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Fuck yeah! Cuba: U.S. funneled money to dissidents http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/538918.htmlThe head of the U.S. mission in Cuba served as an emissary between a top dissident on the island and an exile militant from Miami serving time for weapons possession, the Cuban government announced Monday at a news conference aired live on Cuban radio.
Top Cuban officials released a series of e-mails, which they allege show that dissident Martha Beatriz Roque gets regular financing from Santiago Alvarez, the benefactor and friend of alleged terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. Alvarez's group, Fundación Rescate Juridica, also allegedly sent $200 a month to dissident Jorge Luis ''Antúnez'' García and another $2,400 to the Ladies in White dissident group.
The Cuban government says the U.S. government's top diplomat in Havana, Michael Parmly, was the person who helped carry the money to Cuba.
''We have obtained irrefutable proof about a qualitatively new event, different from the well-known and already denounced flow of financial and material support to the domestic counter-revolution from the U.S. government and its diplomats in Havana,'' said Josefina Vidal Ferreira, head of the North American desk of the Foreign Ministry. ``It is the unusual and scandalous fact involving the participation of diplomatic officials in the U.S. Interests Section in Havana as emissaries in the transfer of money from terrorists living in U.S. territory and counter-revolutionaries in Cuba.''
Alvarez is a real estate magnate who is serving a 30-month prison sentence for stockpiling weapons in South Florida. He was also sentenced in 2006 to 10 months in prison for refusing to testify against Posada, a longtime anti-Castro activist accused of planting bombs in Havana and plotting to kill Castro.
Posada currently faces no criminal charges and is free in South Florida.
The Cuban government claims Roque got $1,500 a month from Alvarez, and that e-mails show U.S. Interests Section chief Parmly served as an emissary between the two.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heide Bronke could not immediately be reached for comment.
The U.S. Interests Section in Havana issued a statement defending its support to dissidents.
''It is longstanding U.S. policy to provide humanitarian assistance to the Cuban people, specifically to provide assistance to families of political prisoners who are treated poorly by their own government. We permit U.S. private organizations to do so as well,'' the statement said.
``This assistance has no political purpose, but is intended to address the day-to-day needs of families who are struggling to survive in the current system. American diplomats are expected to abide by regulations implementing the Cuban embargo and other applicable laws relating to foreign assistance and U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba.''
Parmly is leaving the post after three years, the State Department confirmed last week.
One e-mail, the government said, shows Roque and her nephew in Miami referring to Parmly by the code name ``the little crib.''
'It's an e-mail from her nephew ... who confirms that he delivered `the letters' to 'La Cunita,' identified earlier as the chief of the U.S. Interests Section. Notice the manipulation of names,'' said Manuel Hevia Frasquieri, the director of Cuban State Security's Historic Investigations Center. ``It is not open language: `I gave him your letters, without any problem, at 11 a.m. La Cunita greeted me very effusively, with a hug and everything.'
'It is important to make clear that when these people refer to 'the letters' they're talking about money. This is part of the verbal code these counter-revolutionaries use to conceal this handling of dirty money.''
Roque allegedly wrote a secret letter of support to U.S. District Judge James Cohn, the federal judge presiding over Alvarez's case, and was upset when the original copy of the letter was lost at the U.S. Interests Section office in Havana, according to the e-mails.
''You can see where she understands the gravity of this relationship between the well-known terrorist,'' Hevia said.
Cohn reduced Alvarez's sentence from 46 months to 30 months when others tied to his case turned over 14 pounds of plastic explosives, 200 pounds of dynamite, 4,000 feet of detonator cord, 30 semiautomatic and automatic weapons, one grenade launcher and two handmade grenades, among other items.
Alvarez pleaded guilty in September 2006 to conspiring to possess illegal weapons in a 2005 criminal case unrelated to the firearms surrender. At his sentencing, he maintained that the weapons were meant to help battle Fidel Castro's totalitarian government -- not to harm the United States. Can you image the backlash if the anti US detention/anti Guantanimo protests by Americans were contaminated by groups funded by terrorists like Bin Laden or governments that harbored and supported them like the Taliban? This exactly the situation with Martha Beatriz Roque, and the "Ladies" In White, and their spouses - the '75' so called "dissidents" - who were convicted of conspiring and receiving payments from US based/harbored terrorists and the government that has declared itself the enemy of Cuba (the US gov.). - |
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