By Edmund H. Mahony

There is probably no one with a greater interest than Victor M. Gerena in the talks underway between the U.S. and Cuba about re-establishing diplomatic relations.

In 1983, he and other members of a group of Puerto Rican nationalists — a group armed, advised and financed by the Cuban government — stole $7 million from a West Hartford armored car depot in what was then the biggest cash robbery in U.S. history.

The Cubans sneaked Gerena into Mexico City. They stashed him in a safe house, lightened the color of his hair and gave him a phony diplomatic identity. Eventually, they put him and much of the money on a plane to Havana, where Gerena disappeared into the shadowy community of murderers, bombers, robbers and hijackers Cuba has sheltered from prosecution in the U.S and other countries since the 1960s.

For decades, the U.S. fugitives hiding in Cuba have been of little interest to anyone beyond a handful of journalists, law enforcement agencies and the families of their victims. But as President Obama presses an effort to reopen embassies and lift credit and trade restrictions, the fugitives have been discovered by critics and are emerging as a potential impediment to normalization.

Last week, Obama said he intends to remove Cuba from the government's list of nations that sponsor terrorism, effectively opening Havana to commercial lenders. Cuba has been on the list for 30 years, with Iran, Syria and Sudan. The last time the state department reviewed the list, in 2013, it decided against Cuba's removal because of its continued willingness to provide safe haven to fugitives wanted on terror charges.

Congress has 45 days to challenge the decision to remove Cuba from the list and opponents were lining up last week within Congress and among law enforcement agencies, Cuban exiles and families of victims killed by fugitives who have lived comfortably in Cuba for decades

"In the midst of our global war on terrorism, simply put, how can Obama and this administration remove a state that sponsors terrorists from the State Sponsor of Terror list?" said Joseph Connor, whose father died in a 1975 bomb attack at Fraunces Tavern in New York by a Puerto Rican nationalist group supported by Cuba. "This action shows Obama's utter disregard for Americans like my father, who was murdered by Castro's clients and it tells the world we condone terrorism."

Others want return of the fugitives to be a condition of normalization or, at a minimum, that the fugitives be used to leverage other concessions.

"They are living in Cuba as guests of the Cuban government, which has probably given them houses and probably giving them a dole from the government," said Jaime Suchlicki, Director of the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies. "It's kind of crazy that the president is doing this without getting a list of concessions."

Cuba has said bluntly that the fugitives are off limits.

"Every nation has sovereign and legitimate rights to grant political asylum to people it considers to have been persecuted," Josefina Vidal, the Cuban Foreign Ministry's head of North American affairs, told the Associated Press.

The U.S. has issued a single statement about the fugitives since talks began with Cuba last year.

"We will continue to press for the return of U.S. fugitives in Cuba to pursue justice for the victims of their crimes in our engagement with the Cuban government," said national Security Council spokesman Bernadette Meehan.

The FBI identified 77 American fugitives in Cuba in 1995, but will not release a revised list.

Black Panther William Lee Brent, who recently died in Cuba, wrote a book about his experience. He arrived by hijacking a plane after shooting two police officers in northern California. Brent married a Cuban and held a variety of jobs, eventually obtaining a college degree and becoming an English teacher.

Joanne Chesimard, a former leader of the Black Liberation Army, may be the most notorious fugitive. Now known as Assata Shakur, she shot a New Jersey state trooper to death in 1973, was convicted in 1977, escaped and fled to Havana, where then Cuban President Fidel Castro called her a freedom fighter.

Until recently, Chesimard lived openly in Cuba. She was listed in the telephone directory and gave interviews to documentary film makers. In a 1997 film she described Cuba as "so lush, so green, so ripe."

William Morales, a bomb maker for the FALN, another violent Puerto Rican pro-independence group, also lived openly in Cuba, until recently. In the 1990s, he appeared on Cuban government television as an authority on what he calls the colonial oppression of Puerto Rico by the United States.

The FBI captured Morales in New York in 1978 after his last bomb exploded prematurely, blowing off most of both hands and a parts of his face. At dinner with a reporter in Havana in 2001, he talked about life as a Cuban fugitive while eating with a fork attached by an elastic band to one of his stumps.

The FALN, known in English as the Armed Forces of National Liberation, was responsible for more than 100 bomb blasts in the Midwest and on the East Coast, including the explosion at Fraunces Tavern that killed Connor's father and three others. Another FALN bomb at Mobil Oil in Manhattan two years later in 1977 took one life.

Morales was sentenced to 99 years. With assistance from one of his lawyers, he escaped a prison hospital ward in New York and fled to Mexico and, ultimately, Cuba.

Chesimard, a high profile police killer, is most frequently mentioned by those demanding that Cuba be forced to return the fugitives. But Gerena, Morales and others in the violent wing of the Puerto Rican independence movement have far more history with Cuba. There is extensive documentation by Congress and other agencies showing a long history of high-level support in Cuba for the groups.

For most of the 1980s, the related Los Macheteros and FALN were responsible for more than half of what U.S. law enforcement classified as domestic terror incidents, according to information compiled by Congressional investigators.

Puerto Rican nationalist leader Filiberto Ojeda Rios founded both groups. From 1961, until his death in a gunfight with FBI agents in 2005, Ojeda was an officer in the Cuban intelligence service, according to a variety of sources including Congress, law enforcement agencies and his associates. Ojeda is believed to have founded the FALN while assigned to the Cuban mission to the United Nations in the early 1970s

When he was arrested in Puerto Rico in 1974 for attacks on San Juan tourist hotels, Ojeda was carrying Cuban government documents, some of them in code. When he died, the Cuba arranged a memorial service in Havana.

With the Wells Fargo robbery being the major exception, most of the Machetero actions were staged in Puerto Rico, beginning, as did the FALN bombings, in the 1970s.

The Macheteros took credit for the machine gun deaths of two U.S service personnel and the wounding of nine others, an attack on a National Guard air base in Puerto Rico that destroyed 11 jet aircraft and two rocket attacks on federal buildings in San Juan, one with a weapon smuggled into Cuba after being abandoned by the U.S. military in Vietnam.

Los Macheteros and the FALN operated with support from Cuba's America Department, according to Congressional reports and other sources. Jorge Masetti, a defector who once worked for the America Department, said it's mission was supporting insurgencies in Latin America and, during the 1970s and 80s, had more personnel assigned to Puerto Rico than anywhere else.

FBI reports show that Ojeda and other Macheteros spoke and met regularly with high-ranking America Department officers, including department chief Manuel Piniero, immediately before and after the $7 million Wells Fargo robbery. Suchlicki said Pinero reported to Raul Castro, Cuba's current president

"It was something that really didn't happen with other Latin American groups in Havana," Masetti said during an interview in 2000.

Three months before the robbery, Masetti said he was instructed to meet in Mexico City with a Machetero who used the code name Junior and deliver $50,000 in cash. Masetti said he was assigned the task by Fernando Comas, then the senior America Department officer at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City. The money was delivered to Mexico by Antonio Arbesu, who would later lead the Cuban diplomatic mission in Washington, Masetti said.

"What they said to me when I went to meet Junior was that Los Macheteros had run out of money," Masetti said. "They had this new operation and they needed money to keep going."

After the robbery, Masetti said he was assigned to accompany Ojeda to meetings with a variety of Cubans in Mexico City.

"I did not know his name at the time," Masetti said. "But he was portrayed as chief of Los Macheteros and had worked for the Cuban government for many years in New York. He was said to have particular expertise because throughout all this time he never got caught."

Masetti said he lost track of Gerena once he was disguised and put on the plane from Mexico City to Havana.

The other Macheteros left no doubt, however, about where Gerena ended up. They were explicit when intercepted by an FBI microphone, arguing over whether Gerena's girlfriend should be allowed to join him in exile.

"For you and me, Cuba is an abstraction," the Machetero code named Junior said. "For him, it is not. He, better than anyone else would know, because of the length of time he has been there. … He knows Cuba. You don't."