Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla has accused the U.S. government of criminal negligence because the attack on Cuba’s embassy in Washington DC could have been avoided. He has asked that the attacker’s links with anti-Cuban, Florida-based groups be investigated.
“Twelve days after the attack, the State Department is complicit in silence and does not condemn the incident,” Rodriguez said, recalling that the U.S. government must thoroughly investigate incidents against any diplomatic delegation.
On April 30, Alexander Alazo, a Cuban migrant living in Texas, was detained after opening fire with an assault rifle on the Cuban Embassy, where ten officials were present at the time. No staff members, safely protected within the building, were injured, but the embassy’s façade suffered considerable damage from the impact of the shots.
Rodriguez also considered that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between the attack on the embassy and the U.S. aggressive policy against Cuba.
“There are a constant hate speech and a permanent incitement to violence,” the diplomat said, adding that many U.S. political groups advocate violence against Cuba “permanently and with impunity.”
The Foreign Minister also called for an in-depth investigation into the attacker’s connections with the Doral Jesus Worship Center, a church in Miami in which the U.S. Vice President Mike Pence came to deliver “a speech of enormous hostility calling for action against Cuba.”
Rodriguez mentioned that Marco Rubio, a Republican senator who is known for his animosity against the Cuban revolution, also frequently attends that church.
On Tuesday, Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel reiterated his demand to the U.S. to account for the attack on his country’s embassy.
“Cuba demands answers on the terrorist attack to the Cuban embassy… Silence by the Imperial government undermines its administration anti-terrorist rhetoric,” he tweeted.
Rodríguez was holding a virtual press conference to discuss the terrorist attack on the Cuban Embassy in the U.S.
The Foreign Minister answered questions from the national press and international correspondents.
Cuba denounced on Tuesday that the U.S. government has chosen to silence the terrorist attack on April 30 on Cuba’s embassy in Washington.
Since the attack of what he called terrorist act, there has been no public statement or rejection of the armed aggression against the Cuban diplomatic headquarters.
He pointed out that this attacker had confessed to the local police that with the 32 projectiles fired he intended to beat whatever was in front of him, whatever was in his line of fire, at a time when 10 Cuban diplomats were at the embassy headquarters.
The Foreign Minister acknowledged the professional and prompt performance of the U.S. police and Secret Service, while criticizing the State Department for taking five days to communicate with the Cuban authorities and issue a brief statement on the events.
It is necessary to denounce the U.S. conspiratorial silence, stressed the foreign minister.
The attacker Alexander Alazo, a citizen of Cuban origin, has been living in the U.S. since 2010. Before traveling to Washington DC., he met in Miami with Cuban-American groups known for their violent position against Cuba, Rodriguez mentioned.
The Cuban minister delved into Alazo’s attack plan, who had prepared the attack two weeks in advance and moved more than once in the area outside the Cuban diplomatic headquarters in Washington.
He noted that public legal documents establish that Alazo had previously visited a hospital where he expressed his delirium of persecution by Cuban agents, adding that this person also visited several agencies of the U.S. government, where he denounced that the Cuban agents allegedly intended to assassinate him.
It is up to the White House to clarify what decision it made with Alazo’s allegations, the minister said, stressing there is evidence of negligence on the part of that government. The foreign minister said that the U.S. State Department took almost five days before issuing any official communication about this serious event.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez linked the attacker to U.S. officials with proven aggressive record against the Caribbean country.
Rodriguez linked the attacker to congressmen Marco Rubio and Mario Diaz-Balart.
He explained that the attacker also had contacts with some other Cubans with aggressive record on the Caribbean nation at the Doral Jesus Worship Center in Miami Dade, including Pastor Frank Lopez.
The Cuban FM urged the US government to thoroughly investigate all links and connections with groups and individuals who has an instigating violence and terrorism record on Cuba, such as those who gather in that worship center.
Referring to unemployed attacker’s financial problems, the Cuban diplomat called Washington for determining where the money came from for conducting the terrorist attack on the Cuban embassy.
He noted the attacker acted normally and with a religious attitude when he was living in Cuba, his eight visits to the U.S. after immigrating to Mexico in 2003 and subsequently to the U.S. The attacker’s last stay on Cuba was in 2015.
The Cuban FM asked: The U.S. government must be asked how an individual with peaceful attitude becomes someone who travels from one state to another, and launches an armed attack against an embassy in that country.
The rule of imperial impunity must end
The President of Cuba Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, reiterated on Twitter on May 12, 2020 that Cuba continues to wait for a response to its denunciation of the firearm attack on the island’s embassy in Washington, during the dawn hours April 30.
“We have not forgotten the long history of terrorism against our diplomats. Cuba saves lives and repudiates violence and death,” Díaz-Canel tweeted.
The President has posted several comments demanding that the U.S. government provide information on the incident, insisting that authorities’ silence is equivalent to tolerance of such crimes and encourages a return to the history of terrorism against Cuba.
Since the 1960s, criminal groups have committed innumerable acts of terrorism against Cuban interests within U.S. territory and 35 other countries around the world, with kidnappings and the sinking of fishing boats, bombings at Cuban embassies, assassinations and the introduction of agricultural pests and diseases, among other reprehensible attacks.
For these obvious reasons, and as a matter of law, Cuba awaits a response to its requests. The rule of imperial impunity must end.
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