Published Wednesday, September 20, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Cubans rescued at sea
Nine survive plane crash; one dies in day of drama
By Lisa Fuss, Sandra Marquez Garcia And Paul Brinkley-Rogers. pbrinkley-rogers@herald.com
Ten Cubans apparently trying to flee western Cuba for Mexico's Yucatan on Tuesday in an aging Soviet-era crop-duster were picked up by a freighter when their plane ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea.
U.S. Coast Guard and Air Force planes were still scrambling to find the Cuban migrants when Capt. Konstantinos Kalaitgis of the MV Chios Dream radioed at 1:45 p.m. that his ship had brought aboard four men, three women, and three children. One man was dead, and another had serious head injuries.
The injured man was in guarded condition but good spirits early today in a Key West hospital. He had suffered a mild concussion and a cut to the back of his head. "For the ordeal he has undergone, I think he is in remarkably good condition,'' said Dr. David Bannon, a surgeon at Lower
Florida Keys Medical Center.
The pilot was identified by wire service reports from Havana and Miami relatives of the plane's passengers as Angel Lenin Iglesias Hernández, 36, from Los Palacios, who is assigned to crop-dusting in the Vuelta Abajo tobacco region.
Agence France-Pressé quoted the pilot's sister-in-law as saying he took along his wife, Mercedes Martínez Paredes, his two sons, David, 7, and Erick, 13. Also aboard, she said, was her son, Judel Puig Martínez, 23, and his half brother, Pabel Puig Blanco, 28. She said her
former husband in Hialeah is the only U.S. relative of Iglesias.
Miami relatives identified the others on the aircraft as Liliana Ponzoa, 36, her husband, Robert Fuentes, 38, and their son, Andy Fuentes, 6, who live in Havana, and Jacqueline Viera, a teacher.
But the survivor with head injuries told a maintenance worker at Lower Florida Keys Medical Center, that his name is Rodolfo Fuentes and that his wife and two children are on a Coast Guard cutter. Fuentes, 36, said the group got lost while flying and ran out of fuel.
Relatives of Liliana Ponzoa living in Miami said Tuesday they were alerted at 2:45 p.m. when a cousin phoned from Havana to tell them she was on the plane.
Osvaldo Ponzoa, 37, a taxi driver, said this was no hijacking. "Everybody on that plane knew each other because they were either related or were neighbors or friends, including the pilot,'' he said.
HELICOPTER FLIGHT
The Coast Guard used a helicopter to bring Rodolfo Fuentes to Lower Florida Keys Medical Center, where doctors decided he didn't need to be transferred to the Ryder Trauma Center in Miami for further treatment.
A doctor aboard the Carnival Cruise Lines ship Tropicale provided initial treatment because that vessel could reach the Chios Dream more quickly than the Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard said the other survivors would be brought to the Key West Naval Station, where three FBI agents will interview them.
Ahead, a debate at the diplomatic level appears likely over whether the flight was a hijacking, or an escape led by the plane's pilot.
Spokeswoman Judy Orihuela said the FBI will interview the other survivors to determine what occurred. "A much higher level than us -- I'm talking Washington -- would have to decide whether to prosecute. Some of it would depend on what the Cuban government wants to do.''
It was a day of high drama and frustration for the would-be rescuers, including search aircraft from the U.S. Air Force, and a small armada of ships, helicopters and a jet from the Coast Guard.
CUBAN CONTROLLERS
Cuban air controllers at first said a location off the Dry Tortugas near Key West was the site of the Russian-designed AN-2 plane's last radar contact, but later provided a different location closer to Cuba. The Chios Dream eventually picked up the survivors near the second search area.
A Coast Guard spokesman in Key West said the Chios Dream's captain -- whose 580-foot grain hauler was en route to New Orleans -- also indicated he had recovered pieces of the AN-2 single-engined aircraft from the sea.
The Tropicale's physician, Dr. Myron Binns, went aboard the Chios Dream just before 6 p.m. and reported the seriously injured man was 36 and had suffered a skull laceration, a rib fracture and possible vertebrae fracture. He described the man as conscious and in stable condition, said Carnival
spokesman Tim Gallagher.
According to U.S. officials, citing information provided by the Cubans, the plane took off from a strip at Herradura in Pinar del Río province west of Havana at 8:45 a.m. The survivors were found in the Yucatan Channel between Cuba and Mexico, about 280 miles southwest of Key West and 60
miles north west of Cuba.
HAVANA QUIET
There was no immediate word from Havana on the rescue. Cuban radio and television evening news focused on the Olympic successes of the island's athletes, and did not mention the flight of the AN-2.
It was Havana air traffic controllers who alerted their counterparts at the Federal Aviation Administration in Miami at 9 a.m. that the pilot had radioed he was being "kidnapped.''
But a ham radio operator in Miami said a Cuban contact told him the plane's pilot picked up his family and friends at another location in Pinar del Río after first letting his co-pilot get off the plane.
The radio operator, who asked not to be identified, said his Cuban contact disputed the use of the term "kidnapping.''
"If it was a hijacking, the Cuban government could ask the United States to send them back,'' he said of the people on the plane. "They would not be able to ask for asylum, because hijacking is a crime.''
He said the Cuban contact described the pilot as a Communist party member who was having problems with his political supervisors. The AFP story, however, quoted a cousin of the pilot as saying Iglesias was not in political hot water.
The day began with a massive search led by the U.S. Coast Guard based on radar coordinates provided by Havana, but it failed to find any sign of the missing plane. The AN-2 is a powerful, durable, workhorse used to do crop-dusting, transport up to 15 people, and haul cargo for short distances.
WRONG LOCATION
The first set of coordinates provided by Havana -- the last known radar contact -- placed the aircraft south of the Dry Tortugas, at the extreme western end of the Florida Keys. Spokesmen for the Department of Defense, the FAA and the Coast Guard said the plane never showed up on U.S. radar, nor
did it ever make radio contact.
At midday, the search shifted to a 50-by-100 mile grid much farther west, on new coordinates provided by Havana.
Kathleen Bergen, the FAA's spokesman in Atlanta, said the air traffic controllers in Havana provided the information during their daily conversation with FAA controllers in Miami about previously scheduled overflights of Cuba by commercial aircraft. The Cubans said the aircraft had only a
limited fuel supply.
The FAA, she said, immediately notified the Coast Guard, which led the subsequent search for the plane, and the FBI, which became the lead investigative agency.
Havana said the plane had just completed a crop-dusting flight. It said it was launching its own search, but asked U.S. authorities to help.
Eleven Coast Guard and military aircraft were devoted to the effort, as well as three Coast Guard cutters: the 110-foot Monhegan, the 110-foot Nantucket, and the 210-foot Courageous.
The Monhegan had just repatriated seven Cuban rafters to the Cuban port of Bahia de Cabanas and was leaving when word of the missing plane was relayed from Miami.
Brothers to the Rescue also sent sent up two planes to search for survivors and packed life jackets, five water jugs, and a life raft.
"The thing here is time,'' said Jose Basulto of Brothers to the Rescue as he packed the plane.
"Thankfully, '' Basulto said, "the plane they were flying in is one of the easiest to survive a crash because it flies at low speeds and can float for a few seconds once it hits the water.''
Herald staff writers Alfonso Chardy, Jennifer Babson, Manny Garcia, Curtis Morgan, Marika Lynch and Charles Rabin, Herald translator Renato Perez, and El Nuevo Herald also contributed to this report.
In S. Florida, relatives wait for word on loved ones
By Alfonso Chardy. achardy@herald.com
The South Florida relatives of the Cuban migrants rescued from a plane crash off western Cuban waited anxiously Tuesday night to learn whether the survivors would be allowed to stay in the United States.
They gathered in an apartment in west Miami-Dade County near the turnpike, where they awaited developments.
Sandra Ponzoa, 27, a pharmacy worker, said she received a telephone call about 2:45 p.m. from a cousin named Leticia Mojena in Havana, who told her that relatives were on board the plane.
"She told me the plane that had gone down in the water was the one carrying my sister and her husband and their little son,'' Ponzoa said.
She said that her sister, Liliana Ponzoa, 36, an electrical engineer, her brother-in-law, Robert Fuentes, 38, an aviation mechanic, and their son, 6-year-old Andy Fuentes, were aboard the plane along with a friend of the family, a teacher named Jacqueline Viera, and others whose names they don't
know.
One of Sandra Ponzoa's cousins in Miami, Osvaldo Ponzoa, 37, a taxi driver, said that although they did not know the details of the flight, the family was convinced that this was not a hijacking because all those aboard were relatives, neighbors or friends.
His uncle, Octavio Ponzoa, 61, Liliana's father, who is visiting from Cuba, said that the pilot was a friend of his son-in-law, Rodolfo Fuentes.
"The pilot knew all these people so there is no question in mind that he was not forced to undertake this trip,'' he said.
He said that his daughter and her husband had been trying to leave Cuba for several years and that as far back as 1998 had applied for a U.S. visa but had not received it.
He also said that besides the visa lottery, they had been talking about other possible avenues about leaving the island, but never mentioned the possibility of using a plane.
"This came as a surprise,'' said Osvaldo Ponzoa.
U.S. may face old dilemma: arrest or asylum
Despite a U.S. pledge to treat hijackers as criminals, the record shows a mixed response
By Alfonso Chardy. achardy@herald.com
Federal authorities may face a familiar dilemma: whether to arrest or give asylum to the suspected hijacker or hijackers of the small Russian-made plane that crashed 180 miles southwest of Key West.
Nearly a dozen times since 1980, when the United States first prosecuted Cuban hijackers, officials have debated the same politically charged question. Yet, despite promises after the 1994 rafter exodus to treat all hijackers as criminals, the record shows a mixed response.
In some instances, prosecutors didn't file charges -- even where extreme violence, including murder, allegedly had occurred.
In 1995, the government decided not to prosecute Leonel Macías-González, a Cuban coast guardsman who allegedly killed a Cuban naval officer in August 1994 during the hijacking of a boat to Key West. Federal authorities determined they had no jurisdiction over an incident off U.S.
soil.
And in cases where suspects have been tried, juries have acquitted -- not only in Miami, but elsewhere in the United States.
The only Cuban believed to be in detention after the hijacking of a Cuban plane is former Cuban Army intelligence Lt. Col. Jose Fernández Pupo, who was acquitted of an air piracy charge but was denied asylum.
CHARGES AHEAD?
Federal officials say it's still too early to determine whether charges will be filed in Tuesday's case. The key is not whether the hijacking occurred outside the United States but whether the suspects end up on U.S. soil.
Ultimately, a decision to prosecute would not be made in Miami, said Judy Orihuela, an FBI spokeswoman. "This would not be determined at a local level,'' Orihuela said.
Rosa C. Rodriguez Mera, a U.S. Attorney spokeswoman, said her office had no comment.
The United States toughened its attitude toward Cuban hijackers as part of an agreement with Cuba that ended the 1994 rafter exodus. Under the accord, the United States agreed to help end the hijacking of Cuban aircraft and boats from the island.
But subsequent cases show both the government's resolve to abide by the agreement and the difficulties of prosecuting.
In October 1997, Ridel Ruiz Cabrera and his brother-in-law, Rafael Jorrín, hijacked a boat in Varadero. But they were intercepted off the Florida Keys and returned to Cuba.
In July 1996, Fernández Pupo -- the Cuban intelligence officer -- brandished two .22-caliber pistols to force a commuter plane to land at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo.
U.S. prosecutors flew Fernández Pupo to Washington and charged him with air piracy. But in May 1997, a federal jury acquitted him after the defense argued that his only option had been violence.
While acquitted, Fernández Pupo was not freed. A U.S. immigration judge denied his asylum request in November 1997 and he remains in custody.
Another immigration judge handed down a different decision in a separate case in December 1998 in Brandenton, Fla. He granted asylum to three Cubans who commandeered an airplane and then crashed off Florida's Gulf Coast in August 1996. A federal jury in Tampa acquitted the Cubans of hijacking
charges in July 1997.
The government then sought to deport Adel Regalado Ulloa, Leonardo Reyes and José Roberto Bello-Puente -- but Immigration Court Judge Kevin McHugh thwarted the move.
In air-piracy cases, pilot involvement often determines whether charges are filed.
In 1992, Carlos Cancio -- flying a plane that had taken off from Havana with more than 50 people aboard -- diverted the aircraft to Miami after his son and a flight engineer overpowered an armed guard.
NO CHARGES
Prosecutors decided against filing charges because laws are vague about whether a pilot can hijack his own plane.
In Tuesday's case, the pilot radioed the Havana control tower saying he had been "kidnapped,'' according to the FBI in Miami.
It's also unclear whether passengers aboard the plane would be allowed to stay. While U.S. policy dictates the return of Cubans picked up at sea, Patricia Mancha -- a U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service spokeswoman in Miami -- said officials were monitoring developments.
"We won't speculate because we really don't know what will happen at this point,'' Mancha said.
A boat hijacking two decades ago prompted the United States to reverse a 20-year practice of welcoming as heroes all Cubans fleeing the island. It was a time when the United States sought to improve relations with Cuba despite the Mariel boatlift.
FIRST INDICTMENT
On Aug. 2, 1980, a federal grand jury handed down the first-ever indictment against Cubans involved in a hijacking. It charged Omar Fabelo Blanco and Epifanio Mantilla Herrera, who boarded the 30-foot Victoria de Girón boat in waters near Havana and tied up its captain, Jesús Hernández
Rivero.
Shortly after, two other men -- Luis Hernández Collazo and Miguel Angel Matilla-Tartabul -- swam to the boat and boarded it.
The group arrived in Key West July 9, 1980 -- amid the Mariel boatlift. Matilla-Tartabul, then 17, was not charged because he was a minor.
Hernández Rivero, the boat captain, testified at the trial in Miami -- but the jury acquitted the Cubans after defense attorney Ellis Rubin portrayed them as refugees seeking freedom.
On Tuesday, Rubin said that if federal prosecutors file charges, he will offer his services free to the hijacking suspect or suspects.
"I will represent them because they're obviously looking for freedom,'' Rubin said.
Last 'flight for freedom' took 3 years
Cuban making new life in U.S.
By Frances Robles. frobles@herald.com
The last person to soar from Cuba on a commandeered airplane wound up with an unwelcome distinction: He and two pals became the first Cubans ever charged with air piracy.
Their 1996 "flight to freedom'' -- a quick dash across the Straits of Florida -- took three years. They ran out of gas, crashed, were arrested, and only recently got out of jail.
"I opened my eyes in the United States and found chains at my feet,'' said Leonardo Reyes Ramírez, 30, now a cook in Miami. "Chains and jail were not in my plans.''
Although living a typical immigrant life -- he rents a room, sends money back home -- Reyes cautions that the nine Cubans rescued Tuesday should be wary.
"I came here thinking I could be free,'' he said. "It wasn't that way.''
Reyes bolted from Havana on Aug. 16, 1996, by posing as a sightseer on a Polish Wigna, a small aircraft used to shuttle tourists across the northern coast. His friend, Adel Regalado Ulloa, was a salesman for the company. Another friend pretended to be a tour guide. The pilot, they said, helped
with the scheme.
LEAFLETS PASSED OUT
They took off from Havana and littered the city with 3,000 anti-government leaflets on their way out. Thirty miles south of Sanibel Island, the plane ran out of gas and crashed into the Gulf of Mexico. A passing Russian freighter saved them.
"When they saw the Russian freighter, they said, 'We'd rather die than go back,' '' said defense attorney Ralph Fernández. "And the pilot said, 'I'd rather go back than die.' ''
The pilot claimed the men diverted the plane by threatening him with a nail file.
He went home to Cuba; Reyes and his friends went to jail.
"They were prosecuted wrongfully,'' Fernández said. "It was a flight for freedom.''
A Tampa jury agreed, and acquitted the men in federal court.
But they were detained for another two years by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which sought to deport them as terrorists who entered the country illegally.
Eventually, a federal judge sided with the Cubans and granted them political asylum. The federal government has appealed.
FINALLY FREED
Reyes and his fellow defectors were finally freed from Manatee County Jail during Christmas 1999. After nearly a year in Tampa, Reyes moved to Miami last month.
Regalado went to Washington state and the third man, Jose Roberto Bello Puente, moved to California.
Regalado's other claim to fame was helping the FBI in its investigation of the shootdown of the Brothers to the Rescue plane: Regalado claims he saw Cubans making practice runs of the shootdown.
Born in Santiago de Cuba, Reyes was raised in Havana. He attended cooking school, where he learned to dazzle with Italian, French and Spanish delights.
At his federal trial, Cuban authorities said he stabbed someone when he was 16 -- an incident he denies.
At 18, Reyes was shot twice by police when he tried to help a woman scuffling with police at a street fair.
The shooting left him with kidney problems and years of hospital stays.
"I started to hate the government,'' he said.
Although he was privileged -- he owned a pizzeria -- Reyes decided to leave Cuba. He was 26, married, and the father of two little girls.
He figured he'd leave in dramatic fashion and be welcomed in the United States as a hero. He'd send for his family and get a job as a chef at a prestigious restaurant.
Those plans went down with the plane. But 10 months out of jail, life is improving.
WORKING AS COOK
Reyes works as a cook for a chain restaurant in West Dade. He rents a room in South Miami-Dade.
He owns a new Dodge Inteprid and a cellphone. He speaks English, after six months of classes.
"In America, life is hard. You work, study, help your family,'' Reyes said. "Above all, I just survive and try to recover from the time I lost in jail. In five or 10 years, I hope to have my family and a house. In the meantime, I'll just have my freedom and my job.''
Clashes erupt at hearings on ending Cuba embargo
By Ana Radelat. Special to The Herald
WASHINGTON -- A government hearing on the economic impact of ending the 38-year-old U.S. embargo of Cuba drew repeated clashes Tuesday, with opponents saying the policy damages both the Cuban and U.S. economies, and supporters declaring Cuba would make a poor investment partner.
The two-day hearings before the International Trade Commission, an independent, nonpartisan federal agency, are part of a study the agency is preparing at the request of the House Ways and Means Committee on the sanctions.
A DIPLOMAT
Fernando Remírez, Cuba's highest ranking diplomat in the United States, claimed the embargo has "a dramatic impact on the living standards of the Cuban people'' that results in shortages of food and medicine.
Remírez contended the embargo has caused $300 billion in economic damages and monetary compensation for human suffering.
Cuba rarely testifies at U.S. government hearings, and Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Díaz-Balart, Republican members of Congress from Miami, complained that Remírez had been invited to speak.
"Officials of this regime customarily manipulate the facts and, history has shown, systematically violate the rule of law by acting against internationally legal standards,'' Ros-Lehtinen said.
CASTRO
Díaz-Balart maintained that "Castro's government does not present an intelligent nor ethical investment environment.''
Dennis Hays, the executive vice president of the Cuban American National Foundation, said the high-profile hearing on the embargo served as a "distraction'' from Cuba's human rights record.
The ITC hearings were requested by the head of the Ways and Means panel, Rep. Bill Archer, R-Texas, at the behest of Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York, the senior Democrat on the powerful panel and a longtime critic of U.S. sanctions against Cuba.
"The logic that convinced America, Congress and the administration that we need to trade with China and Vietnam applies also to Cuba,'' Rangel said. The Senate voted Tuesday to give China preferential trading status.
THE CONTROVERSY
Held as Congress debates easing restrictions on the sale of food and medicine to Cuba, the hearings are aimed at helping the ITC compile a report, to be submitted to Congress in February, on the embargo's economic impact on U.S. businesses and Cuba's foreign investors and people.
But the controversy Cuba stirs forced ITC commissioners to repeatedly ask witnesses to limit themselves to economic, not political, discussions of the embargo.
"Most of your answers are directed at whether sanctions serve a political purpose, which is an interesting question. But that's not what we're charged with,'' Commissioner Jennifer Hillman said.
Trading with Cuba was portrayed as the best way to undermine Fidel Castro's government while helping U.S. businesses and lifting living standards of ordinary Cubans.
But embargo supporters maintained that Cuba's unpredictable regulatory system and lack of cash would make it an poor trading partner. They also said that lifting sanctions would only shore up Castro's government and increase repression on the island.
"Unilateral lifting of the embargo now will condemn the Cuban people to a longer dictatorship and will prevent a rapid transformation of Cuba into a free and democratic system,'' said Jaime Suchlicki of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami.
LARGEST MARKET
Richard Bell of the USA Rice Federation said Cuba has imported $3.1 billion worth of rice since 1962 and could once again become the largest market for U.S. rice if the embargo were lifted. "The only real winners as a result of our Cuban trade sanctions are the suppliers of lower quality
rice elsewhere in the world,'' Bell said. "The big losers are the U.S. rice industry and the Cuban consumer.''
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