BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD
Could it be that the very long prison sentences handed down to the five Cubans falsely accused of espionage were aimed at protecting Miami terrorist circles and dissuading any person or group who wants to counteract those circles' criminal activities?
One might think so when one sees with what impunity — and what arrogance — recognised terrorists continue to flaunt themselves in public rallies sponsored by mafia groups in Miami, as in the days immediately following the failed occupation attempt at the Mexican embassy in Havana.
Two successive events, both called by the mafia to denounce the Mexican government's correct attitude related to that incident, have received attention.
The first, a rally called by terrorist group Alpha-66 and its head, Nazario Sargent, was amply covered in the Miami press, which is always ready to spread the terrorist message to those groups most predisposed to violence — including publishing their extremist demands. That was clearly demonstrated less than three weeks before the fateful Twin Towers and Pentagon attacks when the August 22 Miami Herald published a pamphlet defending aggression against Cuba by whatever means, including the use of violence.
Alpha-66's terrorist actions could fill a book, and various volumes at that. The group's leaders were present at a June 1976 meeting in the Dominican Republic, when the most extreme counter-revolutionary elements met to form the Command of United Revolutionary Organisations (CORU). And afterwards they always willingly lent their support in the more than 50 attempts, so far attributed to Cuban-American terrorist organisations.
The day after the first rally, the provocation was even more basic. In the very headquarters of the association of those nostalgic for the counter-revolutionaries' disastrous attack at the Bay of Pigs, representatives of 60 groups called a new rally to denounce Mexico.
While a spokesperson for that species of counter-revolutionary coalition exhorted the Cuban-American community to boycott Mexican products, one could observe at their side, on the very podium along with the most distinguished guests, two of the best known Miami terrorists: killer pediatrician Orlando Bosch, with his usual sinister appearance, and violent black-bearded mercenary Rodolfo Frometa.
Of course, Orlando Bosch is the better known of the pair. He and Luis Posada Carriles were the masterminds of the October 6, 1976 explosion on board a Cubana Airlines plane in flight, in which 73 people died. Killer Bosch was later released from a Venezuelan jail thanks to Otto Reich, now in charge of Latin American affairs for the US State Department. Reich has acted as Bosch's godfather, even to the point of getting him a pardon from George Bush senior.
For more than 40 years, Bosch has been responsible for innumerable crimes of terror. He continues in his capacity as professional terrorist, constantly urging violence as a method for political struggle.
Bosch may be a dinosaur in the world of Miami terrorism, but Frometa is a shrewder version of the anti-Cuba criminal, with a devastating potential for terrorism.
In 1981, Alpha-66 sent him to Cuba to do some "work", such as poisoning cattle, setting fire to sugarcane plantations and destroying citrus orchards. He was imprisoned, serving 10 years.
In 1994, before his return to Miami, Frometa was once again arrested, with six other individuals, this time in the Gulf of Mexico by a US Coast Guard patrol; 50 weapons, 26,000 cartridges and thousands of dollars were discovered on board his boat. Legal authorities didn't consider him worthy of charges — even though the terrorist admitted he was sailing towards Cuban territory.
In June of the same year, Rodolfo Frometa was arrested again with Fausto Merimont, an Alpha-66 crony, while they were purchasing a Stinger anti-aircraft rocket, three M-72 anti-tank rockets, C-4 explosives and a rocket launcher from an undercover FBI agent.
That time he was sentenced to 41 months, a real "bargain" for such a violent individual. He was released in September 1997, on the condition that he stay in Miami and not associate with people carrying weapons.
Frometa is the archetype visceral terrorist, an intimate friend of Guillermo Novo — one of Posada Carriles' Panamanian hirelings — and ally of Roberto Martin Perez, his Cuban American National Foundation sponsor. In the following weeks he associated with Miguel Rodriguez Heredia, living in the Dominican Republic, to support an "infiltration plan" in Guantanamo province with speedboats and weapons from Costa Rica.
The career terrorist has now left Alpha-66, after a dispute with Nazario Sargent, to join "F-4 Commandos", an organisation with a long history of aggression against the island.
On August 24, 1999, El Diario de las Americas daily, another Miami mafia collaborator, announced the "reactivation of activities" by Frometa's organisation and the "destruction" of "two Gaviota corporation buses, four train cars, two cigar factories and two taxis belonging to the Cubalse corporation" in Cuba, claiming that these were "military objectives". This was denounced in a roundtable on the theme in Havana.
January 12, 2001, saw Frometa informing the same propaganda crew that they had "burnt down a Gaviota taxi terminal and also a bus terminal".
Like Bosch, who has free State Department entry, Frometa boasts of his good relations with Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Miami mafia capo on Capitol Hill.
Doesn't the presence of Orlando Bosch and Rodolfo Frometa at rallies sponsored by Miami mafia groups and splinter groups demonstrate that such groups support terrorism? What does Alpha-66's presence on Miami television signify, if not support for terrorism as a "legitimate" means to harass the Cuban Revolution? How should we interpret the US authorities' tolerance of groups like Alpha-66 and F-4 Commandos, which are in the public eye and have web sites, if not as giving their blessing to terrorism?
Miami is dominated, muzzled and swindled by mafia extremists and has now officially been named as the poorest city in the United States. It continues to suffer under the weight of terror, reduced to silence by a criminal network that now even holds strategic positions in the federal government.
While the five Cubans are sent to prison for risking their lives to stop terrorism against the island, tolerance of terrorists on the part of the same Miami legal system has provided a breather for extremists, giving them the green light to concoct attacks against Cuba. And their faces on the city's television screens is one more example of this catastrophic situation.
[From Granma International <http://www.granma.cu>.]
From Green Left Weekly, March 27, 2002.
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