The First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba, Gerardo Peñalver Portal, warmly welcomed Richard Tur de la Concepción this Thursday at José Martí International Airport in Havana, the Cuban diplomat expelled from the United States after physically assaulting an American official at the UN headquarters in New York.
In posts on his X and Facebook accounts, Peñalver Portal shared images of a group—around ten officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX)—posing with a Cuban flag in front of the "Welcome to Cuba" sign at the Havana airport and a flag. The deputy minister introduced Tur as someone who "dignifiedly and firmly confronted the disrespectful and provocative attitude of the U.S. delegation at the United Nations".
The leader went further in his account of the events: according to Peñalver Portal, the incident was an orchestrated maneuver by Washington "to sabotage the vote on the resolution against the genocidal blockade and Richard Tur's candidacy for an important UN body."
However, there are recordings of the aggression. On Tuesday, October 27, during the annual General Assembly debate on the U.S. embargo against Cuba, Tur attempted to seize the phone from the Chief of Strategic Communications of the U.S. mission, J.P. Freire, and slapped at him several times while he was recording the confrontation. Ambassador Mike Waltz himself shared the video on social media.
That same night, Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed the expulsion order. Waltz announced it on Fox News' Hannity program with a clear message: "He's leaving. He will be on a plane to Havana within the next 24 hours. If you lay a hand on an American here in the United States, President Trump, Secretary Rubio, and I will not tolerate it."
This Thursday, the State Department confirmed that Tur had already left U.S. territory and described the Cuban regime as "incompetent," noting that its members "revealed their true nature through their tactics of intimidation and oppression."
The heroic reception contrasts sharply with the real consequences of the scandal for Havana. One day after the incident, the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba (FHRC) added Tur to its list of Cuban repressors. Furthermore, his candidacy for the United Nations Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ) for the period 2027-2029 has been compromised, with the vote scheduled for November.
For its part, the annual resolution against the embargo, presented since 1992, received its worst historical outcome this year, with only 130 votes in favor, 17 against, and 25 abstentions, compared to the 187 favorable votes that Cuba garnered in 2024.
Martí Noticias investigations revealed that Tur is not an ordinary diplomat: his father, Ricardo Tur Novo, operated under diplomatic cover in Bolivia, Paraguay, and Jamaica as an officer of the Cuban Intelligence Department, using the pseudonym "Roger."
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