Chronicle on Cuba - June 2006

Terrorism

June 4: Baltasar Garzón, Spain’s most prominent investigative magistrate, has called on the United States to immediately close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
"A model like Guantánamo is an insult to countries that respect laws," Judge Garzón said in an interview during a counterterrorism conference in Florence in late May. "It delegitimizes us. It is a place that needs to disappear immediately." As the war in Iraq drags on, criticism in Europe of the Bush administration's prison for terrorist suspects as well as its secret transport of terrorist suspects to third countries has steadily mounted. (AP, 4/6/06)

June 4: There are many issues dividing Cuba and the United States, but few have been as explosive in recent years as the charge that each nation is harboring the other's terrorists. The US has designated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism, placing it alongside such nations as Iran, Syria and North Korea. One reason for this distinction is 56-year-old Charlie Hill, an Illinois native who 35 years ago, as a member of a black separatist group, allegedly killed a New Mexico state trooper, hijacked an airliner and fled to Cuba, where Fidel Castro gave refuge to Hill and other fugitives from American justice. Meanwhile, Castro demands that US authorities extradite Luis Posada Carriles, a militant Cuban exile accused of blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976, killing all 73 aboard. Posada Carriles remains in US custody after an immigration judge ruled that he cannot be deported to Cuba or Venezuela, where the downed plane originated, because he could be tortured there. Cuba also has asked the US to return three Cuban-Americans allegedly implicated in the airline bombing and a separate plot to kill Castro, according to the US State Department's 2005 Country Reports on Terrorism released this April. (Chicago Tribune, 4/6/06) 

June 13: The International Committee of the Red Cross is to visit the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, following the deaths of three men held at the prison camp there. Military authorities at the camp have also announced a review of its procedures.
The Red Cross is the only outside agency that has regular access to the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. (The New York Times, 13/6/06)

June 24: Fourteen Saudi Arabians were released from the detention center at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and transferred to their home country, the Pentagon said. One was released because US officials determined the prisoner was no longer an enemy combatant. The releases bring to 310 the number of detainees who have departed Guantanamo to other governments, including Albania, Afghanistan, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Kuwait, Morocco, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden and Uganda. (CNN, 26/6/06)

June 26: The head of Cuba's legislature said that not only should the US naval base at Guantanamo be closed but it should also be returned to Cuba. "What needs to be asked for, of course, is that they close the torture center; even (US President George W.) Bush has said that he's in favor of closing it. But the most important thing is that they return it," said the head of the communist island's National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon. He commented to journalists in response to a question about the European Parliament's resolutions in favor of closing the detention center at the base. The members of the EU body feel that maintaining the detention center for people Washington says are Al Qaeda members or terrorism suspects is a violation of international law and of human rights standards. Alarcon said that "if there has been torture and if (the base) has been turned into what it's been turned into, unfortunately it's because that piece of our national territory has been usurped for more than a century." "So, let them close the installation and return what doesn't belong to the United States or to Europe," he added. (EFE, 26/6/06)