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state sponsors of terrorism
Massachusetts Dems Urge Biden to Take Cuba Off US Terrorism List
"Removing Cuba from this list is one thing that the U.S. can do immediately to ease the daily hardships facing so many Cuban families," wrote seven lawmakers.
Jan 02, 2024
Following a private briefing on Capitol Hill in which a U.S. State Department official angered Democratic lawmakers by revealing that the Biden administration has not yet begun a lengthy review process to remove Cuba from the government's list of "State Sponsors of Terror," Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Jim McGovern led other Massachusetts Democrats in demanding that the White House expedite the process.
The letter sent to President Joe Biden was written in mid-December, a week after the closed-door meeting took place, but was not released on until Tuesday.
Pressley and McGovern were joined by Reps. Lori Trahan, Stephen Lynch, and Seth Moulton, as well as Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey in calling on Biden to reverse the "vindictive action" taken by former Republican President Donald Trump just before he left office in January 2021, when he added Cuba to the SSOT list.
The Democrats noted that while there are numerous reasons for Cuba's economic crisis, "without a doubt a significant contributing factor is the restrictions and penalties facing international financial institutions and other entities because Cuba is on the SSOT list."
"From the poorest and most vulnerable to the struggling private sector to religious, humanitarian, and cultural actors, the Cuban people are enduring the most dire deprivations in recent memory—everyone is suffering," the letter reads. "Removing Cuba from this list is one thing that the U.S. can do immediately to ease the daily hardships facing so many Cuban families, including its struggling private sector."
Inclusion on the SSOT list limits Cuba's participation in international financial markets, as other countries are forced to choose between doing business with the wealthiest country in the world and the small island nation that it claims supports terrorism.
Trump claimed the designation was necessary because Cuba was aiding terrorists in Colombia—reasoning that the lawmakers called "specious."
"During his most recent visit to the United States, Colombian President Gustavo Petro appealed personally to you for Cuba to be removed from the list to facilitate peace negotiations between the Colombian government and the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas," wrote the lawmakers.
The December meeting on Capitol Hill left several Democrats "furious," a lawmaker who was granted anonymity toldThe Intercept last month, particularly because McGovern had reportedly been told that the review process, which takes about six months, was ongoing.
In the letter the lawmakers pointed out that on the campaign trail, Biden pledged to "address re-engagement with Cuba" and lift Trump's punishing economic sanctions, returning to the normalized relations introduced by the Obama-Biden administration.
As William Leogrande wrote at the The Nation on Monday, Cuba's foreign exchange earnings have been "drastically reduced" by the sanctions.
"The impact of the economic crisis is visible everywhere," wrote Leogrande. "There are fewer cars on the streets and long lines at gas stations because of the fuel shortage. Tourist hotels stand half-empty and the once bustling streets of Old Havana are quiet. The shelves in state stores are mostly bare, often lacking even the limited basket of goods that Cubans receive at subsidized prices on their ration book. Garbage is accumulating on street corners. Street crime is rising."
Alleviating some of the suffering by removing Cuba from the SSOT list, said the Democratic lawmakers in their letter to Biden, "is the only option worthy of the United States."
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160 Lawyers Push Biden to Take Cuba Off State Sponsors of Terrorism List
"Policy—and electoral—concerns appear to have always kept Cuba on the SSOT list, rather than actually meeting the legal requirements to be on there," the attorneys argue.
Jan 23, 2023
A group of 160 mostly American lawyers recently urged President Joe Biden to remove Cuba from the U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism list, a designation acknowledged as meritless and politically motivated by critics and proponents of the policy alike.
Noting that numerous former Latin American and Caribbean heads of state, as well as "hundreds of civil society organizations and thousands of citizens" have asked the Biden administration to lift Cuba's State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT) status, the attorneys called on the president "to immediately initiate a review and notification process to remove Cuba from the SSOT list."
"There is no legal or moral justification for Cuba to remain on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list," the attorneys argued in an Alliance for Cuba Engagement and Respect (ACERE) letter. "Given the tremendous economic, social, humanitarian, and commercial effect placement on the SSOT list has had for the Cuba people, maintaining it for such pretextual reasons continues to be a stain on U.S. foreign policy."
\u201cThere is no legal or moral justification to list Cuba as a state sponsor of terror. This important letter signed by 160 lawyers makes that clear. We\u2019re proud to have helped gather signatures! #LetCubaLive\u201d— CODEPINK (@CODEPINK) 1674503676
In 2015, then-President Barack Obama removed Cuba from the SSOT during a promising but ultimately short-lived rapprochement between the two countries that abruptly ended when former President Donald Trump took office in 2017. The lawyers' letter is a point-by-point refutation of the criteria cited by then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo when the outgoing Trump administration re-listed Cuba as an SSOT in January 2021.
These include Cuba's refusal to extradite members of the National Liberation Army, a leftist rebel group from Colombia, who traveled to Havana for peace negotiations with the Colombian government. Such an extradition, the lawyers noted, would have violated Cuba's obligation to ensure the safety and well-being of all participants in the peace talks.
Pompeo also cited the fact that Cuba harbors U.S. fugitives wanted for acts of political violence committed nearly half a century ago, even though no other country has been placed on the SSOT list for such a reason. Aside from ignoring all the Cuban exile terrorists who enjoy not only citizenship but sometimes even heroic status in the United States, the lawyers note that "international law clearly prohibits extradition for acts of political violence."
As the letter states:
To the extent that the 1904 extradition treaty between Cuba and the United States remains in effect and continues to be honored by both parties, it contains a standard political offense exemption. This exception is premised upon a concept familiar to the United States, which is that "individuals have a right to resort to political activism to foster political change." Indeed, this is precisely the sort of "activism" that the United States designates millions of dollars to each year for regime change in Cuba.
"Policy—and electoral—concerns appear to have always kept Cuba on the SSOT list, rather than actually meeting the legal requirements to be on there," the lawyers' letter contends, citing a former Clinton administration Cuba expert who admitted that "frankly, I don't know anyone inside or outside of government who believes in private that Cuba belongs on the terrorist list."
"People who defend it know it is a political calculation," the expert added. "It keeps a certain part of the voting public in Florida happy, and it doesn't cost anything."
Much of that "certain part of the voting public in Florida" consists of Cuban-Americans, who—especially among the older generations—vehemently support isolating Cuba as long as it remains socialist.
"Frankly, I don't know anyone inside or outside of government who believes in private that Cuba belongs on the terrorist list."
Earlier this month, Rep. MarÃa Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.)—the daughter of Cuban exiles who believes that even the sort of democratic socialism found in many of the world's freest and most developed nations brings "misery, oppression, and exile"—introduced the FORCE Act. The proposed legislation would bar Biden from removing Cuba from the SSOT list "until the regime grants basic human rights protections."
Cuba was first placed on the SSOT list by the Reagan administration in 1982. By that time, the island nation and its socialist government had endured a decadeslong campaign of U.S.-backed exile terrorism, attempted subversion, failed assassination attempts, economic warfare, and covert operations large and small in a fruitless policy of toppling longtime leader Fidel Castro. Cuba says U.S.-backed terrorism has killed or wounded more than 5,000 Cubans and cost its economy billions of dollars.
There is no comparable—or any—history of Cuban terrorism against the United States.
In stark contrast, the Reagan administration removed Iraq, then ruled by the dictator Saddam Hussein, from the SSOT list just days before Cuba was added. This was so that the U.S. could supply Hussein's forces with weaponry used to kill both Iranians and Iraq's own restive Kurdish and Shi'a people. Top officials in the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations knew that Iraqi forces were using chemical weapons—some of whose components came from the United States and its allies—against both Iranians and against Iraqi Kurds in the genocidal Anfal campaign, but gave Hussein diplomatic cover until he ordered an invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.
\u201cThe resolution by the Berkeley City Council (CA) marks 1 of the 65 different docs passed across the US, demanding the withdrawal of #Cuba from the SSOT list & the lifting of the blockade.\n\nWe thank the ppl of the US, which each day expresses its solidarity through these efforts.\u201d— Lianys Torres Rivera (@Lianys Torres Rivera) 1672758072
More than 100 progressive groups and over 10,000 people have signed petitions and open letters urging Biden to lift Cuba's SSOT designation.
Last October, leftist Colombia President Gustavo Petro asked U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to end the "injustice" of Cuba being listed as a sponsor of terrorism.
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