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By Juan O. Tamayo, Herald Staff Writer
Published
Friday, October 30, 1998, in the Miami Herald
Cuba on Thursday accused the Cuban American National Foundation and one of
its top members of being the driving forces behind a string of terror bombings
in Havana and an alleged attempt to kill President Fidel Castro.
Havana's allegations were passed on to the FBI several months ago and form
part of the background for a U.S. grand jury in Puerto Rico that has been
investigating several other reputed conspiracies by Miami-based exiles, U.S.
officials said.
Cuba's Interior Ministry made the charges public Thursday in a lengthy
report detailing a secret three-year duel between Cuban security forces and
bombers sent from abroad by Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles.
The report identified Posada's key financier as Arnaldo Monzon Plasencia, a
rich clothing manufacturer and retailer who owns homes in New Jersey and
Miami-Dade and has been a member of CANF's 28-member executive board.
It also charged that CANF as a group had directly supported the terror
bombings, but gave only a hazy description of that involvement.
CANF spokeswoman Ninoska Perez denied any foundation involvement in the
terror attacks and dismissed the report as ``just another circus of the Cuban
government. The Herald tried unsuccessfully to reach Monzon at his New Jersey
office and his Bal Harbour condo.
In a cryptic comment at the end of its report, Havana said Cuban ``organs,''
a euphemism for state security agencies, ``have shared this information with
specialized services of other countries.''
Knowledgeable U.S. officials said that was a reference to the FBI, whose
Puerto Rico office is continuing to work with a federal grand jury that indicted
seven Cuban exiles in a plot to kill Fidel Castro in Venezuela last year.
The grand jury has been considering fresh indictments against Cuban exiles
in the United States in at least two anti-Castro plots in addition to the
Venezuela case, the officials added.
The Venezuela case ``led us to a string of other plots that appear to have
been financed from the same pot of money,'' said one law enforcement agent who
has testified before the grand jury. ``We're still working on those.''
Cuba's report, which takes up four typed, single-spaced pages, said security
agents have arrested and will soon bring to trial five suspects who
``participated in terrorist actions . . . and were members of a network, based
in Central America, directed and financed by the terrorist organization CANF.
Three are Guatemalans arrested in March who identified Monzon, Posada and
another ``man from New Jersey as ``leaders and financiers of their plot to
smuggle explosives into Cuba, the report added.
Monzon and Posada have been friends since their childhood in Cuba, according
to exiles who know both men. But the two grew especially close around 1995, soon
after Monzon, who has been battling prostate cancer for years, began closing or
selling some of his enterprises.
Nicknamed ``The Jeweler and now in his early 60s, Monzon once owned several
clothing factories in New Jersey and a string of some 40 retail shops under the
name of Arnolds, friends and other exiles said.
Big donor
He helped found CANF's New Jersey branch and remains one of the biggest
donors to the anti-Castro lobby's campaigns, the sources added. Perez said he
joined CANF around 1990, but the Cuban report said he joined in 1980.
Perez added that Monzon ``is a businessman, not a terrorist, and added that
the Castro government had picked on a scapegoat after CANF founder Jorge Mas
Canosa died last year.
``This is the same pattern we have endured from the Cuban government for the
last 17 years, she said. ``In the absence of Jorge Mas Canosa, they have to come
up with other names.
Havana's report alleged that Monzon began in 1995 to ``channel significant
resources into recruiting foreign criminals for a campaign of terror bombs
against the Cuban tourism industry, its single largest source of hard currency.
Monzon ``organized, supplied and financed the first attempted bombing in a
Varadero beach resort hotel in March 1995, the report said. It said the bomb was
dismantled and police captured two Cuban exiles who had returned to the island
with false Costa Rican passports, Santos Armando Martinez Rueda and Jorge
Enrique Ramirez.
The next bomber was Francisco Chavez, 26, a Salvadoran car thief and armed
robber who placed two bombs in ``tourist installations in April 1997, the report
said. That appears to be a reference to a bomb that exploded and another found
intact that month in Havana's luxury Melia Cohiba Hotel.
Chavez also may have been responsible for the May 25, 1997, bombing of a
Cuban tourism agency in Mexico City because ``available information shows he was
in the Mexican capital May 22-25, the report added.
A Posada agent
The Herald identified Chavez last November as a Posada agent who recruited
another Salvadoran, Raul Ernesto Cruz Leon, 27, seized in Havana Sept. 4, 1997,
on charges of detonating six other bombs around Havana in 1997.
Posada, a CIA-trained explosives expert, has lived in semi-hiding, mostly in
El Salvador, since he escaped from a Venezuelan jail in 1985 while awaiting
trial in the bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.
Posada pressed on with his bombing campaign in March of this year when he
sent two Guatemalans to Cuba with one pound of explosives in bottles of shampoo
and deodorant, and the makings for four bombs, the Cuban report said.
Maria Elena Gonzalez Meza, 54, and Nader Kamal Musalam Barakat, 28, were
arrested when they landed in Havana on a flight from Guatemala. Gonzalez's
husband, Jazid Ivan Fernandez, 28, was arrested two weeks later when he flew to
Cuba to find out what had happened to her, the Cuban report said.
Havana's report indicates that it was the Guatemalans, rather than the
Salvadorans, who gave Havana security agents the bulk of the information
implicating Monzon.
``The three jailed Guatemalans . . . admit the participation of Chavez in
the operation and identified the leaders and financiers as CANF Director Arnaldo
Monzon, Posada, and ``a man from New Jersey, the report said.
Another Salvadoran
A third Salvadoran, Otto Rene Rodriguez Llerena, 40, a security guard and
former army explosives expert during the 1980s, was responsible for a bomb that
exploded Aug. 4, 1997, in the Melia Cohiba hotel, the report said.
Rodriguez got away but was arrested in Havana when he returned in June of
this year on a flight from Guatemala carrying 3.3 pounds of plastic explosives
and two detonating caps, the Cuban report added.
Rodriguez has now confessed that Posada offered to pay him to smuggle bombs
into Cuba, set them off ``in hotels and museums and cause panic among foreign
tourists, the report said.
Each of the mercenaries was offered $1,400 to $1,500 per bomb, plus the
expenses of flying into Cuba and staying at tourist hotels, the report said. It
did not say how much money was actually paid.
Cuba claimed to have obtained signed confessions from two of the Guatemalans
``in which they give details of the role played by Posada Carriles and Monzon
Plasencia in the organization and preparation of these events.
Careful wording
Although the Cuban report repeatedly blamed CANF as an organization for the
terror campaign, the wording of its specific allegations against the group
appeared to have been carefully chosen:
``Since its beginning . . . CANF has provided financial and other resources
that allow different terrorist organizations to carry out activities aimed at
stimulating internal subversion in Cuba and destabilizing the country through
violence.
``From 1994, the foundation's hierarchy began to recruit people . . . to
send them to countries in Central America, with the goal of increasing the
number of people hostile to Cuba and using them as a base of support for the
violent actions, it added.
``It has been conclusively proven that [Monzon] was assigned by CANF to
direct the actions from El Salvador and Guatemala, and was involved in prior
acts of a violent nature against Cuba, the report said.
Havana's report noted that in August 1997, in the middle of the Havana
bombing campaign, CANF issued a statement supporting the attacks as a legitimate
tool of the Cuban people for attacking the Castro government.
The report noted that a second member of CANF's executive board, Jose
Antonio Llama, was among the seven exiles indicted in Puerto Rico in a plot to
kill Castro during a Latin American summit meeting in Venezuela last year.
Llama owns the yacht Esperanza, intercepted off Puerto Rico by the U.S.
Coast Guard in October 1997 after one of the four Cuban exiles on board, Angel
Alfonso, 58, of Union City, N.J., blurted out that they were on their way to
Venezuela to kill Castro.
FBI agents from Puerto Rico have been in Guatemala twice in recent months as
part of a continuing investigation by the same federal grand jury that indicted
the seven exiles, U.S. officials said.
Alfonso was a longtime employee and personal aide to Monzon, said one of
Monzon's nieces and an employee of one his remaining stores in Union City. Cuban
exile sources say Alfonso and another Cuban exile visited Posada last summer in
Guatemala City.
The Herald reported in May that Posada had used an office in Guatemala City
in the fall of 1997 to experiment with the possibilities of smuggling gel-like
high explosives in shampoo bottles and adult diapers.
The Cuban report pointed out that one of the two high-powered sniper rifles
found hidden aboard the Esperanza had been purchased in 1994 by CANF President
Francisco ``Pepe Hernandez.
Investigation continues
Lawyers for Hernandez told reporters in August that they expected he would
be indicted in the Puerto Rico case within a matter of days. Hernandez was not
indicted, but prosecutors in Puerto Rico have said the grand jury investigation
is continuing. Herald staff writer Maria A. Morales contributed to this report.
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