Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel was slapped with sanctions by the United States on Thursday as Washington continued to ratchet up pressure of the island nation's communist government. File Photo by Ley Royero/EPA-EFE
June 4 (UPI) -- The United States on Thursday leveled sanctions against Cuban Miguel Díaz-Canel, members of former President Raul Castro's family, the Cuban military and other organizations as it continued a crackdown on the country's communist government.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the measures against Diaz-Canel the others in a statement, asserting they are being targeted because they "fund the [Cuban] regime and its efforts to mobilize its radical revolutionary movements in the United States and around the world."
The Cuban president, Rubio said, poses a threat to U.S. national security, while the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba, with its "many majority holdings and subsidiaries," is also now "considered blocked."
Other organizations newly added to the sanctions list are the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, or ICAP, Amistur Cuba S.A., Committees for the Defense of the Revolution and Minera La Victoria S.A.
