The State Department has sanctioned Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, along with four other individuals and five entities within the island nation’s communist government.
The sanctions are “part of the Trump Administration’s comprehensive push to end the Cuban regime’s decades-long campaign of political, ideological, and institutional warfare against the United States and to hold accountable those who sustain its operations and profit from the Cuban people’s oppression,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement on Thursday.
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“The Cuban regime continues to demonstrate that it prioritizes the exportation of radical left-wing violence through its malign influence networks and the enrichment of the regime over the well-being of the Cuban people,” the spokesperson added.
The department warned that any foreign banks and companies providing services to the designated parties “are at risk of sanctions and should freeze those activities.”
The move is the latest instance of the Trump administration ramping up pressure on Cuba’s leadership.
Last month, the Department of Justice brought an indictment against former Cuban President Raul Castro and five others concerning their involvement in shooting down two U.S. planes operated by a Cuban exile group in 1996. Four Americans were killed in the attack.
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The State Department is coordinating with the Treasury Department‘s Office of Foreign Assets Control on the sanctions.
Among the newly sanctioned parties are the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba, the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, and Cuban military official Alejandro Castro Espin.
