National Committee to Free the Cuban Five

Cuba: U.S. funneled money to dissidents

by Frances Robles
May 19, 2008
Reprinted from Miami Herald

Cuban officials display evidence in Havana

The head of the U.S. mission in Cuba served as an emissary between a top dissident on the island and an exile militant from Miami serving time for weapons possession, the Cuban government announced Monday at a news conference aired live on Cuban radio.

Top Cuban officials released a series of e-mails, which they allege show that dissident Martha Beatriz Roque gets regular financing from Santiago Alvarez, the benefactor and friend of alleged terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. Alvarez's group, Fundación Rescate, also allegedly sent $200 a month to dissident Jorge Luis "Antúnez" García and another $2,400 to the Ladies in White dissident group.

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"We have obtained irrefutable proof about a qualitatively new event, different from the well-known and already denounced flow of financial and material support to the domestic counter-revolution from the U.S. government and its diplomats in Havana," said Josefina Vidal Ferreira, head of the North American desk of the Foreign Ministry. "It is the unusual and scandalous fact involving the participation of diplomatic officials in the U.S. Interests Section in Havana as emissaries in the transfer of money from terrorists living in U.S. territory and counter-revolutionaries in Cuba."

Alvarez is a real estate magnate who is serving a 30-month prison sentence for stockpiling weapons in South Florida. He was also sentenced in 2006 to 10 months in prison for refusing to testify against Posada, a longtime anti-Castro activist accused of planting bombs in Havana and plotting to kill Castro.

Posada currently faces no criminal charges and is free in South Florida.

The Cuban government claims Roque got $1,500 a month from Alvarez, and that e-mails show U.S. Interests Section chief Michael Parmly served as an emissary between the two.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heide Bronke could not immediately be reached for comment.

Parmly is leaving the post after three years, the State Department confirmed last week. One e-mail, the government said, shows Roque and her nephew in Miami referring to Parmly by the code name "the little crib."

Roque allegedly wrote a secret letter of support to U.S. District Judge James Cohn, the federal judge presiding over Alvarez's case, and was upset when the original copy of the letter was lost at the U.S. Interests Section office in Havana, according to the e-mails.

"You can see where she understands the gravity of this relationship between the well-known terrorist," said Manuel Hevia Frasquieri, the director of Cuban State Security's Historic Investigations Center.

Cohn reduced Alvarez's sentence from 46 months to 30 months when others tied to his case turned over 14 pounds of plastic explosives, 200 pounds of dynamite, 4,000 feet of detonator cord, 30 semiautomatic and automatic weapons, one grenade launcher and two handmade grenades, among other items.

Alvarez pleaded guilty in September 2006 to conspiring to possess illegal weapons in a 2005 criminal case unrelated to the firearms surrender. At his sentencing, he maintained that the weapons were meant to help battle Fidel Castro's totalitarian government -- not to harm the United States.

Cuban government officials said more information would be released at 6 p.m. Monday.

Cuba: U.S. funneled money to dissidents

by Will Weisser
May 19, 2008
Reprinted from AP

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba on Monday accused America's top diplomat in Havana of carrying mail to dissidents that contained private funds from an organization run by the benefactor of an alleged terrorist.

Authorities presented e-mails and other correspondence they say back their claim against Michael Parmly [picture, right], chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. But while the evidence referred to "letters," it included no direct proof there was money involved.

Nevertheless, Cuba claimed the funds were sent to political opposition leaders Martha Beatriz Roque and Laura Pollan from a Miami-based organization called Fundacion Rescate Juridica, which is headed by Santiago Alvarez — a benefactor of Luis Posada Carriles, accused by Cuba of masterminding bombings of a jetliner and hotels and other terrorist acts. Posada has denied the allegations.

"This reveals the connection between the counterrevolutionaries in Cuba with the terrorists," said Josefina Vidal Ferreira, director of the Foreign Ministry's North American Department.

Roque heads the Assembly for Civil Society while Pollan is a member of the Ladies in White group of political prisoners' wives. Neither was immediately available for comment Monday.

Cuba has accused officials at the American mission of providing U.S. government funds and material support to the island's tiny opposition for years.

U.S. officials have acknowledged sending books, radios, tape recorders and other items purchased through the U.S. Agency for International Development, which receives government funding, but they have always adamantly denied giving dissidents cash.

During a 2003 crackdown, Cuba charged 75 opposition members with being "mercenaries" working with U.S. officials to overthrow the communist system and sentenced them to long prison terms. Twenty of the original 75 have been released — 16 on medical parole and four into forced exile in Spain.

U.S. officials and dissidents denied those charges.