Cuba claims Florida man tried to invade the socialist island on a jet ski
Cuban officials said the latest attempt by exiles in South Florida to overthrow their socialist regime came riding to their shores on a jet ski, the country’s state-run media claims.
The unidentified — and supposedly heavily armed — conspirator landed on Cuba’s northern coast and made his way inland to his native Cienfuegos, where he tried to rally others to his cause, Cuba’s communist regime said.
The notoriously paranoid government leadership maintains that the supposed recent one-man invasion force was just the latest Miami-based plot to wreak havoc on the island, according to the newspaper Diario de Cuba.
“The Cubans involved in these events residing in the United States have links with terrorists who live in that country and who publicly promote violent actions against Cuba,” regime flak Humberto Lopez told the Spanish-language outlet.
“People who have gotten military training in the United States, who have been armed and prepared, and who have resources to carry out these plans in Cuba,” he said.
State-run media claimed two Florida-based groups, La Nueva Nacion Cubana and La Nacion Cubana en Armas — the New Cuban Nation and the New Cuban Nation in Arms — were behind the alleged plot.
But the outlets have been sketchy on the details, according to Reuters.
Cuba has long claimed that exiles who fled to South Florida following the ouster of US-backed leader Fulgencio Batista have since planned to invade Cuba. Batista was overthrown by socialist revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro.
The claims, bolstered by the failed US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, have since been at the heart of ongoing government propaganda to keep dissent on the island in check.
Exiles in Miami and surrounding cities in South Florida have remained havens for anti-Castro sentiment in the wake of the 1959 revolution that snuffed out democracy on the island.
According to Cuban media, the culprit in the recent assault abandoned his watercraft in a mangrove swamp near Matanzas Province, with his “mission” now the subject of a government probe.
With Post wires