Displaying rifles, knives and thousands of bullets they say were seized in a thwarted terrorist attack, Cuban authorities on Friday detailed from start to finish their story of a deadly confrontation on the water with a counterrevolutionary group that departed from the Florida Keys to launch an assault on the island — and pointed the finger at a former political prisoner as the mastermind of the attack.

Officials speaking on state television blamed the Wednesday confrontation on Autodefensa del Pueblo, a group state media alleged years ago was training in the United States in preparation for a terrorist attack. They said 10 men launched from Marathon for Cuba aboard not one but two boats, armed to the teeth with more than a dozen rifles, handguns, nearly 13,000 bullets and explosives.

The men piled everything and everyone into one boat, a 24-foot, 1981 Pro-Line, and abandoned the other vessel after it broke down on the voyage to Cuba, they said.

A Cuban coast guard crew of five spotted the Pro-Line Wednesday morning around 7:10 a.m. a little less than 4 nautical miles within Cuba’s territorial waters, Cuban authorities said. The coast guard monitored the vessel, observing some of the men in the water, when they were spotted.

The men returned to the boat, which headed west. They opened fire on the coast guard vessel from about 600 feet away, hitting the coast guard boat 13 times on its starboard side and striking Capt. Yosmany Hernández in the abdomen and forearm, officials said. Cuban forces returned fire, killed three of the men and wounding seven.

Hernández is recovering from his wounds, Cuban authorities said, and the attackers wounded in the shootout were taken to the hospital for treatment.

Cuba’s government displayed on the broadcast nautical maps to show where the Pro-Line was spotted, its route through Cuban waters and the location where the shooting occurred. They showed pictures of bullet holes in the coast guard and the Florida-registered vessel. For emphasis, they splayed out a cache of more than a dozen rifles, backpacks and two coolers half-filled with ammunition, as well as camouflage mesh, radios and an ultra-silent Power Smart gas generator, detailing what they allege was a plan to infiltrate the island and cause havoc.

The surviving men face charges of armed assault, illegal entry into the national territory and crimes associated with terrorist acts, violence and illicit arms trafficking, the Cuban government wrote on the social media account of the Cuban embassy in the U.S.

“Since the events were financed from abroad, those involved outside the country could also face charges of financing terrorism,” the Cuban government wrote, adding: “There was an exchange of information almost in real time with the liaison at the U.S. Embassy and authorities in Miami, to whom details of the incident were provided.”

The details of Cuba’s story have changed somewhat. Initially, Cuba said four men were killed in the attack, and Havana has acknowledged that a Miami man initially accused of joining the alleged assault was incorrectly named among the 10 men.

Some of Miami’s members of Congress have urged the public to be skeptical when considering details of the incident released by the Cuban government. But so far, accounts published in the U.S. press from the family and friends of the men have generally corroborated Cuba’s story that a group of Cuban radicals living in Florida set out on a mission to invade the island. The owner of the Pro-Line reported it stolen from Big Pine Key late Wednesday, and the suspect accused in the alleged theft was later named by the Cuban government as one of the men killed in the firefight.

The Trump administration remains tight-lipped about the incident, and has not disputed any of the details released by Cuba. Other than confirming that two U.S. citizens were shot Wednesday, and that others involved may have been legal U.S. residents, the State Department has said little while Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s team holds secret talks with Raul Castro’s grandson about economic and political changes in communist Cuba.

The White House and State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Friday night.

Cuban officials on Friday said the attack had been masterminded by Maritza Lugo Fernandez, an exile and former political prisoner in Cuba.

Lugo, a fierce opponent of the Cuban government, arrived in the United States in 2002 after being imprisoned for her activism against the Castro regime. She and her husband, who spent years in prison for a bombing at a state security office in Havana that he said he didn’t commit, were leaders of the Frank Pais November 30 Democratic Party in Cuba.

Lugo was featured by the Organization of American States in a 2024 campaign to urge Cuba’s government to release its political prisoners.

Efforts to reach Lugo late Friday night were unsuccessful.

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(Miami Herald staff writer Claire Heddles contributed to this report.)

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