Cuba : News
News : Cuba : News
US drops charges against Saudi in Sept. 11 attacksThe Pentagon has dropped charges against a Saudi at Guantanamo who was alleged to have been the so-called "20th hijacker" in the Sept. via Contra Costa Times
(Topix.net)Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding reaffirms close ties with Cuba
"So far, all Cuba has done is replace one dictator with another. And its former ruler is still influencing events from behind the scenes."
Signatures and signals. These words best describe the recently concluded Bruce Golding-led trip to Caribbean neighbour, Cuba. via Cuba Journal
(Topix.net)Gitmo attorneys say feds tap conversations
"I think they are listening to my telephone calls all the time."
Lawyers for several Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prisoners said they believe their confidential conversations have been monitored by U.S. government agencies. via Daily India
(Topix.net)Prized Wetland in Danger
"Last year we held three workshops with the participation of community members and representatives of different economic and social sectors. That way we could design a project with the main problems and the possible actions we should develop"
By Patricia Grogg* CIENAGA DE ZAPATA, Cuba - If the worst outcomes predicted for climate change in Cuba become reality, a large portion of the Cienaga de Zapata, the largest and best preserved wetland in the ... via Inside Costa Rica
(Topix.net)Gitmo Detainee Seeks MI5 Information
"I cannot pretend that the U.S. military commissions are fair, but how can we possibly hope to help Mr. Mohamed if his own government leaves him to his fate?"
A detainee at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, says the British intelligence agency MI5 may have information that could help him avoid a U.S. tribunal. via The Post Chronicle
(Topix.net)Chicago Indymedia: The Shortwave Report
A weekly 30 minute review of news and opinion, recorded from a shortwave radio. With times and freqs for listening at home. via Chicago.indymedia.org
(Topix.net)Military judge rules against key Guantanamo figure: paper
"National attention focused on this dispute has seriously called into question the legal adviser's ability to continue to perform his duties in a neutral and objective manner"
A U.S. military judge has disqualified a Pentagon general who has been a key figure in Guantanamo war crimes tribunals from playing any role in the first case headed for trial, The New York Times reported on ... via WNED.org
(Topix.net)Cuban rolls cigar said to be world's longest
"It's an honor for Cuba and I feel satisfied to do it for Cuba"
With music, dancing and rum, Cubans celebrated on Friday the likely return of a record they consider rightfully theirs -- the world's longest cigar. via XtraMSN Real Estate
(Topix.net)Guantanamo detainees spead word to boycott trials
"Many of them are advising him, 'Don't trust the Americans, don't trust the attorney, don't tell them anything, don't cooperate, boycott,'"
The message travels among Guantanamo detainees in whispers between recreation areas and shouts through slots in cell doors: Don't trust the Americans. via The South Mississippi Sun Herald
(Topix.net)Document: Fugitive US financier Robert Vesco died
"Is it right to harass a man like that?"
Robert Vesco, the American fugitive who cooked up moneymaking schemes that allegedly involved everyone from Colombian drug lords to the families of U.S. presidents, died in Cuba and was buried almost six months ... via Free Republic
(Topix.net)U.S. said to shift plans for top brass in Pakistan
Reuters Friday, May 9, 2008; 1:16 AM WASHINGTON - The U.S. military has dropped plans to assign the former commander of the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba , to Pakistan , after sharp criticism of his ... via The Washington Post
(Topix.net)U.S. program to help dissidents from Cuba undergoes overhaul
"We think it presents an opportunity for real, profound change in Cuba."
The Bush administration is overhauling a controversial democracy-promotion program for Cuba in hopes of tightening financial controls and broadening the effort beyond the anti-Castro groups in Florida that have ... via South Florida Sun-Sentinel
(Topix.net)Recent suicide bomber was ex-Gitmo inmate
"Whoever can join them and execute a suicide operation, let him do so. By God, it will be a mortal blow"
A former prisoner who complained of mistreatment at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was involved in a suicide bombing last month in Iraq, U.S. military officials said. via Political Gateway
(Topix.net)U.S. military judge threatens to suspend Khadr trial over evidence issues
A U.S. military judge is threatening to suspend the trial of Canadian Omar Khadr unless the government provides defence lawyers with day-to-day records of his confinement. via Canoe
(Topix.net)Guantanamo man says UK knew he would be tortured
"What possible moral position can the British government take that gives them the right to deny this sort of assistance to a person who's had a razor blade taken to his genitals?"
British intelligence knew in advance that a former London janitor now awaiting trial by a U.S. military commission in Guantanamo Bay would be tortured in an Arab country to extract evidence, his lawyers allege. via Reuters
(Topix.net)Technical flaws mar hearing in new Guantanamo court
"I am renewing my allegiance to Sheikh Osama bin Laden"
Osama bin Laden's suspected "media director" rejected U.S. terrorism court proceedings and renewed his allegiance to the al Qaeda leader on Wednesday in a hearing marred by technical flaws in a new Guantanamo ... via Reuters
(Topix.net)President Bush Criticizes New Cuban Leadership
"He is one of the few presidents worrying about Cuba's problems."
President Bush said Wednesday that Cuba's post-Fidel Castro leadership has made only "empty gestures at reform" and rejected calls for easing of U.S. restrictions on the communist island.
"Until there is a change of heart and a change of compassion and a change of how the Cuban government treats its people, there's no change at all," Bush said at the State Department to the Council of Americas, a business group that advocates for democracy and open markets in the Western Hemisphere. "Cuba will not be a land of liberty so long as free expression is punished and free speech can take place only in hushed whispers and silent prayers. And Cuba will not become a place of prosperity just by easing restrictions on the sale of products that the average Cuban cannot afford." Read more
(Topix.net)Ex-detainees returning to fight
"May God have mercy on you Abdullah al-Ajmi. I send you a warm greeting O you martyr, O you hero, O you, a man in a time where only few men are left."
A Kuwaiti man released from U.S. custody at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in 2005 blew himself up in a suicide attack in Iraq last month, Pentagon officials said Wednesday. via CNN
(Topix.net)Blogger critical of Cuba to receive Spanish prize
"For that powerful institution, I am still an infant who is not told that it is going to be given an injection"
A Cuban blogger who uses cyberspace to voice sharp criticism of the Havana government will receive a prestigious Spanish journalism award Wednesday. via CNN
(Topix.net)Guantanamo inmates on hunger strike
Detainees at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba have begun a new hunger strike. via Toronto News.Net
(Topix.net)Cubans buy first computers in latest change
"We don't have Internet. We don't have a telephone"
By Jeff Franks
HAVANA (Reuters) - The future arrived at Pedro Fresnedo's home on Friday, and it gave him goosebumps.
He held out his arm to show visitors the bumps rising from his skin after his 13-year-old daughter Amanda turned on the computer they had just purchased on the first day Cubans could buy them.
"This is the world for the young," the smiling Fresnedo said. "This the development of the world."
Cuba began selling computers to private citizens on Friday as part of reforms by new leader Raul Castro since he was elected president by the National Assembly in February, replacing his ailing elder brother Fidel Castro. Read more
(Topix.net)2-May-08 - Pope Prods Cuba on Religious Freedom
"It is my hope that the Church in Cuba, in keeping with her legitimate aspirations, may enjoy normal access to the social communications media."
Pope Benedict XVI called for greater freedom for the Church in Cuba, during a May 2 meeting with the bishops of that country. via Global Catholic Network EWTN
(Topix.net)'Sexy' terror cases pushed
"Mr Hamdan cannot be tried in a system where politicians hold the final say over who is charged and what the charges will be"
A PENTAGON legal adviser accused of improperly influencing Guantanamo Bay prosecutions dictated which cases would be tried, based on the possibility that they would pique US public interest. via The Age
(Topix.net)U.S. mulls Guantanamo closure as Bush term nears end
"Everyone is agreed that we need to find a way that eventually leads to the closure of Guantanamo, which is the president's policy decision. It is a very complicated matter"
The Bush administration could announce plans by the end of its term in January to close Guantanamo prison and an upcoming Supreme Court ruling might be the impetus for this, senior U.S. officials and experts ... via Reuters
(Topix.net)Cuba on tightrope of reforms
"Some Cuban insiders already think that the type of economic discussions favored by Raul Castro have gone too far and that some of the economic reforms debated have political dimensions"
In a campaign that bears much similarity to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's 1980s appeal for glasnost, Cuban President Raul Castro has been urging the public to investigate social shortcomings, denounce them ... via Detroit News
(Topix.net)The Shortwave Report Listen Globally
A weekly 30 minute review of news and opinion, recorded from a shortwave radio. With times and freqs for listening at home. via Seattle Indymedia Center
(Topix.net)Report: Al Jazeera cameraman freed from Guantanamo
"We are in a state of high expectation and we are overwhelmed with joy"
Wadah Khanfar, managing director of Al-Jazeera Arabic, confirmed al-Haj was on a plane heading to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, after being released from the U.S. detention center in Cuba earlier on Thursday. via SF Gate
(Topix.net)World's workers flock to streets on May Day
"Everyone in Germany can and should use their right to demonstrate"
BERLIN - Thousands of marchers gathered in Hamburg on May Day to call for more workers's rights, while protesters in Turkey were met with police batons and water cannon. via Detroit Free Press
(Topix.net)Cuba labor leader calls for more efficiency, harder work
The head of communist Cuba's powerful labor union called for more efficiency and harder work in the face of rising world fuel and food prices as hundreds of thousands of workers joined the traditional May Day march on Thursday.
The secretary-general of the Cuban Workers Confederation, Salvador Valdes Mesa, also exhorted workers massed in Havana's broad Revolution Plaza to adhere to the principles of ailing ex-president Fidel Castro, the founder of the island's 50-year-old revolution.
'We Cubans have great challenges before us,' Valdes told the crowd, saying workers needed to rout out 'inefficiencies and weaknesses' in the workplace. Read more
(Topix.net)Amnesty International chief calls for renewed focus on human rights
The leader of Amnesty International said in a talk Wednesday that the United States has taken too narrow a view of how to fight terrorism and said she hopes the next president can be more effective in ... via PR-inside.com
(Topix.net)Khadr's child soldier defence tossed out
"I think if the Canadian government does not act soon, Omar is going to be convicted of a murder that he very likely did not commit and face a life sentence in a matter of months."
A U.S. military judge has dismissed the argument that Omar Khadr -- 15 at the time he allegedly threw a hand grenade that killed a U.S. serviceman -- should be spared a war crimes prosecution on grounds he was ... via Canada.com
(Topix.net)