Chronicle on Cuba - January 2007

Terrorism

January 4: American activist Cindy Sheehan will join an international delegation traveling to Cuba to protest treatment of terrorism suspects five years after the first prisoners arrived at the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay, organizers said. Zohra Zewawi, the mother of a terror suspect still held at the base, will also be in the group protesting outside the US-run prison in southeastern Cuba, activist Medea Benjamin said in a release. Also planning to travel to Cuba is Asif Iqbal, a former Guantánamo detainee who was freed after no charges were filed. A retired US Army colonel and a constitutional rights attorney will also be in the group. The 12-member delegation is to arrive on January 9 in Havana, and later travel to the Cuban side of the US base. (AP, 5/1/07)

January 7: American ''peace mom'' Cindy Sheehan called for the closure of the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as she and other activists arrived in Cuba to draw attention to the nearly 400 terror suspects held at the remote site. Sheehan is among 12 human rights and anti-war activists who will travel across this Caribbean island, arriving at the main gate of the Guantanamo base in eastern Cuba on January 11-- five years after the first prisoners were flown in. ''Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not afraid of anything,'' Sheehan said when asked about the possibility of US sanctions for traveling to communist-run Cuba, which remains under an American trade embargo. ''What is more important is the inhumanity that my government is perpetrating at Guantanamo,'' she told reporters. Sheehan, 49, of Vacaville, California, became an anti-war activist known as the ''peace mom'' after losing her 24-year-old son Casey in Iraq in April 2004. (AP, 7/1/07)

January 8: Cuba recently released from prison a Guatemalan man with alleged connections to Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles, who is being investigated by a federal grand jury in New Jersey on his alleged role in bombings on the communist island in the 1990s. Jazid Ivan Fernandez Mendoza, 36, was released from a Cuban prison on December 12 and returned to Guatemala eight days later, according to Guatemala's ministry of the exterior. A Cuban government official in Guatemala said in a telephone interview that Fernandez, a Guatemalan citizen, had been released more than a year before his sentence was up.  ''He was freed before finishing his term for good conduct even though he was accused of terrorism,'' said Rolando Barroso, first secretary to the Cuban ambassador in Guatemala. ``It would be interesting to ask the American authorities, now that this person is free, if they are going to interview him.'' FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela declined to comment on whether the agency had interviewed Fernandez. (The Miami Herald, 9/1/07)

January 11: International peace activists marched to the Cuban military zone wrapping around the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay to demand closure of the US military prison for terror suspects five years after the first detainees arrived. The dozen protesters, including relatives of one detainee and American ''peace mom'' Cindy Sheehan, walked along a lonesome asphalt highway connecting the Cuban city of Guantánamo to the military zone. Sheehan wore a peace sign medallion around her neck. They chanted, ''Gitmo prison is a source of shame, no more torture in our name,'' and held signs saying, ''Due process is overdue'' and ''There are no justice-free zones.'' US Army Colonel Lora Tucker, a spokeswoman for the detention center, said the military had no plans to acknowledge the protest or increase security at the gate, which is located at a distance from the prison camp on the other side of a hill. ''Nothing changes for us based on a demonstration being held somewhere in Cuba,'' she said, adding that today was ''a normal work day'' at the Navy base. (AP, 11/1/07)

January 11: New UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that the US prison at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay should be shut down. "Like my predecessor, I believe that the prison at Guantanamo should be closed," Ban told a news conference. Kofi Annan, who stepped down as UN chief on December 31, also had called for the facility to be closed. President Bush has said he would like to close the facility, Ban reminded journalists. But the US leader has yet to do so. January 11 marks the fifth anniversary of the camp's opening. (Reuters, 11/1/07)

January 14: A group of American pacifists who visited Cuba to demonstrate against the US Guantanamo Bay prison left the island after a week-long visit. During their last day in Cuban territory, the protesters showed the film "The Road to Guantanamo," directed by the British film-maker Michael Winterbottom, for their final event. Also, the visitors met Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly of People's Power, and Culture Minister Abel Prieto. (Xinhua, 15/1/07)

January 22: Spanish journal “El Correo” said that with Fidel Castro ailing, Basque separatist group ETA fears it could lose the lone country that offers it sanctuary. So it is looking toward Bolivia as a possible alternative. The paper quoted unnamed Spanish security officials as its sources. (AP, 22/1/07)

January 27: A group of protestors – some wearing Guantanamo Bay-style orange jumpsuits, chains and black hoods – staged a rally in front of the US consulate in Toronto, demanding the Canadian government add its voice to demands the American military prison in Cuba be shut down. The event, organized by Amnesty International, drew about 100 protestors who marched around half a dozen "detainees" caged in a mock prison on the sidewalk across from the University Ave. consulate. The Toronto rally follows a series of Amnesty demonstrations around the world this month, marking the fifth anniversary of the facility's opening. Similar rallies were held in Halifax and Winnipeg, and earlier in Ottawa, Montreal, Peterborough and Vancouver. (Toronto Star, 28/1/07)