EDITORIAL: Chesimard’s fate shouldn’t be deal-breaker

President Obama this week announced significant steps toward normalizing relations between the U.S. and Cuba, a process that included an agreement to bring home American Alan Gross, who had been imprisoned on the island for five years, in exchange for three Cubans jailed in the U.S. Obama is now looking toward re-opening an embassy in Havana, and is hopeful Congress will consider easing or lifting the trade embargo that U.S. has had in place for more than a half century, since Fidel Castro and his communist rebels came to power.

This should all be welcome news. Whatever one thinks of the moral need for the Cuba embargo over all these years, it certainly wouldn’t qualify as a political or economic success. The relationship between the neighboring countries has to evolve into something better, and the actions announced this week take us in that direction.

But Obama’s critics won’t stand for any such praise sent the President’s way. Instead, many Republicans — and even some Democrats, most notably New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez — are ripping the administration for supposedly validating Castro’s regime and helping his family maintain its power. Some of the nuttier conservatives insist Obama is bowing to his socialist tendencies in surrendering to Cuba.

Such overheated rhetoric is sadly predictable, but it also ignores the growing recognition that the U.S. philosophy of isolating Cuba has been counterproductive, and that Americans are increasingly receptive to a thawing of relations.

In New Jersey, however, there’s another arrow in the Republican quiver — the pursuit of cop-killer Joanne Chesimard, who fled to Cuba after breaking out of prison in 1979. Chesimard was convicted of fatally shooting State Trooper Werner Foerster on the New Jersey Turnpike in East Brunswick in 1973, but was assisted in her escape by the Black Liberation Army. She was granted political asylum by Castro.

Chesimard — who now goes by the name of Assata Shakur — was the first woman placed on the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorists last year. A $2 million reward continues to be offered for her capture, but repeated efforts to extradite her have failed.

There are, in other words, a whole lot of people who want to see Chesimard finally brought to justice, and to bring some element of closure to the case. Their emotions are understandable, and we would certainly urge government officials to make every effort to bring her into custody. Chesimard deserves to pay a much greater price for her sins.

But there’s a limit to the urgency here, and the quest for Chesimard’s return shouldn’t be used as a wedge to jeopardize improved U.S.-Cuba relations. Republican lawmakers on both the state and federal level are trying, however, to make her capture a prerequisite for any meaningful actions benefiting Cuba. Among those who have already spoken out are state senators Joseph Pennacchio and Anthony Bucco, both of Morris County, as well as U.S. Reps. Leonard Lance and Rodney Frelinghuysen.

Chesimard’s capture is important, but Republicans want to turn it into a crusade to try to taint what could end up one of the great successes of the Obama presidency. That shouldn’t be allowed to happen.