Cuba Blames CIA, Britain for Shooting

Cuba today accused British and American intelligence services of indirect responsibility for a shooting incident that prompted Britain to expel the Cuban ambassador and one of his attaches.

Ambassador Oscar Fernandez-Mell and commercial attache Manuel Medina Perez were ordered to leave today after Medina was accused of firing shots Monday at a group of people outside his home in central London.

The Cuban official daily newspaper Granma, in a front-page article headlined “What Really Happened,” denounced “the disgraceful complicity between the CIA and the English intelligence service against the Cuban Embassy in London.”

It said Medina, on leaving his home Monday afternoon, was approached by “the deserter and traitor” Florentino Azpillaga Lombard, who defected to the West in June, 1987, when serving as a diplomat in Prague.

Granma said Azpillaga, who was accompanied by three men and a woman, urged Medina “in a threatening manner” to defect too.

“Comrade Medina’s reply was to draw his weapon and fire at the traitor.”

Witnesses in London said the attache fired up to five shots when a car with four people pulled up in front of his house. The group ran off, one man holding a blood-soaked handkerchief to his head.

Cuba’s Foreign Ministry considers the expulsion order “arbitrary and unfair” and sees it as a “smoke screen to hide the shameful cooperation between the CIA and the English intelligence service in this disgraceful episode,” Granma added.

According to the Cuban Embassy’s information, Granma said, it was impossible for a man like Azpillaga, who it said now operates under the control of the CIA, to travel to Britain and carry out such action without the British intelligence service and authorities having prior knowledge of it.