How obsession to 'liberate Cuba' led men on deadly speedboat journey

Family members described the men as poorly trained activists who hoped to make a statement. Cuban forces opened fire on the boat, killing four and wounding six.

A day before Amijail Sánchez González entered Cuban waters on a Florida-registered speedboat, his family says, he called his elderly parents on the island to tell them he was heading their way.

In the hour-long phone call, they urged their son not to make the trip, his brother told The Washington Post on Thursday.

Sánchez González, a 47-year-old tree trimmer in Miami who has been critical of Cuba’s communist government on social media, was wanted by Havana on accusations of promoting terrorism. In late 2024, his brother said, authorities detained their parents, both of whom are fighting cancer, and held them for months to pressure him to return to the island and turn himself in.

But he had become obsessed with his mission to “liberate Cuba,” Edisbel Sánchez González said. He wanted to show the world “an act of courage.”

Amijail Sánchez González is now under arrest in Cuba, where authorities say he and nine other Cuban nationals tried to infiltrate the country Wednesday on a speedboat “for terrorist purposes.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/02/26/cuba-speedboat-attack/