministry of the Interior, led to the arrest of a man identified as Ardenys Garcia Alvarez, “the main executor of these actions, prepared on the ground American”.

The latter “entered Cuba illegally by sea and brought firearms and ammunition as part of a new recruitment plan to carry out violent actions in our country,” it added.

Plans designed “once again from the United States”

Ardenys Garcia Alvarez emigrated illegally to the United States in 2014, according to the same source. “Other people involved residing on national territory” were also arrested, it is indicated without further details. The Interior Ministry’s investigation “prevented the realization of plans designed, directed and financed, once again, from the United States,” the text concludes.

In December, Cuba published for the first time a “National List of Terrorists” including several dozen people and organizations that Havana accuses of being in connection with “acts of terrorism” against the Cuban state.

All are off-island and most in the United States. Among them are people accused by Havana of being involved in a series of bombings in hotels in the capital in 1997 or in failed attacks against former leader Fidel Castro (1926-2016) between 1991 and 2001.

Cuba on an American blacklist

In May, Washington removed Cuba from its list of countries that do not fully cooperate in the fight against terrorism, but the communist island remains on the American blacklist of countries that support terrorism, which includes Iran, Korea North and Syria.

Since 1962, the United States has imposed a commercial and financial embargo on Cuba. The latter was reinforced under the presidency of Republican Donald Trump (2017-2021) who reinstated the island on this blacklist. The Cuban government regularly denounces an “arbitrary” decision which hinders financial flows and investments in favor of the island.