A customer picks a pendant of Cuban revolutionary leader Che Guevara (C) among other pendants of Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah (L-R), Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri and Lebanon's assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, at a gift shop in the port city of Sidon, southern Lebanon, January 19, 2011. (Reuters photo)
HAVANA - The Italian daily Corriere della Sera is reporting that Hezbollah is setting up a base of operations in Cuba in order to extend its ability to reach Israeli targets in Latin America, ostensibly to avenge the death of terrorist mastermind Imad Mugniyah.
Mugniyah, a Lebanese-born Hezbollah terrorist leader, was killed in February 2008 by a car bomb. Though it has not been proven who was responsible, it has been reported that several Arab states aided the Israeli Mossad in carrying out the killing.
Mugniyah was believed to have been involved in planning the 1983 Beirut bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks, as well as two attacks on a Jewish synagogue and a community center in Argentina in 1992 and 1994.
The U.S. State Department said upon his death: "The world is a better place without this man in it. He was a coldblooded killer, a mass murderer and a terrorist responsible for countless innocent lives lost. One way or another he was brought to justice."
According to the Tel Aviv daily Yedioth Ahronoth, three members of Hezbollah have already arrived in Cuba to set up the cell, which will allegedly “include 23 operatives, hand-picked by Talal Hamia, a senior member tasked with heading the covert operation.”
The information about the terrorist cell is quite detailed, and includes information that would normally be contained in a high-level intelligence brief. The clandestine terror operation is reportedly called "The Caribbean Case," and is said to operate on a budget of $1.5 million. The report also detailed that the base in Cuba would be used initially for logistics, intelligence collection and document and id forgery - a scenario given more credence since Cuba took over the agencies that issue identification and immigration documents in Venezuela.
It has long been speculated that there was a strong connection between the Castro regime and Hezbollah terrorists. In July of 2008, Samir Qantar, a Lebanese terrorist that was serving a life sentence for murdering a Jewish family, a crime that included smashing the skull of a 4-year-old female child with a rifle butt, made his first private visit after being freed in a prisoner swap to the Cuban Embassy in Beirut.
Upon his release, Qantar told Maria Isabel Velasquez, Cuba’s top diplomat in Beirut, "I am at the disposition of the Cuban government for any work to liberate the five Cuban prisoners being held by the United States."
A week later, the Cuban Embassy in Lebanon congratulated the terrorist, saying, "We appreciate his struggle for the release of our five compatriots," and Velásquez also noted that the five Cuban spies imprisoned in the U.S. had also campaigned for Qantar’s release. Velásquez added, "We believe Samir Qantar to be a fighter in the Arab cause to put an end to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and Lebanon."
Cuba has been a center of terrorist operations and training since shortly after Fidel Castro usurped the sitting government in 1959. Reuters reported as early as May 30, 1978, that Palestinian terrorists of the PLO had been trained in Cuba, and on September 13, 1978, the Egyptian daily Ahar Sa'ah reported that as many as 500 Palestinians were on their way to Cuba to receive terrorist training.
The Subcommittee on Counterterrorism in the U.S. House of Representatives held hearings in July, entitled “Hezbollah in Latin America - Implications for U.S. Homeland Security,” which detailed the terror group’s ties to left-wing regimes in the region. And the U.S. Military’s Southern Command reported recently on the terror group’s activities on Venezuela’s Margarita Island, where Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists are alleged to have held planning meetings, as well as a number of money laundering operations.
