The US reported today that 19 tourists from the country in Cuba have reported since September the same symptoms as officials who were victims of alleged attacks on the island between November 2016 and August 2017.
“Since September 29, 19 US citizens have reported having symptoms similar to those listed in the travel alert we issued that day with the request not to visit the island,” a spokeswoman for the State Department told Efe.
This news comes at a very complicated time in the relationship between Cuba and the United States, because the government of Donald Trump accuses Havana of knowing who perpetrated between November 2016 and August 2017 alleged attacks on 24 of its officials on the island and Do not tell them, besides not having adequately protected them.
For months, Washington called those attacks “sonic”, but in a hearing in the Senate on January 9, the State Department admitted for the first time that it is not certain that it was acoustic aggression.
The foreign spokeswoman explained today that the State Department “is not in a position to evaluate medically or provide individual medical advice, but we encourage those who are concerned to report it and seek medical attention.”
For reasons of “privacy”, the US government will not disclose where these allegedly symptomatic tourists could have suffered, nor which cities they visited.
Although Cuba has not found evidence of these attacks and denies knowing anything about it, the United States left its embassy in Havana at minimums last September because of this crisis, and expelled 17 officials from the Cuban legation from Washington.
The news of these alleged new attacks comes precisely in a day in which a score of US companies linked to the tourism sector defended in Havana that Cuba is a safe destination to which the citizens of that country can still travel legally , facing the “confusion”, they said, created by the new Trump measures.
The United States changed its travel alert system earlier this month and withdrew the recommendation not to go to Cuba issued last September, after the departure of its non-essential personnel from the embassy for alleged attacks.
The State Department left Cuba out of the category “do not travel” and placed it in category 3, which includes the countries recommended to “reconsider the trip” and in which next to the island are Venezuela, Haiti , Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.
However, a senior government official then said in a press telephone call that “the assessment of the situation on the island has not changed.”
