Cuba claims to have thwarted ‘terrorist’ plot planned in US

HAVANA: Cuba claimed on Sunday to have thwarted a “terrorist plot” planned on US soil, arresting its alleged mastermind and several others.

The interior ministry announced in state mouthpiece Granma that a Cuban citizen who had been residing in the United States was arrested as he entered Cuba “illegally” by sea, with firearms and ammunition and “as part of a new recruitment plan to carry out violent actions in our country.”

The suspect had entered the United States as an undocumented migrant in 2014, said the ministry, adding that others implicated in the alleged plot were also arrested in Cuba.

It did not say how many people were detained, or when, in an operation based on information received in December of a plan “to execute violent actions in our country.”

That same month, Cuba published a list of several dozen suspected “terrorists,” many of them living abroad -- mainly in the United States.

The list included people Havana accuses of involvement in a series of hotel bombings in the capital in 1997 and attempts on the life of ex-leader Fidel Castro.

Washington in May removed Cuba from a list of countries “not cooperating fully” in the counterterrorism fight, but kept it on a blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism. The United States has had sanctions in place against Cuba since 1962.