14ymedio, Madrid, September 26, 2023 — A slogan runs this Tuesday through the official Cuban press and accounts related to the regime following the alleged attack, on Sunday, of the Island Embassy in Washington with two Molotov cocktails: #NoAlTerrorismo. Although the United States called the event “unacceptable” and prefers not to speculate while an investigation is being carried out, both the Government of Miguel Díaz-Canel and its allies describe it as a “terrorist act.”
On Monday afternoon, about 30 people, summoned by the National Networks on Cuba group, demonstrated in front of the diplomatic headquarters, located on a street that will soon bear the name of Oswaldo Payá, to demand the US authorities to remove the Island from the list of states that support terrorism.
Ambassador Lianys Torres Rivera and the diplomats did not participate in the demonstration, says the Spanish agency EFE, which certifies that the participants were, for the most part, U.S. citizens.
Moscow also demands that Washington “unconditionally guarantee the security of the diplomatic missions of foreign states located in its territory
For its part, Russia not only “strongly” condemns the alleged attack on Tuesday, but even asks the United States “not to let it go unpunished, and that those responsible for its organization suffer severe sanctions” after a “quick and thorough” investigation, according to EFE from statements issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Moscow also demands that Washington “unconditionally guarantee the security of the diplomatic missions of foreign states located in its territory in strict accordance with international obligations” and has taken the opportunity to defend Havana, with which it maintains increasingly close relations, remembering that it is not the first “crime committed against the
Cuban mission in Washington, which unfortunately, occurs in the context of an atmosphere of threats against the Government of the Isle of Freedom, which continue to be cultivated in the United States.”
The Government of Honduras, headed by Xiomara Castro, has also expressed its “solidarity” with “the brother people” of Cuba, while condemning what it called a “criminal fact.” In the same vein, the chavista Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (Alba) said that the “Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations establishes the obligation of the receiving State to respect and protect the premises of the diplomatic mission.”
Other voices in defense of the regime’s point of view given in different official media are the Union of Cuban Residents in Argentina, a group of Cubans in Germany, the Popular Vanguard Party of Costa Rica, the Martian Association of Cubans Living in Panama and the Syrian Association of graduates in Cuba.
All of them remember, as did Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, that Sunday was the “second violent attack on the diplomatic headquarters in Washington since April 2020,” when an individual fired an assault rifle at the headquarters.
The Proyecto Inventario platform demanded that the Cuban government publish the videos of the “alleged impact”
For those events, the Cuban Alexander Alazo Baró was arrested and charged with shooting with firearms in a violent act, violently attacking an official with a deadly weapon and damaging the property of a foreign government in the United States and possession of weapons.
The penalty foreseen for those crimes was 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000; however, the last that was heard about the attacker in 2022 was that he was in a correctional facility awaiting a ruling on his mental state. Alazo, according to acquaintances, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and lived obsessed with the idea that State Security was after him.
Meanwhile, there are many suspicions aroused by the event, for which the alleged attacker had to launch homemade projectiles from the street over the high fence of the Cuban delegation and avoid two columns, before they landed in the corner of one of the windows on the ground floor. The Proyecto Inventario platform demanded that the Cuban government publish the videos of the “alleged impact,” showing the places on the facade of the building where three security cameras are located.
The organization also denounced the dissemination of false images from a news story about France in 2018, published at the time by the Russian agency Sputnik, in the propaganda disseminated by the media related to the regime.
Several users on networks, on the other hand, questioned the facts when they saw the true photos, published by Ambassador Torres herself on her X account (Twitter), in which the papers inside one of the explosive bottles were not burned. “What damage can there be if he didn’t set that cocktail on fire?” asked one user. “The papers are intact. They just threw away the bottle with the papers to pose for the photo. Don’t they realize it?” Another replied sarcastically: “They couldn’t burn them because the matches hadn’t arrived at the bodega (ration store).”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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