HAVANA (AP) — Cuban authorities accused the United States government of not having the will to clarify a bomb attack on the Caribbean nation’s embassy in Washington a little over a year ago or cooperating with the island to identify the aggressor. .
The Cuban diplomatic headquarters in the United States was attacked twice in the last four years: the first by a confessed sniper named Alexander Alazo Baró, a Cuban-American found red-handed, and the second in September 2023, when an unidentified person threw Molotov cocktails. , but managed to escape.
There is “a lack of will and to a certain extent complicity on the part of the United States federal agencies that are in charge of preventing terrorist actions,” the deputy director for the United States of the Cuban Foreign Ministry, Johana Tablada, told a group of journalists on Wednesday.
Cuba’s protest is the latest downward step in binational relations that began during the administration of former Republican President Donald Trump and continued without practical modifications during the administration of Democrat Joe Biden.
Throughout this year there have been no statements or announcements regarding the progress of the case of the unidentified attacker by the United States authorities. An AP request for comment to the U.S. Embassy in Cuba on Wednesday was not immediately returned.
Tablada reported that the Cuban and US authorities and the police agencies of both countries had throughout this year from videoconferences and in-person meetings – while recordings were shared and US officials were allowed to enter the Cuban embassy in Washington – about this last attack with homemade bombs, that of 2023.
The Americans confirmed that “they had fingerprints and DNA” of the unknown person who threw the Molotov cocktails. Then they fell silent, the Cuban official said.
The Law Enforcement Dialogues, which Tablada indicated as part of spaces in which the island sought to cooperate, are the mechanism between Cuba and the United States that allows the exchange of police information, one of the few contact points that currently operates between both countries.
Diplomatic relations – and the opening of the embassy – were resumed in 2014 and 2015 during the mandate of President Barack Obama, but suffered a strong setback with the increase in sanctions by Trump as part of the pressure to achieve a change in the political model. on the island.
“Cuba trusted the investigative process and subsequently nothing appears,” Tablada protested now.
“After a year, we find it alarming, especially because of the message it sends: it is possible in a strategic area of the capital of the United States to attack a diplomatic mission with a terrorist act,” the official added. “Could something like this be done in Havana? Never. In any capital of the world in an embassy of a country, without the authorities having a quick response.”
As for Alazo Baró, he was arrested in the early hours of April 30, 2020 with an AK-47 automatic rifle magazine precisely at the moment when he was causing material damage to the diplomatic headquarters and had already fired 32 projectiles. There were no victims in the attack. The man was released earlier this month by judicial authorities.
Tablada recalled many violent incidents against Cuba since the years of the Cold War and considered it a “pattern” fostered by the impunity of the perpetrators.
For her part, the official indicated that Cuban television will broadcast a special program on Wednesday night to publicize the elements that Cuba delivered to the United States about the 2023 attack, including video recordings where the aggressor is seen. not identified so far.
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Follow Andrea Rodríguez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ARodriguezAP
