Four Cuban exile residents of Miami were detained on the island and accused of planning "terrorist actions," Havana authorities said today.
In a statement published by Communist Party newspaper Granma, the Interior Ministry said the men were arrested April 26 and alleged their targets were military.
"They intended to attack military installations with the objective of furthering violent actions," the statement said. "To such ends, since mid-2013, three of them had made several trips to the island to study and carry out their plan."
The statement named the detained men as Jose Ortega Amador, Obdulio Rodriguez Gonzalez, Raibel Pacheco Santos and Felix Monzon Alvarez.
It alleged that they were operating under the direction of others in Florida, named as Santiago Alvarez Fernandez Magrina, Osvaldo Mitat and Manuel Alzugaray. It linked them to exile militant Luis Posada Carriles, who Cuba and Venezuela have sought to prosecute in a 1976 airliner bombing that killed 73 people aboard a flight bound for Cuba.
Contacted early today in Florida, Alvarez denied involvement in any alleged plot and said he did not know the detained men. He accused Havana of trying to create an excuse to crack down further on island dissidents.
"These are nothing but lies by the Cuban regime," he said. "This is the Cuban government planting something sinister using my name to scare Cubans on the island." Cuba's Interior Ministry said it was reaching out to US authorities to investigate.
An official at the US Interests Section in Havana, which Washington maintains instead of an embassy because the two countries do not have diplomatic relations, had no immediate comment.
Cuban officials did not immediately respond to a request for further details about the alleged plot.
