I N T E R N A T I O N A L

Havana. March 13, 2006

The Secret Service isn’t
mistaken so easily

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD--Special for Granma International--

WHEN notorious terrorist Sixto Reynaldo “El Chino” Aquit was noticed sitting in the front row while George W. Bush gave a speech on Cuba on May 20, 2002 in Miami, some people commented that it must have been a Secret Service error.

At which point the respected investigator Saul Landau—just to clarify— asked an FBI officer if such a an error was possible, and the reply was a blunt “no,” it is unimaginable that an individual could have gotten that close to the President without formal authorization .

Certainly such a spectacle was surprising, even though Orlando Bosch also took the opportunity to appear in the vicinity of Bush and Luis Zúñiga, another well-documented terrorist, even embraced the man who pretends to champion the “war on terrorism”. Aquit appeared in a more ordinary role: just another member of the extremist Miami fauna.

A true inventory of Aquit’s criminal activities by Guatemalan investigative writer Percy Alvarado in 2004 explains how, among many other things, Aquit participated in an attack on the Cypriot ship Mikonos on April 2, 1993 with a 50-Caliber machine gun, only 7 miles from the port of Matanzas, a province to the east of Havana.  

In early 1999, Aquit also actively participated in plotting a failed attempt against the president of Cuba at the investiture of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

EUROPEAN TOUR FOR TERRORISTS

In recent years, Aquit has made a few public appearances reported on Washington-subsidized websites. The most publicized were those organized by a Czech group pretending to be an “NGO” called People In Need Foundation (PIN), which on two occasions, offered him “European tours”, all expenses paid.

PIN could afford such extravagance, as it receives abundant funding from the Czech government as well as from large U.S. sources provided by the international extreme right.

According to recent data made public by investigators of this topic, the NED granted PIN, exclusively for attacking Cuba, $99,000 in 2005, an significant increase over the $60,000 sum of 2004. The totals published are doubtless no more than the tip of the iceberg of what the CIA contributes with its habitual generosity.

It was in this way that the name of the Miami terrorist appeared, February 6th, on the program of an anti-Cuba propaganda event organized in the Swedish parliament by PIN, which also recruited certain Swedish politicians, addicted to cocktail parties given at the U.S. embassy there and its Czech subsidiary.

Aquit shared the dubious honor of participating in this event — a complete failure: attended by only 50 people— with Ramón Humberto Colas, noted con-man also firmly connected to the wellspring of USAID and NED subsidies.

This trip of Aquit had been preceded by another, a few months earlier, in which “El Chino” was accompanied by another criminal, Angel Cuadra Landrova, who portrays himself as an artist, poet or writer, but who is better known in Cuba for his participation in the burning of cane fields using cats as torches. He also plotted, unsuccessfully, to blow up the Monument to Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara in the city of Santa Clara.

NOW WHERE HAS EL CHINO REAPPEARED, SUDDENLY?

The last “appearance” of El Chino, though, completes the picture and makes evident, through the trajectory of this single individual, to what degree Cuban-American terrorism is intimately linked to the imperial power.

Just a few days ago, El Nuevo Herald of Miami revealed with its habitual complacency the presence of Aquit among the founders of a Luis Posada Carriles support committee. Said committee announced the sale of “paintings” by the old assassin, works much admired by the former Panamanian President, Mireya Moscoso.

The notice from the “support committee” described Posada as a ''true patriot'' and a “tireless warrior for the liberation of Cuba,'' noted the paper adding that Radio Mambí is “promoting the auction” with an advertisement that ends with the phrase “For Cuba, for Luis”.

According to the daily, Aquit (whom the journalist identified as Reinaldo Aquí, as it is common for this criminal to alter his identity) belongs to the committee along with Nelis Rojas, Pedro Remón and Dionisio Suárez.

Investigations have revealed, among other things, how Nelis Rojas actively participated, from his residence in Venezuela, in a failed assassination attempt conceived by Carriles against President Castro during the 7th Ibero-American Summit on Isla Margarita. The plot ended with the arrest (accidental) of the conspirators in Puerto Rico. All of them, including a well-known drug runner, were closely linked to the Cuban-American National Foundation.

Remón, Posada’s prison buddy en El Renacer, Panamá, was designated in a confidential FBI report as the murderer of the Cuban diplomat Félix García Rodríguez and of the Cuban-American citizen Eulalio José Negrín and was exposed before the Senate committee investigating, in Puerto Rico, the murder of Carlos Muñiz Varela…among other crimes.

Dionisio “Pool of Blood” Suárez Esquivel confessed to plotting the assassination of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and his associate Ronnie Moffit and made the extent of his criminal career perfectly known.

According to El Nuevo Herald, Rojas, Remón, Aquít and Suárez are “all connected to Posada by strong friendship.”

The presence of Aquit in the Luis Posada Carriles support committee not only confirms a relationship between the White House and Hialeah and Coral Gables but also that it is directly nourished from fraudulent financial sources at the expense of U.S. taxpayers.

The upcoming release of Posada or his expulsion to a “friendly” country will underscore that relationship, the same one that keeps René González, Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino and Fernando González imprisoned for attempting to infiltrate this world of violence and corruption.

There is no doubt. The presence of the terrorist at the May 20, 2002 Miami event, at the side of George W. Bush, was NOT a coincidence. The Secret Service and the FBI are not mistaken so easily.