Cuba sanctions tighten, returning Americans face detentions

WASHINGTON (AP):

President Donald Trump’s administration is increasing pressure on Cuba by imposing more economic penalties on industries in the heavily sanctioned socialist country and broadening enforcement of laws that bar Americans who visit the island from dealings with government-owned or -affiliated businesses.

The Treasury and State departments announced yesterday that they are levelling new penalties against nine state-owned mining, metal and construction companies, along with the leadership of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP). Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the institute is responsible for sponsoring “a vast subversive network in the United States aimed at identifying, cultivating, and radicalising” Americans.

“Just days ago, the regime attempted to use Communist kingpin and despot Fidel Castro’s 100th birthday to reinvigorate this subversive network, ferrying a new brigade of international sympathisers to Havana to network with regime officials,” Rubio said in a statement.

“The Trump Administration will not stand by while a hostile foreign power seeks to exploit our freedoms — none of which are afforded to its people — by misleading and corrupting American citizens with lies, spy tradecraft, and other malfeasance as part of the regime’s raison d’être of exporting Marxism, racial resentment, and Communist violence across the world,” Rubio said.

Trump’s Republican administration has steadily ratcheted up pressure on Havana, threatening it with potential military intervention even when mired in a conflict against Iran, while also boosting economic sanctions designed to cut off funding for the Cuban government. An oil blockade that the US imposed on Cuba after the American military raid that ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, whose country provided Cuba with free oil, has plunged the already economically crippled island into full-blown crisis.

UNFAIR TARGET

The Cuban Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new sanctions. Cuba routinely denounces US sanctions and the decadeslong embargo it has imposed on the island, accusing multiple administrations of unfairly targeting a poor nation and its people merely for ideological differences and its proximity to the United States.

The latest sanctions follow an operation at the Miami airport last weekend in which several American citizens returning to the US from Cuba after participating in events marking Castro’s birthday were briefly detained, according to US officials. Some of them had their cellphones and other personal electronic devices seized for inspection, the officials said.

US authorities had been prepared to detain dozens of returning activists for secondary screening, but far fewer were found to meet the criteria for the enhanced questioning by Customs and Border Protection agents, the officials said. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because details of the operation have not been made public, said those detained were eventually released and allowed to enter the US.

The officials said anyone detained and released could still face prosecution if it is found they violated US sanctions, which prohibit all transactions with Cuban government-owned entities, including restaurants, hotels and shops. The status of seized cellphones, laptops and tablets, however, was unclear.

The new sanctions that were imposed on the leadership of ICAP target the group’s president, Fernando González Llort, who had been among five Cuban intelligence officers arrested in the US in 1998 but later released in 2014. They also target its first vice -resident, Noemí Ramona Rabaza Fernández, and its North America director, Leima Martínez Freire.

The metals, mining and construction sector sanctions target a nickel production company, two firms that specialise in the import of heavy industrial products, a mineral resources company, the Cuban Ministry of Construction, a company that provides Cuban workers to foreign entities on the island, and two enterprises that import vehicles, automotive parts and construction materials.