HAVANA (AP) — Senior officials in Cuba’s Interior Ministry revealed for the first time Friday night the items they said were on board a Speedboat with Florida flag who opened fire on troops in waters off the island’s northern coast this week, and soldiers returned fire and killed four suspects.
The officials also revealed to The Associated Press that authorities were able to establish that the 10 Cuban suspects left the U.S. on two boats, but one failed, so they transferred all supplies to the remaining one and left the other adrift.
The government said the detained suspects revealed those details and emphasized that immediately contacted the US Coast Guard..
Among the items Cuban officials said were aboard the ship: a dozen high-powered weapons, including one with a telescopic sight; a large cooler filled with more than 12,800 pieces of ammunition; 11 guns; sturdy boots, helmets with cameras; and camouflage backpacks.
“We were able to clearly assess that we were facing a terrorist action from a ship coming from the United States,” First Colonel Ivey Daniel Carballo, of the Cuban Border Guard troops, told the AP.
According to Carballo, the 30-foot (nine-meter) border patrol vessel detected an intruder Wednesday morning and approached to within about 600 feet (185 meters) to investigate, but was met with high-caliber gunfire.
He said three of the attackers were killed immediately and a fourth was wounded and later died.
Caraballo said the speedboat was located about a mile (1.6 kilometers) northeast of Cayo Falcones, off the island’s northern coast. The border guard commander was wounded, he added.
Víctor Eduardo Álvarez Valle, one of the heads of State Security Criminal Investigation at the Ministry of the Interior, told AP that authorities were surprised by the resistance they encountered.
“We didn’t expect it, especially with so many people and weapons,” he said.
“The military equipment found on board has been identified by the assailants, where and how they acquired it, the training they received and they also revealed who financed it,” Álvarez added.
He noted that officials detected 13 bullet holes in the border guard boat and another 21 in the suspect’s boat, “which means there was combat.”
The Cuban government had reported on Wednesday that one person had been captured on land, but Álvarez said that so far there is no information that the suspects had any support network on the island.
The chief prosecutor of the Cuban Attorney General’s Office, Edward Robert Campbell, told the AP that the six detainees, all of Cuban origin, could face terrorism charges, which carry a possible sentence of 30 years in prison, life in prison or even the death penalty, although the latter has been in moratorium for more than a decade.
The Associated Press had access to Cuban military officials and showed the items displayed at the headquarters of the former Cuban Institute of Radio and Television before a program that showed them to the public for the first time.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that it was not a United States government operation and that the american government he was collecting his own information.