Yahoo! November 27, 2000
Jurors Screened in Cuban Spy Case
By Catherine Wilson, Associated Press Writer
MIAMI, 26 (AP) - By the time they're seated, jurors picked to hear the case
of five Cubans accused of spying will have no secrets left about their attitudes
toward Cuba.
Lawyers have haggled for hours with each other and U.S. District Judge Joan
Lenard over the wording of questions intended to uncover any bias, down to
whether potential jurors display bumper stickers for Cuban exile groups on their
cars.
Jury selection begins Monday for dozens of prospective jurors drawn from the
predominantly Hispanic community, in what the defense calls "the epicenter
of anti-Castro politics.''
Jurors will learn of the cat-and-mouse spy game between the world's biggest
superpower and its stridently communist neighbor. Cuban officials have said the
defendants were only spying on exile groups that Cuba deemed terrorist threats.
"It would be extraordinary and one might say, looking at it
objectively, a bit irresponsible of the Cuban government not to have such
assets,'' said Wayne Smith, President Carter's chief of the U.S. Interest
Section, the highest level of diplomacy between two countries without
ambassadors. "You expect if you get caught at it, that you are going to
spend some time behind bars or worse.''
The five Cubans on trial are Miami-area residents arrested in South Florida
in 1998.
In all, 14 people were accused of plotting to infiltrate Miami exile groups
and gather intelligence from military installations in Florida. Five pleaded
guilty and received sentences of up to seven years. Four are fugitives believed
to be in Cuba.
One of the five on trial, Gerardo Hernandez, also is charged with murder
conspiracy for allegedly giving Cuban authorities the flight plan of two planes
flown by Brothers to the Rescue, an exile group that patrols the sea between
Florida and Cuba looking for refugees. The planes were shot down by Cuban
warplanes on Feb. 24, 1996, and four men died.
The defense wants to implicate militant anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Miami in
a bombing wave at Cuban tourist destinations in 1997 to support its claim that
the five were acting as de facto U.S. agents by feeding their discoveries about
those plots to the FBI (news - web sites).
The judge has ordered attorneys on both sides not to talk about the case.
But in court records, prosecutors say the crimes allegedly traced to the
defendants were "hardly acts of short-lived or spontaneous vigilantism to
thwart terrorism.''
The murder conspiracy charge against Hernandez carries a potential maximum
sentence of life in prison. After the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown, his
indictment said, Cuba's spy agency recognized him for his role and promoted him
to captain.
Other charges the defendants face include delivering defense information,
being unregistered foreign agents, conspiracy to commit fraud, and document
fraud. Two other defendants also could face life in prison.
On the Net:
Brothers to the Rescue: http://www.hermanos.org.
Survivors Upset With Elian's Fame
MIAMI, 26 (AP) - The woman who survived the journey across the Florida
Straits with Elian Gonzalez said she feels abandoned by the world, even though
she's waging her own international custody battle.
Arianne Horta's 6-year-old daughter, Estefani, is still in Cuba and Horta
can't return to visit her or bring her to the United States.
She started to take the child on the ill-fated boat trip last November, but
sent her back home at the last minute because she feared bad weather. En route
to Florida, the boat sank, drowning 11 people. Only Elian, Horta and her
boyfriend Nivaldo Fernandez survived.
"Today, I am glad I did it - she is alive because of it,'' Horta said.
But Horta is angry that Elian got so much publicity while her daughter, who
is the same age and goes to the same elementary school in Cardenas, isn't spoken
or written about.
"Isn't my daughter a child, just like Elian? Aren't I a human being,
like his mother?'' she said in an interview with The Miami Herald.
Horta said she and Fernandez were initially besieged by reporters and were
asked by Elian's Miami relatives to testify on the boy's behalf in January. But
they haven't heard from any of them since.
"Everybody has forgotten us,'' Horta said. "We only see them
(Elian's Miami relatives) on TV. They used us.''
Horta said Estefani's father has remarried and begun a new life and wouldn't
object to the girl coming to the United States.
The problem is that Horta applied for residency instead of political asylum,
Cuban American National Foundation spokeswoman Ninoska Perez-Castellon said.
"At that time, with all the publicity, it would have been a very good
case for asylum, and her daughter would have a visa by now,'' Perez-Castellon
said. "Now reclaiming her child falls into a process that takes years.''
But Horta said if the foundation "moved mountains'' for Elian, it can
do something to get her daughter out of Cuba.
Horta and Fernandez are scraping by in a tiny efficiency. Horta works
sporadically for a home-cleaning business; Fernandez works in a warehouse making
$600 every two weeks.
But they say they are grateful to be alive, and Horta looks forward to
Sunday nights when she can talk on the phone with Estefani.
"She's well. She's happy, at least,'' Horta said. "She says she
misses me and asks me when I'm coming. I don't tell her I can't go. I say, 'Yes,
yes. Soon we'll see each other.''
Mexico To Withold Reply to Castro
By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer
HAVANA, 26 (AP) - Because President Fidel Castro soon will be visiting
Mexico, the Mexican government said Sunday it would not respond to Castro's
criticisms of its support of a motion approved by Latin heads of state at a
regional summit this month.
In a two-paragraph communique sent to news media, Mexico's Foreign
Secretariat said "out of courtesy'' it would issue no official response to
the complaints Castro made during a speech Saturday about Mexico and Spain's
support for the measure introduced at the Ibero American Summit in Panama.
The Mexican communique noted that the heads of state of all the Spanish- and
Portuguese-speaking nations at the summit approved the motion to condemn
terrorism, with the exception of Cuba.
Castro is expected to visit Mexico later this week for the Friday
inauguration of President-elect Vicente Fox.
Castro's criticisms about Spain and Mexico came at the end of a half-hour
speech that focused on his old nemesis, Luis Posada Carriles, an exile who has
made a career out of battling the Cuban government.
Posada Carriles was arrested during the summit after Castro said that his
old enemy was in Panama and plotting to kill him. The Cuban government hopes to
extradite Posada Carriles to Cuba to face charges for the 1976 bombing of a
Cubana airliner that killed 73 people off the coast of Barbados.
Castro accused Salvadoran President Francisco Flores of "tolerating''
Posada Carriles in the Central American country, where he was living. "Perhaps
he could not do anything because of lack of authority and of courage,'' Castro
said of Flores.
Later in his Saturday speech, the Cuban president accused Spain of "cooking
up the hypocritical measure on terrorism.''
Cuba opposed the measure because it focused on the acts of the Spanish
separatist group ETA and did not mention the Cuban government's complaints of
terrorist acts committed against the island.
Spain, "at times has been useful in the fight against the voraciousness
of the North,'' Castro said, in a reference to the United States. "But its
political leadership acted with an evident tilt toward the (United States) in
proposing the measure.
"It was immediately seconded by the president of a different Mexico,''
Castro said, referring to the somewhat chilly relationship President Zedillo has
had with Cuba in recent years without actually mentioning Zedillo by name.
Mexico, said the Cuban president, "is now ruled by the interests, the
principals and the commitments, imposed by the (North American) Free Trade
Agreement.''
In additional fallout from Castro's speech, the Salvadoran president said
Sunday he would not meet with Castro in Mexico to discuss the Posada Carriles
case.
After clashing at the Ibero American summit over the motion on terrorism,
Castro and Flores had tentatively agreed to discuss the Posada Carriles case in
Mexico.
"After his declarations .... I feel like such a meeting would have no
objective, it doesn't make sense to do it,'' Flores said in the capital of San
Salvador.
"We're not interested,'' he said.
Cubans Mark Elian's Arrival in U.S.
By Alex Veiga, Associated Press Writer
MIAMI, 26 (AP) - About 100 Cuban exiles holding candles and carnations
marked the first anniversary of Elian Gonzalez's arrival in the United States
with a bayside vigil Saturday.
Only Lazaro Gonzalez, the boy's great-uncle, and a cousin were present to
represent Elian's Miami relatives, who fought a seven-month legal battle to keep
the 6-year-old from being returned to Cuba.
"In the name of Elian, I thank everyone profoundly for remembering his
beautiful mother, who with her own life, was able to bring that boy to a country
of liberty, where they cruelly stripped him of that liberty and took him to a
system where everyone tries to flee,'' Lazaro Gonzalez said.
Elian was one of only three survivors among 14 people who tried to sail a
small boat from Cuba to Florida a year ago this week. His mother, Elisabeth
Brotons, was among those who died when the boat capsized.
The vigil was held along Biscayne Bay behind a Catholic church. The crowd
stood facing a framed photo lit by gas-powered torches of Brotons.
"We feel very sad like all of you in remembering the grave (fate) of
Elisabeth, Elian's mother,'' Lazaro Gonzalez said. "We are entirely
convinced that Cuba is not doing this for that woman.''
Elian was rescued at sea a year ago Saturday - adrift on an inner tube, limp
like a rag doll.
He was taken in by relatives in Miami and adopted as a symbol by
Cuban-Americans who oppose Fidel Castro's communist regime. But the boy's father
insisted that Elian was taken from Cuba without his permission, and after a
months-long court battle, armed federal agents seized the boy from his
great-uncle's home April 22. He later returned with his father to Cuba.
Saturday's event, organized by the anti-Castro group Democracy Movement,
culminated with the crowd casting hundred of multicolored carnations into the
bay, shouting "Viva Cuba Libre!'' and singing the Cuban national anthem.
Participants then attended an evening Mass.
Ramon Saul Sanchez, head of Democracy Movement, earlier asked the crowd to
remember Haitian, Dominican and other non-Cubans who have perished at sea
attempting to reach the United States.
"In the tragedy of Elian Gonzalez, sadly, it is reflected the tragedy
of the Cuban people,'' Sanchez said.
Castro: El Salvador OKs Terrorists
By Vivian Sequera, Associated Press Writer
HAVANA, 25 (AP) - Fidel Castro accused the Salvadoran government on Saturday
of tolerating "the worst terrorist in the hemisphere,'' a political nemesis
who the Cuban leader says was plotting to kill him.
Castro told a gathering of about 30,000 people in eastern Cuba that
Salvadoran President Francisco Flores did not act on information sent to him on
Oct. 5 about Luis Posada Carriles, who lives in El Salvador.
Posada Carriles has been detained since Nov. 17, the day Castro arrived in
Panama for a regional summit and announced that his enemy was in the country and
planning to assassinate him. Panamanian authorities picked up Posada Carriles
and three other Cuban exiles at a Panama City hotel several hours later.
Castro told the gathering in the rural town of Guisa, about 450 miles east
of Havana, that he was not accusing the Salvadoran president of involvement in
the "macabre plan'' to kill him.
But he did accuse the Flores administration of "knowing about,
tolerating and hiding'' Posada Carriles in the Central American country he
currently calls home. Cuba has long blamed Posada Carriles for the bombing of a
Cuban airliner that killed 73 people as well as other violent attacks against
the island.
Flores "did absolutely nothing'' after receiving the information from
Cuba, Castro said. "Perhaps he could not because he did not have the
authority and the courage.''
Calls for comment from Salvadoran authorities were not immediately returned.
Cuba and El Salvador have not had diplomatic relations since the 1960s.
Castro and Flores clashed during the Ibero-American Summit in Panama over a
proposal by Spain and Mexico to condemn terrorism. Castro opposed the measure
because while it mentioned the Basque separatist group ETA, it did not mention
acts of terrorism against the communist island.
During the summit, Castro accused Flores of tolerating Posada Carriles'
presence in his country, and Flores accused Castro of fomenting leftist
rebellion in El Salvador during the 1980s.
Cuba is seeking the extradition of Posada Carriles, 72, an admitted former
CIA (news - web sites) operative who has made a lifelong career out of fighting
against socialist Cuban and other communist governments and movements. Panama is
holding the men pending completion of Cuba's extradition request. They could
also face trial in Panama if they broke any laws in that country.
Posada Carriles is "the worst terrorist known in the hemisphere,''
responsible for "uncountable crimes,'' Castro said.
Posada Carriles has admitted to involvement in a string of bombings that
shook Havana in 1997, including one that killed an Italian tourist. Havana wants
to try Posada Carriles for those attacks, as well as the 1976 bombing of the
Cubana airliner off the coast of Barbados. Members of Cuba's fencing team were
among the 73 people who perished.
Posada Carriles has long denied involvement in the airliner bombing and was
twice acquitted in the case. He was awaiting a retrial when he escaped from a
Venezuelan jail in 1985.
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