Cuba is not cooperating in fight against terrorism, Biden administration says

The U.S. State Department has told Congress that Cuba is not fully cooperating with the United States in combating terrorism, signaling that the Biden administration will keep the island on the list of states sponsors of terrorism.

The Federal Register published Tuesday an annual certification to Congress by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, informing lawmakers that Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Syria and Venezuela are not “fully cooperating with United States anti-terrorism efforts.” Of those countries, only Venezuela is not designated as a state sponsoring terrorism.

In March, Blinken told Florida Republican U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar that the administration was “not planning to remove” Cuba from the list of states that sponsor terrorism because the country did not meet the necessary conditions for such action.

“If there is to be such a review, it will be based on the law and based on the criteria in the law established by Congress,” Blinken said during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.

Under the Biden administration, the U.S. and Cuba resumed regular talks to discuss law enforcement cooperation, including on anti-terrorism.

Cuba was added back to the list of terrorism sponsors during the last days of the Trump administration in January 2021 as the culmination of its “maximum pressure” campaign against the communist government. At the time, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cited Cuba’s refusal to extradite members of the National Liberation Army, a Colombian terrorist group, that were in the country after a breakdown in peace talks with the Colombian government. Since then, the new government of Gustavo Petro in Colombia withdrew the extradition request and called for delisting Cuba from the terrorism-sponsor list.

Pompeo also mentioned that the Cuban government is harboring several fugitives from U.S. justice, including Joanne Chesimard, also known as Assata Shakur, a fugitive on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists List, who was convicted of murdering a New Jersey state trooper.

In February, the State Department released the 2021 country report on terrorism, which listed other fugitives wanted by the U.S. Justice Department who are and reportedly living in Cuba.

Among them:

▪ “William “Guillermo” Morales, a fugitive bomb maker for the Armed Forces for National Liberation, who is wanted by the FBI and escaped detention after his conviction on charges related to domestic terrorism;

▪ Ishmael LaBeet, aka Ishmael Muslim Ali, who received eight life sentences after being convicted of killing eight people in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1972 and hijacking a plane to flee to Cuba in 1984;

▪ Charles Lee Hill, charged with killing New Mexico State Police Officef Robert Rosenbloom in 1971;

▪ Ambrose Henry Montfort, who used a bomb threat to hijack a passenger aircraft and fly to Cuba in 1983, and

▪ Víctor Manuel Gerena, a Puerto Rican militant who stole $7 million in a bank heist.

During the Cold War, the Reagan administration added Cuba to the terrorism-sponsor list in 1982. President Barack Obama took Cuba off the list in 2015, as he who sought normalization and restoring diplomatic relations with the Caribbean island. The designation of a country as a state sponsor of terrorism carries financial sanctions, a ban on weapons sales and restrictions on U.S. aid. It also works as a deterrent to companies wanting to do business with those nations for fear of exposure to U.S. sanctions.

The Cuban government has vigorously protested the designation, stating that claims that it supports terrorism are baseless and that the financial restrictions it carries are harming the population. Officials also said Cuba won’t extradite political refugees who have been granted asylum.

Hard-left groups in the United States close to the Cuban government recently campaigned to call for the removal of Cuba from the list, gathering several signatures from Cuban private entrepreneurs in a letter sent to President Joe Biden claiming the designation was hurting the island’s private sector. But the efforts fell flat after few American companies signed the letter.

Reacting to the Tuesday announcement, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said on Twitter: “Washington persists in mendacious allegations against Cuba related to terrorism, an abominable crime that the U.S. has unscrupulously practiced and opportunistically uses as a means of political coercion.”