CUBANET ... CUBANEWS

April 24, 2001



Patients say Cuban nurse now living in Miami tortured political prisoners

By Jody A. Benjamin . Staff Writer. Posted April 24 2001 in the The Sun-Sentinel.

As electric current burned through his 22-year-old body, former psychiatric patient Jorge Ferrer curled up on a urine-soaked floor in a vain attempt to blunt the pain.

Other patients couldn't even manage that much. While hospital workers pinned their bodies flat, they clenched their jaws so tight that their teeth broke. Others bit off the tips of their tongues.

Such horrific scenes occurred daily at the Mazorra Mental Hospital in Havana, Cuba, said Ferrer and several former patients at a media conference on Monday in Miami. They alleged that the hospital's head nurse, Heriberto Mederos, tortured them and hundreds of other political prisoners in Cuba before he found a new home in the United States.

"He used to smile while he was doing his job," said victim Jose Ros. Mederos was known in Cuba as El Enfermero (The Nurse).

That Mederos is now a U.S. citizen living in Miami has enraged two Congress members, who on Monday called on the federal government to revoke his citizenship. U.S. Reps. Lincoln Diaz Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen want Mederos stripped of his citizenship, saying he hid his past from INS officials when he became naturalized in 1993.

At the news conference, the two Miami Republicans signed a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft asking him to investigate allegations made by several people who say they are Mederos' victims.

"We have ample evidence that this man was a torturer," said Ros-Lehtinen.

Mederos could not be reached for comment on Monday.

Ros-Lehtinen said Mederos has admitted using electric shock but denied torturing anyone, saying he was following doctors' orders.

Mederos' case is not unique, said Richard Krieger of the Boynton Beach-based International Education Mission. Hundreds of former torturers have moved to the United States to claim the same haven as their former victims, he said.

"This is an American issue that should concern all Americans," said Krieger, whose group is pushing for stronger U.S. action against accused torturers and war criminals.

"Whether it's Mederos or a Rwandan general or the Nazi war criminals, none of them should be here," Krieger said.

Despite the zeal of Mederos' opponents, however, denaturalizing him would not be an easy process, an INS spokesman said.

The evidence of his alleged crimes would first have to be compelling enough to convince the district director to reopen the eight-year-old naturalization case, a fairly rare occurrence, spokesman Bill Strassberger said. And if the district director ruled against Mederos, he could appeal.

"It is a difficult process to denaturalize somebody," Strassberger said. "There is a lot of due process involved. We cannot do it automatically. They are going to have to meet serious standards of evidence for this to go forward."

Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz Balart are convinced they have that evidence.

One by one on Monday, several of their Miami constituents related horrific tales of abuse. Manuel Hernandez wiped tears from his eyes and jabbed his finger angrily in the air as he blamed Mederos for torturing his younger brother, Ramon, who was held at Mazorra for opposing the government.

"By the time he left jail, he didn't have a single hair on his head," Hernandez said. His brother came to the United States during the Mariel boatlift of 1980, contracted Lou Gehrig's disease and died.

"Anything they can do to [Mederos] will not be sufficient," said Hernandez. "He killed my younger brother."

To have become a citizen, Mederos must have withheld facts from immigration officials, Ros-Lehtinen said.

One question on citizenship application form N400 asks whether the applicant has ever persecuted another person.

"He would have had to have put yes to be truthful, but he must have lied," Ros-Lehtinen said. "Every question on the N400 is material. There is no such thing as an insignificant lie. We believe there is proof enough that an investigation should take place."

Jody A. Benjamin can be reached at jbenjamin@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4530..

Copyright 2001, Sun-Sentinel Co. & South Florida Interactive, Inc.

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