Cuba puts Miami exiles, media personalities, influencers on list of wanted ‘terrorists’

The Cuban government, irked by the publication of a U.S. government report that continues to include the island on its list of nations sponsoring terrorism, has published its own list of what it calls wanted “terrorists,” which includes the names of well-known Miami-based Cuban activists, media personalities and influencers who are critical of the government.

For the first time, Cuba’s Ministry of Interior published Thursday a list of people “wanted” by Cuban authorities for allegedly promoting, planning, financing or committing acts related to terrorism in Cuba and abroad. Most of them live in the United States.

The publication follows news of the arrest in Miami of former U.S. ambassador Manuel Rocha, whom the U.S. Department of Justice accuses of having been an agent working for Cuban intelligence for 40 years.

While some of the people included in the list have participated in documented acts of violence, others seemed to have been included simply because of their political opposition to the Cuban government.

In the past, Cuban officials have compiled and shared with foreign governments lists of people they called terrorists, including political activists with no record of violence. But this is the first time the government officially designates them as such in its Official Gazette.

Sixty-one people appeared on the list, including Miami radio host Ninoska Pérez Castellón; Orlando Gutiérrez, the head of the Miami-based opposition group Asamblea de la Resistencia, and several influencers who routinely criticize the government on social media, including current Miami-Dade mayoral candidate Alexander Otaola.

The decree does not provide any evidence of supposed crimes these people allegedly committed, but says all have open investigations in Cuba.

“Should I surrender, or are they coming to get me?” joked Pérez Castellón, adding that the list “is their response of being again included in the list of countries that sponsor terrorism and the arrest of a spy [who worked for] the U.S. States Department.”

“This is a classic response by the Havana regime,” she added, recalling that when Cuba was pushing for the release of the Cuban spies from the Wasp ring arrested in Miami in 1998, the former minister of foreign affairs and head of the National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcón, handed a similar list to the FBI.

“They published our phone numbers and addresses online,” she said.

Gutiérrez said the accusations against him and the Assembly of Resistance, which also listed by Cuba as a terrorist organization along with another 18 groups, prove their work — building support in the United States and abroad for initiatives that put pressure on the Cuban government — is having an impact.

The formal accusation shows “there is no law in Cuba under communism,” he said.

Similarly, Otaola rejected the accusations and said the list is another example of how the government wants to silence opponents.

“These actions show the government fears the voices of those challenging their lies,” he said in a statement. “Instead of recognizing their failure and the damage they have caused to the Cuban people, they are desperately looking for enemies to blame.”

Other organizations listed as terrorists include the once-powerful Cuban-American National Foundation and the Movimiento Democracia, led by activist Ramón Saúl Sanchez, who is also formally designated.

The list makes reference to open investigations from several decades ago and as recent as this year.

It names organizations like Alpha 66, which dates back to the early years of the Revolution, which the Cuban government has accused of planning violent attacks to overthrow the communist regime in the past. It also includes Felix Rodriguez, a former CIA agent who helped capture guerrilla fighter Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Bolivia in 1967, as well as people the Interior Ministry claims attempted to kill Fidel Castro and placed bombs in Cuban hotels.

Beyond a prohibition from entering the island, it is unclear what other legal ramifications may stem from being on the list.

Pérez Castellón, who also worked for the Cuban American National Foundation, warned that in the past, Cuba handed similar lists to foreign governments, so activists were denied entry to countries hosting international events where Fidel Castro was expected to make an appearance.

Cuba has launched an intense diplomatic and propaganda campaign calling to be removed from the State Department list of states that sponsor terrorism, arguing the financial restrictions associated with the list have affected the government’s capacity to provide for the population. But Havana has given no indication it would be willing to release some of the political prisoners it has imprisoned — numbering around a thousand — a significant obstacle for the Biden administration to consider a review of the island’s designation.

The annual Country Reports on Terrorism published by the State Department last week does not imply that Cuba has been reinstated to the list, as some media outlets mistakenly reported. It merely summarizes findings for 2022. The Trump administration added Cuba to the list in January 2021, and the country will remain there until the president certifies that the Cuban government is not supporting acts of international terrorism and gives assurances it won’t in the future, following a thorough review. Still, Cuban officials promptly pushed back against the report.

“The lies about Cuba repeated in the recently published report on terrorism by the United States Department of State are insulting,” said Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel on X. “Its authors lie and they know it. It is another pretext to maintain the genocidal blockade,” the Cuban term for the decades-old U.S. embargo on the island.