14ymedio, Havana, 16 April 2021 — On the eve of the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba this Thursday, Cuban television announced the arrest of four people accused of plans that were supposedly were to take place in the “next few days.”
According to Humberto López, director and presenter of the government TV program — who, himself, has recently been added to the list of “violent repressors” drawn up by the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba — the supposed plans came from South Florida with ties to Spain.
The alleged terrorist organization is called La Nueva Nación Cubana (LNNC – The New Cuban Nation) and is led by Cuban-Americans William Cabrera González and Michael Naranjo, described on Cuban national television yesterday as “people with terrible behavior” and admirers of Brigade 2506, the former combatants who attempted the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.
Both individuals publish on their Facebook pages posters or videos related to the LNNC in which they call for unity to violently combat the Cuban regime. These posts have been shared by Armonía Díaz, a Cuban resident in Spain, whom the television report also accuses of links with “counterrevolutionary” groups.
Information from Cuban Television warned that this group planned to bring weapons and explosives to the island, infiltrate people, shoot up hotel establishments and set fire to shops and police stations.
In addition, López stated that the targets include civilians, with bombs to be detonated in childcare centers and healthcare facilities. He also said attacks are planned against leaders and officials, and include introducing a new strain of Sars-CoV-2.
The LNNC collective has already reacted by denying their links with the detainees and affirming that their struggle, armed as they admit, is not directed at civilians, but at the Communist Party.
Among those detained are two people from Holguin, Amaurys Casaels Martínez, 44, and Ernesto Javier Espinosa Mañé, 22, residents of Guaro who are accused of “receiving directions from counterrevolutionary elements from abroad to throw Molotov cocktails against a bank branch and the Police station” of the locality where they live.
The other two are Daniel Aponte Ruiz, 45, and Francisco Ángel Rodríguez Gronlier, 41, both from Havana. The former is suspected of recruiting people to “create clandestine cells” to carry out terrorist attacks against the Convention Center, electrical substations, stores that sell in freely convertible currency, and units of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior. Meanwhile, the latter, they maintain, was to be taken over by Aponte to carry out those actions.
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