FONTOVA: The Castro-coddled cop killer 1

The ‘most-wanted terrorist’ mocks U.S. justice from Cuba

By Humberto Fontova in the Washington Times

On May 2, the FBI announced a $1 million reward for “information leading to the apprehension” of Joanne Chesimard, also known as Assata Shakur, who they named a “most-wanted terrorist.” Chesimard is the first woman to make the FBI’s list. The New Jersey State Police then added another $1 million to the reward pot.

Convicted cop-killer (of a New Jersey state trooper) and “domestic terrorist” Chesimard has been living in Cuba since 1984 as a Castro-coddled celebrity of sorts. And it’s not like bounty hunters can operate freely in a Stalinist country. So the $2 million may be symbolic. As in the U.S. Justice Department putting on a game face and saying: “Look, Castro, we’re serious here.”
In the early 1970s, Chesimard belonged to a Black Panther offshoot known as the Black Liberation Army. “This case is just as important today as it was when it happened 40 years ago,” according to a recent press release from Mike Rinaldi, of the New Jersey State Police. “Chesimard was a member of the Black Liberation Army, a radical left-wing terror group that felt justified killing law enforcement officers. … This group conducted assaults on police stations and murdered police officers.”

More than a mere member of these domestic terrorists, Chesimard was described by former FBI Assistant Director John Miller as “the soul of the Black Liberation Army.”

In 1973, while wanted for multiple crimes from bank robbery to murder, Chesimard and two accomplices were pulled over for a taillight violation on the New Jersey Turnpike. As the troopers were routinely questioning them, Chesimard (who was in the passenger seat) and her pals opened up on the lawmen with semi-automatic pistols (no word on whether these were properly registered.)

As Trooper Werner Foerster grappled with the driver, Chesimard shot him twice — then her gun apparently jammed. As Foerster lay on the ground wounded and helpless, Chesimard grabbed the trooper’s own gun and blasted two shots into his head, much in the manner of her Cuban idols Che Guevara and Raul Castro killing hundreds of their own (always defenseless at the time) “counterrevolutionary” enemies.

“This crime was always considered an act of domestic terrorism,” stresses Mr. Rinaldi. She escaped, but was captured in 1977, convicted of murder and sentenced to life plus 33 years. Then in 1979 she escaped from prison — and with some professional help, probably by Cuban or Cuban-trained terrorists. “Two men smuggled into the prison, took guards hostages and broke her out,” explained John Miller to CBS News.

Chesimard’s 1979 escape from prison was well-planned, Mr. Rinaldi explained. “Armed domestic terrorists gained entry into the facility, neutralized the guards, broke her free, and turned her over to a nearby getaway team.” “In 1984, they smuggled her to Mexico. Using a network of Cuban intelligence officers who worked with American radical groups, they got her into Cuba,” adds Mr. Miller. Since then, according to New Jersey State Police Col. Rick Fuentes, Chesimard “flaunts her freedom. … To this day, from her safe haven in Cuba, Chesimard has been given a pulpit (by Castro) to preach and profess, stirring supporters and groups to mobilize against the United States by any means necessary. She has been used by the Castro regime to greet foreign delegations visiting Cuba.” “Joanne Chesimard is a domestic terrorist,” declared FBI agent Aaron T. Ford, during a recent news conference. “She absolutely is a threat to America.”

Along with coddling Chesimard, Castro’s fiefdom provides haven for more than 70 other fugitives from U.S. law, including several on the FBI’s most-wanted listed. Cuba harbors convicted cop-killers Michael Finney and Charlie Hill, along with Victor Gerena, responsible for a $7 million heist of a Wells Fargo truck in Connecticut in 1983, as a member of the Puerto Rican terrorist group, Los Macheteros. All requests by U.S. authorities for these criminals’ extradition have been rebuffed, often cheekily by Fidel Castro himself: “They want to portray her as a terrorist, something that was an injustice, a brutality, an infamous lie!” is how he answered a U.S. request for Chesimard on May 3, 2005.

Humberto Fontova is author of “Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant” (Regnery, 2005).

Is Cuba’s Longtime Status as a Terrorist Safe Haven Becoming a Liability? Reply

Washington Times OP/ED: Assata Shakur, Terrorist — The FBI Accurately Labels a Cop-killer

Not a month has passed since the Patriots’ Day bombings in Boston, and the hand-wringers are already mumbling that the FBI made the wrong call when it designated 65-year-old fugitive Assata Shakur, formerly known as Joanne Chesimard, as a terrorist. If words have meanings, of course she is.

That 40 years have passed since her conviction does not dim or erase the impact of her crimes as a member of a radical group known as the Black Liberation Army, which was formed by disgruntled former Black Panther Party members. The Panthers were not radical enough. The liberation army aimed to “take up arms for the liberation and self-determination of black people in the United States.”

Assata Shakur and two others took up arms in a gunfight on the New Jersey Turnpike in May 1973. Prosecutors said she shot New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster twice in the head, using the officer’s own gun, taken from him when her accomplice tackled him. He left a wife and two children, one of whom, Eric, became a state trooper himself.

After a 1977 murder conviction, armed Black Liberation Army members broke her out of prison. She is thought to have spent four years in “safe houses” in the United States before making her way to Cuba, where Fidel Castro granted her asylum. She has remained in touch with family, friends and supporters, safe so far from extradition and justice.

Eric Foerster decries the life of comfort of his father’s killer. The passage of the years has not healed the wound inflicted on his family. “It is a loss that will stay with us forever,” he tells Fox News.

The killer is unrepentant; she revels in her crimes. In an open letter to Pope John Paul II, who was visiting in Havana in 1998, she confessed her “guilt” for supporting revolution: “I advocate self-determination for my people and for all oppressed inside the United States. I advocate an end to capitalist exploitation, the abolition of racist policies, the eradication of sexism, and the elimination of political repression. If that is a crime, then I am totally guilty.”

That’s hardly the only crime of which she is “totally guilty.” She was a member of an organization that employed violence to advance a political cause, which is precisely what terrorists do. Her cause has died — interest in the Black Liberation Army has since dissolved — but Assata Shakur has yet to pay for her crimes. Putting a little pressure on the Cuban government for her extradition, while not likely to succeed, is nevertheless the right thing to do.

To compromise, Castro’s government wouldn’t have to send her out of Cuba. There’s already a cell waiting at Guantanamo Bay.

Ros-Lehtinen Comenta Sobre Espia Convicto Rene Gonzalez y el Caso de Alan Gross 1

Expelled Cuban Spy Hosts Press Conference for Released Cuban Spy 1

Cuban spy officially stripped of US citizenship

Editor’s Note: You have to admire the Castro regime’s unabashed chutzpah. Expelled spy Gustavo Machin Gomez, who now serves as director of Cuba’s International Press Center, hosted a press conference for convicted Wasp Network spy, Rene Gonzalez. In November 2002, First Secretary Gustavo Machin Gomez was declared Persona Non Grata and expelled from the United States. At the time, he had been serving under diplomatic cover at the Cuban Interests Section. According to the Washington Post, the expulsion retaliated for the 16-year career of Cuban spy Ana Montes, who was sentenced in October 2002. Machin was then promoted to Ambassador to Pakistan, where he is believed to have targeted US counterterrorism operations in the region.

Is the Huff Post Becoming “Granma USA?” 1

It’s Time to Delist Cuba

By Arturo Lopez Levy in the Huffington Post

Each spring, the U.S. State Department releases a report indicating which countries the United States considers “State Sponsors of Terrorism.” Currently the list consists of four countries: Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria. This year, John Kerry’s ascent to U.S. Secretary of State generated a discussion about taking Cuba off the list. Given Kerry’s generally reasonable position on Cuba in the past, it was perhaps not surprising that he considered this option.

Nonetheless, on May 1, the U.S. State Department announced that Cuba would remain on its list. It’s a serious mistake.

State Department reports from the last decade have provided no substantive evidence to justify keeping Cuba on the list. In fact, the country’s inclusion is based on dubious allegations. The reports allege that Cuba has provided medical treatment and refuge for terrorist groups from the FARC in Colombia to the ETA in Spain. However, the reports do not acknowledge that the governments of both countries have expressed appreciation for Cuba’s cooperation in this arena.

The reports mention some fugitives from American justice who live in Cuba, but neglect to say that the United States stopped honoring the 1904 extradition agreement between the two countries in early 1959. Cuba has sent back most U.S. fugitives and has generally recognized the validity of U.S. courts, but has occasionally offered asylum to people it considers victims of “political persecution,” including former Black Panther Assata Shakur, accused of killing a New Jersey highway trooper in 1973.

Shakur’s asylum in Cuba has precedent in international law, as well as in decisions by U.S. Courts not to equate all violent political acts to terrorism. Her case constitutes a reason to raise the issue diplomatically and negotiate a new bilateral extradition treaty, but it is not sufficient motive to keep Cuba on the list. It is no coincidence that those Cuban-American politicians who demand that Cuba unilaterally return these few U.S. fugitives are the same ones who have advocated providing refuge for anti-Castro terrorists like Luis Posada Carriles–who in 1976 was responsible for a bomb that took 73 lives (including the Cuban national fencing team) on a Cuban civilian plane. Posada lives freely in Miami.

The Bush administration removed North Korea from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism in 2008 as part of a larger diplomatic strategy to shut down the country’s nuclear program. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice explained the thinking behind that decision in No Higher Honor, her recently published memoirs. The list, she wrote, was supposed to single out “countries that supply a terrorist organization with training, logistics, or material or financial support. Technically, the North Koreans should have already been removed from the list much earlier; there had not been, at the time, any known terrorist incident involving Pyongyang for two decades.” Using Rice’s same substantive criterion for determining whether a country belongs on the list (no terror incident involving the country in question for twenty years), it is very difficult to argue that Cuba should be there.

Confronted with this double standard and the lack of evidence for keeping Cuba on the list, some defenders of the Obama administration’s decision to keep Cuba on the list simply reply that Cuba is not as important economically or strategically as South Florida is electorally. Yet these self-proclaimed political realists miss an important reality. The Cuban-American community, including the majority of those who oppose Castro, has changed. For most Cubans who came to the United States in the last two decades, the inclusion of their country of origin in the terrorism list is not only unfair, but also an obstacle to promoting changes on the island that could take place through exchanges between Cuba and the United States.

Defenders of including Cuba on the list point to Cuba’s imprisonment of Alan Gross, an American citizen who was arrested for his participation in a United States Agency for International Development regime change program on the island. They also claim that Cuba violates human rights and point to an increase of short-term detentions of Castro’s opponents during the last year.

Yet these actions have nothing to do with the congressional mandate to create a list of States Sponsors of Terrorism under the 1979 Exports Administration Act. Mixing these unrelated issues only demonstrates that the list has become a pretext to punish the Cuban government. This situation feeds into the Cuban government’s narrative that its revolution is under siege, and that because the island is a victim of U.S. double standards and hostility, it has to adopt emergency measures. Using the list in this way is therefore not only inconsistent, but also counterproductive.

If the goal is to provide anti-Castro militants a venue for psychological catharsis, there are other ways for them to vent their frustrations. The State Department already has a mechanism for reporting human rights violations all over the world. The UN Human Rights Council is in the process of evaluating Cuba this year, and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has indicated that the Gross arrest is unfair.

The misuse of an otherwise effective foreign policy tool should give pause to responsible members of Congress and the Washington intelligence community. First, it dilutes America’s multilateral anti-terrorist efforts by taking eyes and dollars away from where the real threats are. Second, it sends the wrong message to countries such as Iran and Syria and the groups they sponsor by diminishing both the substantive and political impact of being listed. Third, it weakens the case for monitoring countries such as Iran, whose presence on the list is more easily justified. In short, including Cuba undermines the credibility of the list itself, and has a corrosive effect on U.S. leadership in world.

Characterizing Cuba as a terrorist state–and more generally implying that the island in any way poses any threat to U.S. security–hinders the United States’ ability to develop a strategic vision for post-Fidel Cuba. The list encourages hostile actions against Cuba in American courts, thereby aggravating conflicts and blocking new exchanges. The island is a country in transition that is carrying out market-oriented economic reforms without changing its centralized, one party system. This situation calls for policies of engagement completely different from those required for dealing with a terrorist threat.

Editor’s Note: Arturo Lopez Levy is an admitted “former” intelligence officer and close relative of the Castro family. A prolific writer, Castro apologist, and de facto agent of influence, his efforts have been well covered by Cuba Confidential, Babalu blog, and Cuba expert Humberto Fontova.

CBS News Exclusive: Cuban Spy on Renouncing U.S. Citizenship 1

CBS News Exclusive: Cuban spy on renouncing U.S. citizenship

CBS News’ Portia Siegelbaum has an exclusive interview with Cuban intelligence agent Rene Gonzalez, who spent 13 years in a U.S. prison and two years of supervised probation in Florida before being allowed to renounce his citizenship.

Cuban Spy Slams U.S. 1

Cuban agent Rene Gonzalez reaffirms his commitment to the communist-led island and defends his fellow Cuban spies still in U.S. detention shortly after taking the first steps to renounce his American citizenship.

Full Indictment of Marta Rita Velazquez, the “Talent-Spotting” Agent Who Helped Recruit Ana Montes 2

Indictment of Marta Rita Velazquez

Cuba Open to Talks With US Over Detained ‘Spies’ 1

Brazil – (Agence France-Presse) – Visiting Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said Monday that Cuba was ready to open talks with the United States on swapping their respective nationals held for spying.

Speaking to reporters after meeting his Brazilian counterpart, Antonio Patriota, Rodriguez referred to US contractor Alan Gross, who is serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba, and of Cubans convicted of espionage in the United States. “Cuba has signaled to the United States its readiness to open serious, respectful talks, taking into account humanitarian aspects, to try to find a solution to the case of Mr. Alan Gross and also taking into account reciprocal humanitarian concerns in the case of the other Cuban citizens still detained in the United States,” he added. “Gross was sentenced for violating Cuban laws as agent of a foreign power who tried to set up (spy) rings with use of non-commercial technology, military technology for avoiding satellite signals, to change the constitutional order of our country,” the Cuban chief diplomat said.

Gross, 64, was arrested in December 2009 for distributing laptops and communications equipment to members of Cuba’s small Jewish community under a State Department contract. Rodriguez was queried about Gross after a Florida federal court last Friday ruled that one of five Cubans convicted of spying in the United States would be allowed to remain permanently in Cuba in exchange for renouncing his US citizenship. Rene Gonzalez, 56, who was on probation in the United States after serving 13 years in prison for espionage, has been in Cuba since traveling there to attend the April 22 burial of his father.

Gonzalez was arrested in 1998 along with the other members of the Cuban Five group — Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando Gonzalez. The five men were found guilty in 2001 of trying to infiltrate US military installations in South Florida and were given long prison terms, ranging from 15 years to life. Gonzalez was released from prison in October 2011. Cuba has admitted that the five were intelligence agents but says they simply aimed to gather information on “terrorist” plots by Cuban expatriates in Florida — not to spy on the US government.

Cuban Spy Unrepentant, But Hopes For Better Ties 1

HAVANA (AP) — A Cuban intelligence agent who spent 13 years in a U.S. prison said Monday he still has affection for America and hopes to see the two countries reconcile, but added that he does not regret for a moment his decision to spy for Cuba. Rene Gonzalez also told The Associated Press he would welcome an exchange of prisoners that would send a jailed U.S. government subcontractor home in return for freedom for four other Cuban agents serving sentences in America. Speaking soon after renouncing his U.S. citizenship, Gonzalez called on President Barack Obama to show “courage” in changing U.S. policy toward the Communist-run island. “I would like to think that the North American government will meet the hopes of the whole world, which is telling it to change its policy toward Cuba,” Gonzalez said. “Courage is what President Obama needs now.”

The interview, conducted in the presence of his lawyer and a Cuban government representative, was Gonzalez’s first since U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard ruled Friday that he could remain on the Communist-run island in return for renouncing his U.S. citizenship. Gonzalez had asked for permission to do so several times, but the U.S. government initially refused. Lenard had earlier granted the 56-year-old leave to travel to Cuba to attend a memorial for his father, the second trip home he had been allowed to make since his release in 2011. Earlier Monday, Gonzalez arrived at the U.S. diplomatic compound in Havana accompanied by his wife and children to renounce his citizenship. He waved as onlookers shouted his name from surrounding buildings, then spent about 30 minutes inside completing the necessary paperwork.

Under U.S. law, Americans who choose to renounce their citizenship must do so at an overseas consular office. They are warned that the move is irrevocable, and must pay a $450 fee. Gonzalez‘s request must still be sent to Washington for approval, at which point he would receive a certificate of loss of nationality. Gonzalez, who was born in Chicago before moving to Cuba as an infant, is one of the so-called “Cuban Five.” The men were convicted in 2001 of spying on U.S. military installations in South Florida as well as exile groups and politicians. Gonzalez was released about a year and a half ago but ordered to stay in the U.S. while he served a three-year probation. The other four agents remain in jail.

The Five are celebrated as heroes in Cuba, with their faces staring down from highway billboards and restaurant shrines. Their case has received renewed attention since the 2009 arrest of Alan Gross, a U.S. government subcontractor who is serving a 15-year sentence after he was caught bringing communications equipment onto the island illegally while on a USAID-funded democracy building program. Cuba has suggested it would be willing to free the 64-year-old Maryland native in exchange for the five agents, something Washington has rejected, at least publically.

In the interview, Gonzalez said such an exchange would be “a good gesture on both sides in order to improve relations between Cuba and the United States.” He said he hoped his release would give hope to the other four agents and their families. Of his four co-defendants, 49-year-old Fernando Gonzalez, also known as Ruben Campa, is scheduled for release from an Arizona prison Feb. 27, according to the federal Bureau of Prisons. Antonio Guerrero, 54, is set to walk out of a north Florida prison Sept. 18, 2017. The other two are serving much longer sentences. Gonzalez flew to Florida in 1990 on a crop duster that he had supposedly hijacked in order to defect. In reality, he was a Cuban agent from the start.

Finally reunited permanently with his wife and two daughters, Gonzalez insisted on Monday that he had never second-guessed his actions. “Nobody made me do it. They told me the risks, and I said ‘Yes,’” he said. “I did it as a Cuban patriot and I don’t have any regrets … I’ve never doubted myself for a second.” Gonzalez insists his activities never aimed to harm the United States or its people, but only to protect Cuba from a wave of bombings perpetrated by militant exile groups that aimed to sabotage the island’s tourism industry. An Italian man was killed.

He said he took no pleasure in renouncing his citizenship, though he has always felt more Cuban than American. “I have family in the United States and I left many friends there,” he said. “It is a country with a history that is admirable … One realizes that there is more that we have in common than what separates us.”