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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. María 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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Nukes and Nuns
Oct 28, 2007
I first met Sisters Carol Gilbert and Ardeth Platte at a gathering for young nuns in March 1980. Their task was to help us understand the ways in which the Gospels called us to work for justice in our communities and our world.
Carol and Ardeth were two of the three nuns who were convicted and imprisoned in July 2003 for breaking into the N-8 Minuteman III nuclear missile site in Colorado and symbolically spilling their blood on it. A Denver federal court sentenced them to 30 and 41 months, respectively.
Back then I didn't care much for their message. It contradicted my own uncomplicated understanding of the world and questioned the purposes and practices of the U.S. government. What they said seemed convoluted, overwhelmingly, and just plain nutty.
The next time I saw the sisters was 27 years later. They had come to my town to give a presentation about their arduous trial.
The nuns' protest at the missile site was not an off-the-cuff act. They are members of Plowshares, a worldwide peace organization that calls attention to the dangers of militarism and seeks the dismantling of all nuclear weapons. The sisters' hammers and wire cutters served as symbols of disarmament and referred to Isaiah 2:4 which reads: "They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks." This time I found the nuns truly inspiring and courageous.
So what had transpired to me during those 27 years that caused me to change my outlook toward these nuns-and indeed the social justice movement? Quite simply, I witnessed people's struggle for truth and justice.
I first learned about this struggle when I visited Nicaragua in 1985 as I stood on the blackened ground of the port of Corinto where several huge oil storage tanks had once sat before they were blown up by the CIA. Ronald Reagan wanted to neutralize the Sandinistas, who were deemed Communists, in order to clear the way for comfortable trade arrangements U.S. corporations had been enjoying under the deposed dictator Somoza.
In 1986 in Lima, Peru, I saw how desperate peasants tried to make a life for themselves after they left their mountain farms, which had been run over by armed insurgents. These people came to the city to sell plastic combs, laundry buckets, and toys. They were part of the city's rapid six-fold increase in population which until the 1980s had been stable for 300 years.
My trip to Cochabama, Bolivia, during the Christmas 1985 was delightful. I stayed with a congenial family who taught me in Spanish language. However, two images stick in my mind from that trip. One is of the poor peasant woman on New Year's Day who was sleeping on the street with her child by her side. Her head poked up for a minute when my companions and I walked near her and then went back down. Sleep often helps to forget hunger. Another woman I saw wore a cracked, light brown, faux leather jacket. The calculator that dangled from a chain on her wrist helped her figure out the exchange of dollars to bolivianos. The Bolivian economy was so inflationary that one dollar would get you one million bolivianos; 750,000 bolivianos would get you a Coke. And speaking of coke, I saw the coca fields. Turns out that the reason the peasants cultivated it was because the world demand for cocaine earned them enough money to feed their families.
As I flew across the ocean to the former Soviet Union on April 26, 1986, little did I know that a nuclear reactor was melting down in a small town called Chernobyl. Little did the people of the Soviet Union know either, especially those who were participating in the festive May Day celebration in Kiev on May 1, just 50 miles from Chernobyl. I witnessed how the Soviet government didn't care enough to tell its people that they were in danger. I also witnessed how the U.S. embassy not only denied me or my fellow travelers any help but refused to acknowledge that there was an emergency.
The Nuclear Weapons Freeze of the 1980s came from Americans' response to the Reagan administration's decision to escalate the country's weapons of mass destruction stockpile. As I helped circulate petitions on the street corners of my city, an old man yelled at me: "You people don't know what you're doing," he said. "We have to keep the U.S. safe with these weapons."
All of a sudden and out of the blue in 1991 we were at war with Iraq in tiny country known as Kuwait, a place where the oil flows. Although the war didn't last but 100 hours and ended in our victory, thousands U.S. soldiers became sick from Gulf War Syndrome. It was later learned that the depleted uranium applied to the tips of our rockets was such a lethal substance that just touching the remains of blasted vehicles affected our soldiers-thousands of them.
In 2002 the United States began the Afghanistan War and in 2003 it launched what would become the Iraq War and Occupation. Both of these military actions were responses to 9/11-yet another means of gaining control of that precious Middle Eastern oil. The U.S. military still uses depleted uranium only the rockets it fires are not confined to the desert. They are being launched in cities where hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians live.
These experiences changed me. I learned not to trust political leaders' motives, especially when they decided to stomp into a country "to save it from evil dictators." I also came to understand that our government cared more about corporate profits than people, including the American people. This was the same message that Sisters Ardeth and Carol had delivered 27 years before and they, together with Sister Jackie Hudson, subsequently put their lives on the line for that message.
Most people have not had the opportunities I did to learn these lessons about social justice. Somehow, those of us who have been enlightened must find ways to share the truth with those who are not exposed to it.
One way to start is to view the new film about the Sisters Ardeth, Carol and Jackie Hudson titled "Conviction" by Brenda Truelson Fox of Boulder, CO. It illustrates the sisters' commitment to disarmament and the price they paid as a result. Former president of the U.S. National Association of Evangelists Ted Haggard and anti-nuclear weapons advocate Helen Caldicott, MD, are featured. Copies of the 43-minute film are available through the website Zero to Sixty Productions: www.ztsp.org.
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