Condemnation for inclusion of Cuba in list of countries that don’t fight terrorism
The Executive Committee of the Foundation for the Normalization of United States / Cuba Relations (FORNORM) condemns the spurious inclusion of Cuba in the list of countries that supposedly do not help fully to combat terrorism, according to the State Department.
The reasons given by the State Department are that (1) members of the ELN, who travelled to Havana to conduct peace talks with the Colombian government in 2017, remained in Cuba in 2019; and (2) Cuba harbors several U.S. fugitives from justice wanted on charges of political violence, “many of whom have resided in Cuba for decades.”
These two reasons are pretextual, and meant to hide the true intentions of the Trump administration, which is to continue to punish Cuba for its defense of national sovereignty.
Cuba refused Colombia’s request to extradite ten ELN leaders living in Havana after the group claimed responsibility for the January 2019 bombing of a Bogota police academy. Cuba, however, is following the protocols established between it and Colombia to facilitate the end of decades of war and street violence, the opposite of terrorism. Moreover, Cuba has no extradition treaty with Colombia.
As to the request to extradite fugitives from U.S. “justice,” Cuba is acting in the same manner as many other countries where such alleged fugitives continue to live in the absence of an extradition treaty between the parties. It is also the height of hypocrisy given that the United States has harbored notorious and confessed terrorists who attacked Cuba repeatedly, and conducted numerous attacks itself or through proxies. In addition, a Cuban-American perpetrated a terrorist attack on April 30th against the Cuban embassy in Washington, but the State Department has yet to communicate with Cuban authorities about it in any way, shape or form.
It is evident that the State Department decision is another attempt by Trump to undo everything Obama, including the latter’s efforts to start the normalization of relations between the two countries, and to cater to extremist groups in South Florida in the hope of gaining votes for Trump in November. We are confident this calculation will backfire.
