Cuban intelligence agents assisted members of the Basque group ETA
wanted for terrorist attacks in Spain as recently as 1995, according to
computer files seized in an ETA hideout in France.
Havana may even have allowed ETA commandos to leave the island, stage attacks
in Spain and then return to the safety of Cuba, say French and Spanish police
officials quoted in the Spanish media.
The captured files indicate that eight to 10 ETA members sought refuge in
Cuba after Madrid tried to extradite them on terrorism charges from other
Latin American countries where they had been living.
One top Interior Ministry official said the cold relations between Spain and
Cuba since President Fidel Castro vetoed Madrid's ambassador to Havana last
year have complicated Spanish efforts to pursue ETA fugitives who seek refuge
on the island.
``We are not in a position to apply the same type of diplomatic influence on
Cuba as in the other countries,'' said the official, who spoke on condition
of anonymity.
As the media reports began surfacing last month, Cuban Foreign Ministry
spokesman Alejandro Gonzalez told reporters in Havana that the reports
``lacked all foundation and do not merit our consideration at all.''
ETA, the Basque-language acronym for Basque Homeland and Liberty, has long
waged a bloody terror campaign for independence from Madrid. Every year, its
commandos kill a few dozen people in assassinations and car bombs.
Files found in a computer in the house of two ETA members arrested by French
police during the summer revealed a string of contacts between ETA members
and Cuban intelligence officials on the island from 1992 to as late as 1995.
`Delegation' in Havana
ETA established a semiofficial ``delegation'' in Havana after discussions in
1992 between its representative, Jose Ramon Antuxia Celaya, and two Cubans
identified as Esteban Rivero and Denys Guzman, the files showed.
Cuba's Communist Party considers its relations with ETA to be ``fraternal,
sustained, strategic and increasingly deep,'' according to ETA computer files
published in the Spanish and French media.
The files indicate that two Cuban intelligence colonels and several Communist
Party officials in 1993 offered to help six leading ETA members escape from
the Dominican Republic, where they were awaiting court hearings on a Spanish
extradition request.
Two of the ETA members managed to slip their Dominican watchers and reach the
safety of Cuba, although it is not clear whether they did so with Cuban
intelligence assistance.
ETA's computer files also indicated that Cuban intelligence officers asked
ETA members in April 1993 to gather information on European border controls
so that Cuba could help the Basques with their operations.
At least one ETA member caught crossing the French-Spanish border last year
had ``rested'' in Cuba before returning to operate in Europe, according to
the computer files.
Cuba's help was not entirely enthusiastic because Havana feared angering its
allies in the Socialist government of then-Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez.
`A complicated matter'
``For Cuba, this is a complicated matter. They want to help us but need to
carefully assess the situation for it to come out well,'' wrote arrested ETA
leader Jose Maria Dorronsoro in one of the computer files.
ETA's presence in Cuba goes back, at least publicly, to March 2, 1984, when
Gonzalez and Castro negotiated an agreement under which seven ETA members
then living in Panama would move to Cuba.
The deal: The ETA members would abandon all political activity and the
Spanish government would not try to extradite them to face terrorism charges.
Later arrivals brought the number of ``legitimate'' ETA members in Cuba to
15. They are forbidden to leave the island but live comfortably and some run
small import-export firms, the Mexican magazine Proceso reported recently.
Under Castro, Cuba has welcomed Marxist groups from Latin America, Europe,
Africa and Asia, although its training of foreign guerrillas appears to have
dropped off in recent years.
The eight to 10 ETA members in Cuba now worrying Spanish authorities are
fugitives who sought refuge there after Madrid launched a campaign to
extradite them from other Latin American countries.
An estimated 30 ETA fugitives remain in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and
Mexico.
Evidence on the new ETA members in Cuba came from the computer files recently
presented before Laurence Lever, a Paris judge investigating international
terrorism cases. Reports on the files' contents have been confirmed by the
Spanish Interior Ministry.
Although ETA's relations with Cuba were believed to have cooled at the
beginning of the 1990s, the most recent revelations appear to show the
contrary.
The recorded contacts between ETA and Cuban intelligence coincide with a
period in which the Basque group was under serious pressure as a result of
upgraded international intelligence cooperation.
Group strikes back
More than a dozen top ETA leaders were arrested in a French border town and
much of the group's infrastructure was dismantled in 1992 after U.S. and
Spanish officials cooperated in tracking stolen weapons to an ETA hideout.
ETA lashed back a year later with a series of kidnappings and assassinations
that culminated in a 1995 car bombing against Prime Minister Jose Maria
Aznar, then head of the opposition conservative Popular Party.
ETA's presence in Latin America has been evident since the early 1980s, when
several members arrived in Nicaragua to help the Marxist-led Sandinista Front
guerrillas who seized power in 1979.
An unknown number of ETA members wound up working for Sandinista state
security under the chief Cuban intelligence adviser to the Sandinistas, a
secretive man who used the name of Renan Montero.
Montero arranged military training for some of the ETA members in Cuba and
put them in touch with Salvadoran and other leftist guerrillas in Latin
America, arrested ETA members have testified.
Copyright © 1997 The Miami Herald
