HUDSON COUNTY — U. S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) was critical of the Obama Administration’s removal of Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
“This dangerous and misguided policy is resulting in the U.S. conceding on bedrock values, while Cuba is only more intransigent and uncompromising in its disrespect for universal values and freedoms,” Menendez said. “This approach of the U.S. giving and Cuba taking simply rewards the regime for decades of repression. The Castro regime is feeling vindicated for fifty years of brutality, making this announcement a further misstep in a profoundly flawed policy.”
Menendez said the Castro regime has not shown “one iota of change in its actions” that earned it a spot on the State Sponsor of Terrorism list. Cuba still provides sanctuary to Joanne Chesimard who remains on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorism List for the murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster, it recently was caught sending arms to North Korea in the single largest violation of United Nations Security Council sanctions, and also received a shipment from a Chinese arms manufacturer that was seemingly headed for Colombia’s terrorist organization FARC. Yet today Cuba was somehow delisted from this dishonorable list of State Sponsors of Terrorism.
“To this day, we have not seen one substantial step toward transparent democratic elections, improved human rights, freedom of assembly, or the ability to form independent political parties and trade unions on the island,” Menendez added. “It is terribly disconcerting that the list of unilateral concessions by the Obama Administration continues to grow without any signs of reciprocity from a despotic and reinvigorated Castro regime. At the end of the day, decisions like this are doing nothing but depriving the Cuban people the liberties and freedoms they seek and deserve.”
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