WASHINGTON – The State Department on Monday named Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism in a short-term foreign policy stroke that will complicate plans by the new Biden administration to restore friendlier ties with Havana.
In a statement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cited Cuba’s reception of 10 Colombian rebel leaders as well as a handful of American refugees wanted for crimes in the 1970s and Cuba’s support for Venezuela’s authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro.
Mr Pompeo said the operation sent the message that “the Castro regime must end its support for international terrorism and the subversion of the US justice system”.
The New York Times reported last month that Mr Pompeo was considering the move and had a plan on his desk.
The move, announced only a few days ago in the Trump administration, reverses a step taken in 2015 after President Barack Obama restored diplomatic relations with Cuba and described his decades of political and economic isolation as a relic of the Cold War.
After his tenure, President Trump acted swiftly to undermine Mr Obama’s policies of openness, to the delight of Cuban-American and other Latino voters in Florida, who welcomed his aggressive stance on Havana and its socialist, anti-American ally, Mr Maduro.
Other Republicans cheered Mr. Trump, saying Havana failed to push through political overhauls and continued to crack down on dissent and break promises it made to the Obama administration.
U.S. officials said the plan to put Cuba back on the terrorism sponsor list was drawn up in a departure from the standard process by the State Department’s Western Hemisphere Affairs Office, rather than the Counter-Terrorism Bureau, which normally plays a pivotal role such a decision would play.
Monday’s denomination said Cuba had “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism,” according to the Foreign Ministry’s criteria for listing countries that include only three other nations: Iran, North Korea and Syria.
The move automatically triggers United States sanctions against Cuba – likely negligible effects, experts said given the magnitude of the existing American penalties against Havana.
But the action could be a symbolic deterrent for businesses and “add another of many negative incentives to look for ways to export, import from, or provide services to Cuba,” said John Kavulich, president of trade – and Economic Council of the USA and Cuba.
The statement by Mr Pompeo cited Cuba’s refusal to extradite ten leaders of the Colombian National Liberation Army. A foreign terrorist organization that has lived in Havana since 2017 was also named. The leaders traveled to Havana for peace talks in 2017 to end a long riot in Colombia and have not returned home.
The National Liberation Army has taken responsibility for a bomb attack on a police academy in Bogotá in January 2019 that killed 22 people and injured more than 87 others.
Mr Pompeo also cited the presence in Cuba of three refugees who were charged or convicted of murder in the early 1970s, including Joanne D. Chesimard, 73, a former member of the Black Liberation Army, now called Assata Shakur, who remains on the List of FBI Most Wanted Terrorists Who Killed a New Jersey State Soldier in 1973.
His statement also stated that the Cuban government “is engaged in a range of malicious behaviors across the region” and that its intelligence and security services are “assisting Nicolás Maduro in maintaining his stranglehold on his people and enabling terrorist organizations to operate,” the Cuban Government supported Colombian rebels beyond their borders and that their support for Maduro had helped “create a permissive environment for international terrorists to live and prosper in Venezuela”.
Speaking of a return to Obama’s more open approach to Havana during the campaign, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. vowed to “immediately reverse the failed Trump policies that have harmed the Cuban people and done nothing to move forward Democracy and human rights. “
While the Biden government can remove Cuba from the terrorism list, it requires a screening process that can take months.
Ted A. Henken, associate professor of sociology at Baruch College in New York, called the designation “a symbolic last gesture” by the Trump administration towards Cuba as well as a reward for the Cuban exiled community and like-minded Latino voters who stood for in November gave the president a surprisingly strong number.
“It’s unjustified based on merit or evidence,” he said. “Cuba is a dictatorship that systematically denies its citizens basic rights, but has not been shown to engage in terrorist activities.”
“The label is politically motivated for a domestic audience in the US,” he added.
William LeoGrande, a professor of government at the American University in Washington, noted that Trump’s numerous sanctions against Cuba meant that the new name would have little additional impact.
In the past two years, Cuba has faced the most severe sanctions in the United States in the past 50 years, which have contributed to rationing and the profound shortage of basic necessities such as medicine and food. According to Alejandro Gil, Cuba’s economics minister, the economy contracted by 11 percent last year.
Mr. LeoGrande said the designation could impede legal financial transactions with American financial institutions, such as a U.S. airline that pays the Cuban government for landing fees, as banks become more suspicious of the additional surveillance of such exchanges from Washington.
Banking transactions via third countries could also be affected. During Mr Trump’s tenure, European banks became increasingly reluctant to make payments to Cuban state-owned companies. The island’s terrorism designation could further reduce risk appetite.
Mr LeoGrande said the Cuban government would try to avoid escalating the conflict in the expectation that Mr Biden would try to improve relations.
The news was received with anger on the streets of Havana. “That’s a lie,” said Sergio Herrera, 45, a bicycle taxi driver.
“Trump has his neck in a noose” politically and is “looking for excuses,” he said.
Michael Crowley reported from Washington, Ed Augustin from Havana and Kirk Semple from Mexico City.
