Cuban government officials say a man who illegally entered the island last year on a jet ski carrying five handguns was part of a terrorist plot organized by a group of Cubans in the United States, though officials provided few details of such a plan.
A senior criminal-investigations chief at Cuba’s Ministry of Interior, Col. Victor Alvarez Valle, said on state television Monday evening that Ardenys Garcia Alvarez, a Cuban who had been living in the United States since 2014, tried to infiltrate the country last November with “the intention to commit violent acts.”
Garcia Alvarez arrived on the Matanzas coast east of Havana on a Jet Ski with a Florida registration number, carrying the handguns, ammunition and “other military equipment,” including a ski mask and binoculars, the colonel said.
Garcia Alvarez is being held at the notorious high-security prison Combinado del Este in Havana, a source with knowledge of the case said.
Cuban officials did not say where the jet ski departed the U.S. from, but some of the watercraft can travel as fast as 70 mph and can go as far as 150 miles on a tank of gas, which would mean a rider could make the 90-mile trip to Havana from Key West — the closest U.S. point to the island — in under two hours in ideal conditions.
Cuban authorities said last December they had thwarted a terrorist plan but did not provide details at the time.
“This action was organized and financed by a group of Cuban terrorists based in the United States,” the senior Interior Ministry officer said on television. He named William Cabrera Gonzalez and Jorge Luis Fernandez Figueras, both Cubans living in Florida, as individuals involved in the plan.
According to social media accounts, both men are members of a group named La Nueva Nación Cubana en Armas — the new Cuban nation in arms — whose members support regime change in Cuba through an armed uprising. Cuban television showed clips of a member of the group reading a fragment of their manifesto and of one of several videos Cabrera Gonzalez published on social media advocating for the violent overthrow of the Cuban government.
Cabrera Gonzalez and Fernandez Figueras did not respond to messages seeking comment. Their names were included in a controversial list the Cuban government published last year of Cubans they accused of having committed or incited terrorism. The list included several activists and media personalities who oppose the Cuban government.
The chief of the crime-fighting division at Cuba’s Office of the Attorney General, Edward Roberts Campbell, said on the television show that Garcia Alvarez and others involved in the plan had the intention to “subvert” Cuba’s “economic and social order.”
The Cuban prosecutor said they could be accused of crimes against the state and “crimes associated with terrorism because of the motivations, the means they employed and the goals they had.” He added that Cuban law “reaches those who act in the national territory as well as those who provide help from abroad.”
The officials did not say what the ultimate plan was. And they did not disclose any evidence of Gonzalez’s and Fernandez’s role.
Alvarez Valle, the Interior Ministry colonel, said Garcia Alvarez “arranged plans by talking to some people” and “made observations … of places where weapons might be stored or where military training takes place.” The official did not say what Garcia Alvarez was planning to do next.
In an edited statement shown on Cuban television Monday, Garcia Alvarez did not explain what he intended to do in Cuba.
He said he was recruited as a member of La Nueva Nación Cubana and participated in training in shooting ranges in Naples. But he did not provide any other details about the group’s role in the alleged plot. At one point, he said he only knew Fernandez Higueras by his nickname, El Lobo, the wolf.
Cuban state television also showed an edited statement by Garcia Alvarez’s father in Cuba and another man who were both detained for collaborating with him, the Interior Ministry colonel said. They spoke of Garcia Alvarez’s plan in broad terms, without details on what he wanted to achieve and how to do it in a country under strict government surveillance.
Garcia Alvarez’s father, Rigoberto Garcia Avila, said his son wanted to “recruit people to prepare conditions for … assaulting a military unit, to arm those people … and find a truck and buy a farm to gather the people there.”
The other man detained in Cuba, Pavel Fernandez Alonso, said Garcia Alvarez told him of another man “who was recruiting people around the country to create a movement and organize in a farm he was going to buy.” But he then suggested there were still no plans on what to do next. He said, “Preparations would be made” at the farm and along with a decision on “when they would act.”
Cuban television left out background information about Garcia Alvarez, a truck driver who was arrested in August 2023 in New Mexico on charges of “conspiracy to transport aliens” and “conspiracy to harbor aliens” along with five other defendants.
His case was then transferred to El Paso, Texas, where he lived. He was released on bond on the condition he get a job and enroll in a substance-abuse program. He is not a U.S. citizen and had to surrender his Cuban passport, meaning he could not travel to Cuba legally.
His defense lawyer in the U.S., Jose Montes, said he learned in November that his client had been arrested in Cuba, and his U.S. case is on hold for the time being.
The accusations in Cuba have been met with skepticism in Miami, where critics of the Cuban government have said the alleged plot seems far-fetched and might be a distraction from the third anniversary of the July 11 protests in 2021.
Cuban officials have already used the case as part of a government campaign to protest Cuba’s inclusion in the U.S. list of states that sponsor terrorism.
“Clear evidence demonstrates once again that terrorist plans against our country are directed and financed from #USA,” Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said in a post on X. “Who then deserves to be on the list of state sponsors of terrorism?”
___
© 2024 Miami Herald
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
