Cuba broadcasts Abarca confession
In this, the first of a three-part video from Cubavision, Salvadoran Francisco Chavez Abarca talks about—and reenacts—a number of his missions to Cuba to plant bombs at tourist facilities during the mid-1990s:
For more on who Chavez Abarca is and the story of his involvement in the 1997 hotel bombing campaign, check out The Gordito Connection, an excerpt from "Sting of the Wasp," my in-progress nonfiction book on the Cuban Fiva.
Copyright 2010 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
Day in the Five: The tortured tale of a terrorist
On September 27, 2005, an American immigration court turned down alleged Cuban terrorist Luis Posada Carriles’ request for political asylum in the United States.
Blood on the floor at the Copacabana.
The following day, however, the same judge ruled Posada couldn't be deported because he might face “torture” in Venezuela, which had requested his extradition to face charges in connection with a deadly 1976 terrorist attack on a Cubana Airlines flight carrying 73 passengers.
Venezuela responded that the United States had a “double standard in its so-called war on terrorism.”
Posada is now scheduled to go on trial in El Paso, Texas, in January 2011—not for any of the terrorist acts he's been accused of (including the airline bombing and the Havana hotel attacks) but for fibbing to immigration officials when he first filed for asylum.
The immigration officer asked Posada if he'd been involved in the 1997 hotel bombing campaign. Posada said no. The government says he lied. Which means it believes he was responsible for the death of Fabio Di Celmo. But it won't charge him for that... just for telling an untruth to an immigration officer.
One more irony: this time it's using evidence the Cubans gathered to press its case against Posada.
Copyright 2010 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
Day in the Five: America war-games the ‘Cuba Scenario’
After attending a briefing from the Cuban Five's lawyer, Leonard Weinglass, Lawrence Wilkerson, who had served as a military aide and later senior advisor to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, wrote in The Havana Note on September 19, 2007:
“As a military officer for 31 years, I occasionally encountered Cuba. In exercises, I recall vividly that when we war-gamed 'the Cuba scenario.'
"What happened was that the U.S. Navy, the FBI, the Florida State Police, the Coast Guard, and a host of other folks got involved not in invading Cuba, but in preventing a group of Cuban-Americans in Florida from doing so. [Italics added]
"I might add that such actions violated U.S. law and so, in the exercises—which were in my view very realistic—we spent our time attempting to stop several hundred small boats, loaded with automatic weapons, explosives, and lots of Cuban-Americans, from getting to Cuba.
"So, I was acquainted with some of the vagaries of U.S. Cuba policy."
Copyright 2010 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
Day in the Five: Meet Orlando Bosch, Havana’s terrorist, Miami’s hero
On September 16, 1968, Orlando Bosch was arrested for firing a bazooka at a Cuba-bound Polish ship in Miami harbour.
Orlando Bosch
Convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison, the onetime pediatrician—who, more significantly, was trained in using explosives by the CIA—was paroled in 1974. He then fled the country rather than answer questions in a murder investigation, thus violating the terms of his parole.
In 1976, Bosch—with Luis Posada Carriles—helped mastermind the bombing of a Cubana Airlines flight, killing 73 people. He was convicted in Venezuela but later acquitted on a technicality.
In 1986, Bosch attempted to return to the U.S.
Despite the fact he was immediately charged with a parole violation and despite the fact the U.S. Defence Department considerded him one of the hemisphere’s most deadly terrorists and wanted him denied asylum, Bosch had friends in high places.
Thanks to pressure from anti-Castro Cuban exile leaders and support from soon-to-be Florida Governor Jeb Bush (the son of the then-president), Bosch was set free.
In 1983, Miami honoured him with Orlando Bosch Day.
He is currently a free man in Florida.
Copyright 2010 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
Day in the Five: The night before René’s arrest
September 11/98
René González recalls the uneventful night before the FBI smashed in his door.
René González
"The day before the arrest was a regular day. I was preparing to start flying to Bahamas with a small company operated by a friend out of Opalocka airport—the same place where the Bay of Pigs brigade was flown to Central America from—and did some small errands in regards to that goal.
"Then I went back home early to say goodbye to my wife and stay with my daughters.
"My second daughter Ivette was born on April 24, 1998, at the Miami Jackson Memorial Hospital. She was over four months old by the time of the arrests. By then my wife had started working as a telemarketer, selling an English course over the phone. Her work day started at 2 pm until 11 pm, so Irmita [his older daughter] and I had to take care of the baby.
"Later in the evening I fed the baby. I lay in bed and bent my knees so as to make kind of a seat for her. She would then drink her milk with her back against my thighs, looking me straight in the eyes with that intense stare of hers.
That night she immediately fell asleep, so I put her over my chest face up, her arms wide open. That's how my wife found us after work, and she couldn't resist the temptation of taking a picture of us. It is a beautiful picture, myself laying on my back with the baby on my chest, her arms to the sides and a very satisfied expression on her face."
The following morning, at 6 a.m., armed FBI agents stormed his apartment.
Copyright 2010 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
Day in the Five: Tale of the tape (recording)
On September 10, 1997, Cuba officially announces the arrest of Raúl Cruz León, a Salvadoran mercenary, in connection with the bombing that killed Fabio Di Celmo.
But there’s more the Cubans don't announce…
The day before—at the direction of his Cuban interrogators—Cruz León telephoned Francisco Chávez Abarca, the Salvadoran who’d hired him for the bombing mission. They recorded the conversation.
And got one step closer to the man behind the bombing campaign, Luis Posada Carriles, and to the organization that was underwriting his terrorist plot, the Cuban American National Foundation.
Havana
September 9, 1997
“And why don’t you come, Fatty, to get me out of here? You know how the hell to do that!”
Raúl Cruz León
Raúl Cruz León sounded angry. And frustrated. He had been trying to reach Francisco “Gordito” Chávez—the man who sent him on his bombing mission—for three days. He had called Gordito’s father Antonio, his brother Mario, even his wife Karla. Tell Gordito I need money now, he told them.
Finally, Gordito himself had called back.
“Don’t fuck around,” Cruz León continued his tirade. “You’re the one who put me in here and I don’t know what the hell to do.”
Gordito did his best to placate his clearly off-the-rails bomber. “No, I know, I know,” he said soothingly. “I won’t leave you by the wayside.”
He would make the necessary arrangements, get some cash together, get it to him as soon as possible. “Stay put,” Gordito said, not knowing that Cruz León had no choice in the matter. “I'll talk to you tomorrow.
Adalberto Rabeiro, Cuban State Security’s lead investigator in the bombing case, listened in on the conversation, which he’d carefully arranged—and recorded—with a quiet satisfaction. Another dot had been connected. It was time to tell the world.
Copyright 2010 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
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About
This is the site for Sting of the Wasp, collected research and other materials for an in-progress narrative nonfiction book about the Cuban Five by Stephen Kimber.
The Cuban Five were members of "La Red Avispa"—the Wasp Network—spies Havana dispatched to Florida in the early 1990s to infiltrate militant anti-Castro exile groups that Cuba believed were plotting terrorist attacks on its soil. The Cuban Five were arrested, tried, convicted and are all now serving long prison terms in the United States.
In the United States, they are virtually unknown. In Cuba, they are heroes.
That’s the short version of the story. The long version is… well, more complicated... Stay tuned.
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