Cuba's response to inclusion in US sponsors of terrorism list
News from Cuba | Friday, 19 August 2011
From Granma International
Statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
ON August 18, for the 30th time, the U.S. Department of State included Cuba on the spurious list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, with the sole objective of discrediting our country and having a continued justification for the cruel and repudiated blockade policy against Cuba.
The government of the United States, which has historically practiced state terrorism, extrajudicial executions, the kidnapping of persons, murder using drone aircraft, torture and illegal detentions; which has established secret prisons; which is responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians as the result of its wars of occupation and conquest in Iraq and Afghanistan, and which is systematically bombarding sovereign states such as Libya, does not have the minimum moral or any other right to judge Cuba, a country which has an impeccable history of combating terrorism and which has been, moreover, a systematic victim of this scourge.
The U.S. government is acting as if it had not constantly protected the self-confessed criminal Luis Posada Carriles, an individual whom it has not wanted to try on terrorism charges, despite the overwhelming evidence in its possession.
Posada Carriles, in conjunction with Orlando Bosch Avila, the recipient of a presidential pardon by George Bush Senior, is the mastermind of the horrific sabotage of a Cuban passenger plane in full flight, which caused the death of 73 innocent people. He is also directly responsible for the death of Italian tourist Fabio Di Celmo during the bomb attacks on Cuban tourism facilities in 1997. Today Luis Posada Carriles is free to walk the streets of Miami, after having been absolved from any terrorism charges in a farcical trial in El Paso, Texas.
At the same time, as irrefutable evidence of its double standards, the U.S. government continues to unjustly hold and punish our five Cuban anti-terrorists in its prisons.
As the result of acts of terrorism organized, financed and perpetrated from U.S. territory - in many cases with the complicity of the U.S. government itself - 3,478 Cubans have lost their lives and another 2,099 are living with disabilities.
This political manipulation of an issue as sensitive as combating terrorism is also an insult to the memory of the victims of the criminal acts of September 11, 2001, an event which prompted solidarity and the offer of unconditional aid on the part of our government and people.
Cuba demands that the government of the United States punish the real terrorists currently resident in that country, free the five Cuban heroes and end its policy of blockade and hostility toward our country, a policy which militates against the legitimate interests of both peoples.
Havana, August 19, 2011
Translated by Granma International
