A slew of cop-killers, murderous bombers and violent armed robbers who fled to Cuba to avoid justice must be hauled back to the United States before Americans start puffing on Cuban cigars, police and victims’ relatives said Thursday.
“America must demand the return of all fugitives from American justice before any normalization of relations with Cuba can be agreed,” said Joe Connor, whose dad, Frank Connor, was blown to bits in a 1975 terror attack at Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan launched by the Puerto Rican separatist group FALN.
The group’s chief bomb maker, William Morales, was busted after blowing his own hands off in a Queens apartment in 1979, but escaped from Bellevue Hospital and fled to Mexico and then Cuba, where he has lived freely ever since.
“I demand Morales and other fugitives be returned to the US to finish their sentences,” Connor told The Post.
Another fugitive given asylum by the Castro regime, Joanne Chesimard, 67, a member of the Black Liberation Army, was convicted in the 1973 murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster during a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike.
She was sent to prison but escaped in 1979 with help from other black nationalists, and has lived in Cuba since 1984 despite a $2 million reward offered by the FBI and Jersey state cops, who have also demanded her return.
Retired NYPD Detective Tom Nerney, who worked on the case, said the US should do what it takes to put Chesimard — who is also known as Assata Shakur and is the aunt of the late rapper Tupac Shakur — back behind bars.
“I would say to the administration that justice delayed is justice denied. The [Foerster] family suffered greatly, and we hope to get her back here,” Nerney told The Post.
Connor blasted the Obama administration for apparently doing nothing to secure their return as part of any deal.
“What angers me is that the federal government knows that Chesimard and Morales have been in Cuba, and from what we can tell, there’s no evidence they sought their return,” he said.
Another Puerto Rican nationalist, Víctor Manuel Gerena, 56, of the Los Macheteros gang, pulled a $7 million armored car heist in Connecticut in 1983.
Gerena, who is on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list and has a $1 million reward on his head, made his way to Cuba and has been living there since.
The feds say as many as 70 US fugitives are living in Cuba after winning asylum from the Castro regime.