Thank you Secretary Rubio for including Cuba on the "not-cooperating with the U.S. on counterterrorism" list.
For decades, murderous, convicted terrorist fugitives have lived under safe haven in Cuba insulated from American justice and immune from the consequences of their heinous crimes against Americans. Now after all these years, many false starts and even terrible politically driven presidential clemencies, victims’ families, law enforcement and the new Trump administration are on the verge of securing these terrorists' return to American prison.
The Frank Connor and Trooper Werner Foerster Justice Act, which calls for the immediate extradition or return to the United States of convicted felons Joanne Chesimard, William “Guillermo” Morales, and all other fugitives who are receiving safe haven in Cuba was introduced into the Senate in 2024 by then senator and current Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The Act was reintroduced in early 2025 by previous co-sponsor Senator Rick Scott. In 2024, similar legislation, The Walter Patterson and Werner Foerster Justice and Extradition Act, was introduced by Congressman Chris Smith in the House.
On May 2, on the 52nd anniversary of Trooper Foerster’s murder by Black Liberation Army member Joanne Chesimard on the New Jersey Turnpike, Secretary Rubio said in a statement, "The Cuban regime continues to provide safe haven for terrorists and criminals, including fugitives from the United States. The brutal killing of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster will never be forgotten, and we will never stop fighting for justice."
Added Senator Rick Scott, "It's disgusting that some killer like this would be just roaming the streets in Cuba. It makes you mad that Cuba harbors these terrorists and these fugitives… They're clearly a state sponsor of terrorism. Trump did the right thing by putting them back on."
Along with harboring Chesimard (aka Assata Shakur) the horrendous murderer of heroic State Trooper Foerster, Cuba sponsors convicted fugitive terrorist William Morales and others.
Our father, 33-year-old Frank Connor, and three other innocent men were murdered, and scores were injured and maimed, when the Marxist Puerto Rican terrorist group Armed Forces for National Liberation (“FALN”) bombed New York's historic Fraunces Tavern during a crowded lunchtime on January 24, 1975. The FALN appointed themselves my father and the other men’s judge, jury, and executioner. Our mother planned to celebrate my brother’s recent 11th and my 9th birthday that very night. But our family survived. We stuck together depending on our faith, our love for our father and for each other.
FALN communique # 3 found near the Fraunces bombing read, “We FALN…take full responsibility for the especially detornated (sic) bomb that exploded today at Fraunces Tavern with reactionary corporate executives inside…” Frank Connor was a first-generation American husband, son, and father from working class Washington Heights New York City neighborhood; hardly a reactionary corporate executive. Dad graduated from college at night when we were kids.
Fraunces Tavern was targeted by Morales, Oscar Lopez Rivera and the rest of the FALN for its Wall Street location and reputation as the birthplace of American liberty. Alexander Hamilton and the Sons of Liberty met there. General Washington bade farewell to his officers at Fraunces after the Revolutionary War.
Between 1974 and 1983, the FALN claimed responsibility for over 130 bombings in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Though never prosecuted specifically for the Fraunces bombing, the unrepentant terrorists served only 18 years of prison sentences from 55 to 70 years before having a craven politically driven clemency pushed on them in 1999 by the Clintons and Eric Holder.
Morales, however, was not offered clemency by Clinton. He, who most likely built the devices used at Fraunces and New York’s Mobil Oil building, where, in August 1977, 26-year-old Charles Steinberg was murdered, was already a guest of Cuba.
On July 12, 1978, Morales blew off part of his face and nine of his fingers when a bomb he was crafting exploded in his Queens bomb factory which was filled with explosive materials, FALN communiqués, and even the copy machine used to make the January 24, 1975, Fraunces communiqué.
Morales was captured, tried, convicted, and sentenced in 1979 to up to 99 years in New York State and Federal prison but escaped from Bellevue prison hospital with the assistance of other radicals known as the Revolutionary Armed Task Force; the same radicals who broke Joanne Chesimard out of prison.
Morales was located by U.S. officials in Puebla, Mexico, in 1983. He and an accomplice killed a Mexican police officer. Morales was arrested, charged as an accessory to murder, and imprisoned in Mexico.
In 1988, ignoring President Reagan’s extradition demands, the Mexican government flew Morales to Cuba, where he remains along with other murderous and felonious fugitives such as Victor Gerena and Joanne Chesimard.
Disgracefully, Hillary Clinton during her 2000 New York Senate run looked to connect with New York’s Hispanic community. President Bill Clinton then granted clemency to the FALN, a blatant political gesture orchestrated by then–deputy attorney general Eric Holder. Terror leader Oscar Lopez Rivera actually refused the 1999 Clinton clemency.
In his last days in office in 2017, President Obama handed an unprecedented second clemency to Lopez, who we faced and kept in prison at his 2011 parole hearing at the Federal Prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Ironically, as a 9/11 family member and eye witness (dad’s godson Steven Schlag was murdered in the WTC only minutes after I left the buildings), in 2016 I went to Cuba, facing KSM and other high value detainees at GTMO. I have looked into the faces of terrorists who murdered our loved ones, close up.
The fight against terrorists is not some political theory for our family, but a real battle against evil with real consequences. We live it. As expressed in our new documentary film Shattered Lives, this has been a generational struggle affecting all of us including the lives of Frank Connor’s future daughters-in-law and grandchildren he never met.
Incredibly over the past decade, Cuba, which sponsors terrorists like Morales and Chesimard, was removed from and added to the US State Sponsor of Terrorism (SSOT) list by alternate U.S. administrations. President Obama removed Cuba from the SSOT in 2015. President Trump returned Cuba to the list during his first term. President Biden removed Cuba during his last days in office, and on his first day back in office in 2025, President Trump rightfully revoked the Biden administration's last-minute removal of Cuba from the list.
Finally we have the chance for justice led by Secretary Marco Rubio, Sens. Rick Scott, Ted Cruz, and Jim Risch, House members like Chris Smith and Mario Diaz-Balart, NJST Col. Pat Callahan and many other government and law enforcement officials and President Trump, dedicated to justice for American citizens. As I pleaded on Fox last week, “President Trump absolutely can use economic power…we have the economic leverage on Cuba to bring them back. Cut the deal… and then we will talk about how we are going to assist Cuba in the future.”
While these terrorists will receive ultimate judgement by a greater power, I urge Americans to request their representatives, senators and President Trump to join in securing the return of these terrorists to face the American justice they were already sentenced to.
My father’s horrific death has haunted our family for generations. I promised my mom that we would get Morales back… She is 87. It’s time for justice.