Originally published in Spanish on April 21, 2026. Read the original Spanish-language analysis.
Opinion and analysis | Ernesto García
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in Hannover on April 20, 2026, that he sees no Cuba threat to other countries. That assessment conflicts with allegations by former Medellín cartel leader Carlos Lehder, criticism from former Colombian President Iván Duque and the national-security concerns U.S. officials have raised about Havana.
Merz spoke at a news conference with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva after German-Brazilian government consultations. Asked about a possible U.S. attack on the island, he said that, despite the country’s domestic problems under its communist regime, Cuba posed “no discernible danger whatsoever to third states outside Cuba,” according to the German government’s official transcript, translated here from German.
The record discussed here spans decades: sheltering fugitives, supporting armed groups and working with authoritarian governments in Latin America. In the author’s assessment, that history makes a benign reading of the Cuban regime difficult to defend.
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What Merz said about the Cuba threat
The chancellor did not defend Havana’s government. He acknowledged the problems Cuba has at home with its communist regime and pointed to freedom of movement, open borders and human rights as areas where there are problems or a desire for change. His advice was to pursue that change by diplomatic and peaceful means.
He added that being able to defend oneself does not mean “having the right to intervene militarily in other states” because their political systems are disliked, and said he saw no reason at present for Washington to begin such an action.
This analysis does not argue over the remedy. It takes issue with the premise: that no Cuba threat reaches beyond the island’s borders.
Carlos Lehder’s allegations against Raúl Castro
Lehder, a co-founder of the Medellín cartel, reiterated in 2025 that Raúl Castro had personally authorized cocaine shipments toward the United States through Cuba. He spoke after returning to Colombia following more than three decades in U.S. prison.
In statements to Martí Noticias and his book Vida y muerte del cartel de Medellín, Lehder alleged that Cuban officials invited him to establish a trafficking route, that he supplied an aircraft to the then-minister of the armed forces and that he coordinated operations with Fidel Castro’s younger brother during the 1980s. He had also made allegations in the 1991 trial of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.
Read the original coverage of Lehder’s allegations.
Iván Duque on Havana’s support for Colombian armed groups
At the Freedom and Democratic Renewal in Latin America forum, hosted by the National Endowment for Democracy on April 13, 2026, Duque accused the Castro regime of destroying freedoms and backing the FARC, ELN and M-19.
He recalled the ELN bombing at Bogotá’s General Santander police academy in January 2019. The original account gives a toll of 23 deaths. Havana protected ELN leaders despite Colombia’s extradition requests, a dispute Colombia took to the United Nations in September of that year.
The attack took place on January 17, 2019. Duque, then president, ended peace talks with the ELN and asked Cuba to hand over the guerrilla negotiators who were in Havana for those talks. Cuba refused, citing the protocols agreed for the negotiations. When Washington returned Cuba to its terrorism list in January 2021, the State Department cited that refusal among its reasons.
Read the report on Duque’s criticism.
Cuban intervention in Angola, Nicaragua and Venezuela
The regime’s overseas involvement extended beyond irregular groups. The original analysis cites international accounts of as many as 36,000 Cuban personnel in Africa during the 1980s, including roughly 23,000 in Angola under Operation Carlota, and military assistance to Nicaragua’s Sandinista government between 1979 and 1990.
In Venezuela, Cuban intelligence officers have been accused of helping reorganize military counterintelligence for more than two decades. Opposition leader María Corina Machado has argued that this assistance helped sustain Nicolás Maduro’s regime against internal pressure.
The alleged Cuba–Venezuela network
The Spanish article refers to a March 2026 DEA report concerning alleged financial, military and trafficking links among Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Hezbollah and the organization known as the Cartel de los Soles.
It attributes to that account allegations that Cuban intelligence officials operated in Caracas to facilitate movements of cocaine, arms and militant personnel into the Western Hemisphere. The article’s link leads to a DEA search for Cuba; the specific report is not identified there. These claims should therefore be read as attributed allegations, rather than findings independently verified by this English translation.
Why the Cuba threat matters to victims
Merz’s words are especially painful for families that fled political violence and repression. Exile leaders in Miami and Madrid argue that minimizing Havana’s role also minimizes the suffering of victims of attacks such as the 2019 Bogotá bombing and the 1996 shootdown of Brothers to the Rescue aircraft, for which U.S. federal proceedings attributed responsibility to Cuban orders. Four men died when Cuban fighter jets shot down two of the group’s civilian planes on February 24, 1996.
The concern is not abstract. It connects the regime’s treatment of Cubans with its alliances and operations beyond the island.
Cuba and the state sponsor of terrorism designation
The second Trump administration restored Cuba’s state sponsor of terrorism designation in January 2025. The original analysis cites successive accounts of fugitives protected by Havana, including people associated with U.S. militant organizations, ETA and Colombian armed groups.
The State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism shows Cuba alongside North Korea and Iran, with a designation date of January 12, 2021. Cuba was first placed on the list in 1982 and removed in 2015 under President Barack Obama. The Biden administration announced Cuba’s removal on January 14, 2025. President Donald Trump reversed that decision six days later, on his first day back in office.
While Berlin offered a comparatively benign assessment of the Cuba threat, the author argues that documentary, testimonial and judicial records point in the opposite direction. In the view of the hemispheric authorities and security analysts cited here, Havana has exported instability toward the United States, Latin America and beyond.
