Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Wednesday evening the government of President Donald Trump is working to verify the facts surrounding an alleged shootout at sea between an alleged Florida speedboat and the Cuban communist coast guard.
The Communist Party’s foreign ministry announced on Wednesday it had allegedly engaged a speedboat registered in Florida, killed four people, and detained at least six others. On Thursday morning, the Communist Party’s official newspaper Granma reported the names of six people allegedly on the speedboat when it was stopped and claimed that they were “terrorists” attempting to attack the Cuban government.
Among those named are individuals that the Castro regime had previously identified as “terrorists” on a mostly spurious “terror” list featuring human rights activists and Youtubers.
Neither the Castro regime nor the White House have offered any more details at press time on Thursday morning, though some American outlets have claimed to speak to relatives of those on board who suggested that the individuals involved were deeply committed to overthrowing communism in their native country. The Castro regime has a decades-long track record of unjustifiably killing civilians at sea, including children and American citizens, with impunity.
Secretary of State Rubio, speaking to journalists in the Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis, offered journalists no details on the situation, other than confirming that no one involved is believed to be a U.S. government official and that there is no reason to believe the speedboat was involved in any American government operation. He suggested that journalists approach the Castro regime’s “facts” on the situation with extreme skepticism.
“We will know quickly many more facts about this incident than we know right now. The majority of the facts being publicly reported are those by the information provided by the Cubans,” Rubio noted. “We will verify that independently.”
“I don’t know who has possession of the vessel, which is the first thing we want to have. We obviously want to have access to these people if they are American citizens or U.S. residents,” Rubio added. “But I’m not going to speculate now because right now, still a lot of the information that’s out there is information that’s been provided by the Cubans. We are going to verify that information independently and reach our own conclusions.”
Rubio repeatedly insisted that Washington would not “base our conclusions on what they’ve [the Cuban government] told us.” Asked directly if the American government has a specific reason to doubt the Communist Party’s version of events, he asserted, “I have every reason to want our own information. We don’t generally make decisions in the United States on the basis of what Cuban authorities are saying.”
The current facts on the ground, the secretary of state observed, was “embedded all sorts of facts of things that they claim to be facts, which is where the ship came from, where the boat came from, who was on it, what happened, and so forth.” He refused to confirm that the ship was from Florida or who was on board, repeating again that the United States is conducting an independent investigation.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Rubio also verified that the United States has caught “people in the past that have run into Cuba to bring people and so on.”
“It is illegal. It is a violation of federal law to go and run people back and forth. And we’ve caught people doing that in the past,” he asserted. “It doesn’t normally lead to shootouts, to be honest with you. But I’m not claiming that’s what’s happened here. I don’t know.”
The Cuban embassy in the United States, allowed to operate after former President Barack Obama adopted a pro-Castro foreign policy, issued an English-language statement on Wednesday sharing the alleged registration number of the alleged Florida vessel and confirming that fatalities have occurred.
“When a surface unit of the Border Guard Troops of the Ministry of the Interior, carrying five service members, approached the vessel for identification,” the embassy claimed, “the crew of the violating speedboat opened fire on the Cuban personnel, resulting in the injury of the commander of the Cuban vessel.”
“As a consequence of the confrontation, as of the time of this report, four aggressors on the foreign vessel were killed and six were injured,” it added. “The injured individuals were evacuated and received medical assistance.”
A follow-up statement, shared through Cuban state media, identified the individuals as alleged “terrorists.” It listed six individuals currently alive and in Cuban custody: Amijail Sánchez González, Leordan Enrique Cruz Gómez, Conrado Galindo Sariol, José Manuel Rodríguez Castelló, Cristian Ernesto Acosta Guevara, and Roberto Azcorra Consuegra.
At least one of those named, Sánchez González, appeared on a list the Cuban regime published in 2023 of alleged “terrorists.”
“Amijaíl Sánchez González also lives in Florida. Among other things, from social networks he offers financing for terrorist actions in national territory,” the regime claimed at the time. “When he was in Cuba, he was prosecuted for illegal possession and carrying of firearms, theft and illegal slaughter of livestock, injuries, illegal economic activity and reckless homicide.”
The vast majority of the individuals named on that “terror” list, however, were individuals known for legitimate human rights advocacy in the United States, including Breitbart News contributor Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat and several popular Youtube commentators from Miami.
The Castro regime has massacred civilians at sea, including outside of Cuban waters, on multiple occasions. The incident this week occurred the day after the 30th anniversary of the Brothers to the Rescue massacre, which resulted in the deaths of Americans Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre, Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales over international waters. Brothers to the Rescue was a humanitarian aid organization that flew missions seeking to save the lives of wayward refugees attempting to raft into the United States. The Castro regime shot the four men down over international waters as they sought to rescue Cuban refugees in 1996. The Communist Party has never faced any criminal or international repercussions for killing the Americans.
In another harrowing incident, the Castro regime drowned 37 refugees, including children as young as six months old, on the 13 of March tugboat in 1994, who were attempting to flee to the United States.
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