Cuba Lays Out Rules Governing Surveillance, Informants 1

FILE – In this Nov. 14, 2019 file photo, Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel, center, visits with residents after arriving in Caimanera, Cuba. A new decree approved by Diaz-Canel Oct. 8 and made public Monday, Nov. 18, 2019, says prosecutors can approve eavesdropping and surveillance of any form of communication, without consulting a judge as required in many other Latin American countries. ISMAEL FRANCISCO, FILE AP PHOTO

By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press

Cuba has publicly laid out the rules governing the extensive, longstanding surveillance and undercover investigation of the island’s 11 million people.

A new decree approved by President Miguel Díaz-Canel on Oct. 8 and made public this week says prosecutors can approve eavesdropping and surveillance of any form of communication, without consulting a judge as required in many other Latin American countries. The law also creates official legal roles for informants, undercover investigators and sting operations.

The decree is intended to “raise the effectiveness of the prevention of and fight against crime,” according to the declaration in Cuba’s register of new laws and regulations.

The country’s powerful intelligence and security agencies have for decades maintained widespread surveillance of Cuban society through eavesdropping of all types and networks of informants and undercover agents, but their role has never been so publicly codified.

The decree describes a variety of roles: agents of the Interior Ministry authorized to carry out undercover investigations, cooperating witnesses who provide information in exchange for lenient treatment and sting operations in which illegal goods are allowed to move under police surveillance.

The law allows interception of telephone calls, direct recording of voices, shadowing and video recording of suspects and covert access to computer systems.

Unlike Cuba, many countries including Mexico, Argentina, Guatemala, Chile and Bolivia require a judge to approve surveillance operations.

Labour Election Candidate Mark McDonald Helped Cuban Spy Overturn a Visa Ban And Come to the UK to Visit Parliament 1

A hard-Left Labour candidate helped a Cuban spy overturn a visa ban and visit Parliament after he was invited by Jeremy Corbyn (pictured)

• Barrister Mark McDonald won court battle to get intelligence officer Rene Gonzalez into Britain
• Mr McDonald is now standing in Stoke-on-Trent South after winning backing
• While a backbench MP, Mr Corbyn attended vigils in support of the jailed Cubans

By Martin Beckford For The Daily Mail

A hard-Left Labour candidate helped a Cuban spy overturn a visa ban and visit Parliament after he was invited by Jeremy Corbyn.

Barrister Mark McDonald won a court battle to get intelligence officer Rene Gonzalez into Britain on human rights grounds after Theresa May blocked him because of his conviction in the US for espionage.

He then attended the Westminster reception for Mr Gonzalez and his spy cell leader along with Mr Corbyn, who had campaigned for their release from prison in America and joined in their legal battle.

Mr McDonald is now standing in Stoke-on-Trent South after winning the backing of the Corbynite campaign group Momentum, ahead of two prominent local hopefuls.

In an article in 2016, he also dismissed widespread claims of anti-Semitism in Labour as ‘wholly without foundation’, although he admitted last night that it had since ‘become clear to me there are significant problems of anti-Semitism within the party’.

While still a backbench MP, Mr Corbyn regularly attended vigils in support of the jailed Cubans, who he finally met with the help of Mr McDonald.

The spies were part of a cell known as the ‘Wasp Network‘ who were caught by the FBI in Florida while trying to infiltrate Cuban exile groups hostile to Fidel Castro.

They were jailed in 2001 for espionage and their leader was also convicted of conspiracy to murder over the shooting down by the Cuban military of two planes belonging to an anti-Castro group, in which four pilots died.

Feature continues here: Cuban Spy’s UK Friend

DGI Defector: Cuban Intelligence Behind Chile Protests 1

Written by Christian Gomez, New American

A former Cuban intelligence officer affirms that Cuba’s intelligence service is carrying out destabilization efforts in Chile and that they are being directed out of the Cuban embassy in Santiago.

For 11 years, Enrique García Diaz served as an officer in the General Intelligence Directorate (DGI) — Cuba’s primary intelligence agency under the supervision of Cuba’s Ministry of Interior. During his years of active duty, García Diaz served as a vice consul in Bolivia and as a foreign trade representative in Ecuador. At the same time, however, he was actually an undercover agent for the DGI, in charge of surveillance operations in seven Latin American countries, including Chile.

García Diaz defected to Ecuador in 1989 and now lives in the United States. In an interview with the Chile-based, Spanish-language, online news publication El Líbero, he claims that the DGI (since renamed the Directorate of Intelligence, DI) retains much of the experience and training that it received from two KGB-run institutes located in the outskirts of Moscow. According to García Diaz, these KGB-run academies conducting training for Cuban intelligence in 1981-82 and another one for the chiefs of Cuban intelligence in 1985-86.

Throughout the Cold War, the leadership of the Soviet Union steadfastly encouraged and supported Marxist revolutions in non-communist countries. By the mid-1960s, the Soviet Union, through its espionage and intelligence service the KGB (now renamed FSB), had established special training centers for fomenting revolution at the Lenin Institute and Patrice Lumumba University, both in Moscow. The KGB also set up additional centers throughout Eastern Europe, the Baltic, North Korea, and in Cuba.

At these centers, recruits from all over the world received special training in how to disseminate propaganda, handle small arms, make improvised explosives, and carry out asymmetrical warfare. Historically, under the direction of the Soviet Union, Cuba has played an instrumental role in inciting communist revolutions throughout Latin America.

Article continues here: Cuban Manipulation