Four Miami men have been arrested in Cuba for allegedly trying to carry out terrorist acts in the Communist country, Cuban state media reported late Tuesday.
The four men were arrested on April 26 on charges of planned terrorist actions, according to an article on CafeFuerte.com, a Spanish language website that obtained the state media release.
The men are accused of intending to attack military installations, and three of them had made several trips to the island since 2013 to "study" their targets, the article reported.
"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.
Three other men are accused of organizing the plans from Miami, 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 Wednesday 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."
Officials said they are making arrangements with U.S. authorities to investigate the incident.
An official at the U.S. Interests Section, which Washington maintains in Cuba 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.
