HAVANA.- Ten Panamanians were arrested on Saturday in Cuba and are accused of being “authors of propaganda acts” against the government, the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) reported this Monday, in a statement distributed to the official media.
The arrest of Panamanians It occurred three days after the Cuban coast guard intercepted on Wednesday, February 25, a boat coming from the United States with ten armed people on board. And of them, four were shot down by the islanders and a Cuban coast guard was killed.
This incident occurs at a time of great tension between the United States and Cuba, after Washington blocked the entry of oil to the island and pressured Havana to start negotiations.
The detained Panamanians entered Cuba “with the purpose of making signs with subversive content contrary to the constitutional order,” the MININT said in a statement broadcast on Cuban television.
The graffiti contained phrases such as “Down with tyranny”, “Communism: enemy of the community” and “We trust Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Mike Hammer”, referring, respectively, to the president of the United States, his secretary of state and his ambassador on the island.
All the graffiti were dated with the day they were made, February 28, and had the initials CDPC below. The independent NGO Cuban Prisons Documentation Center (CDPC) denied any relationship with this action.
The ministry stressed that those involved “acknowledged being the authors of the events” that took place in Havana on Saturday morning.
According to the investigations, which are still continuing by the MINIT, “once the objective was met, they had to leave the country and upon their return to Panama, they would receive a sum of money that, according to their first statements, ranged between 1,000 and 1,500 dollars for each one.”
