The Miami Herald
Family seeks to avenge execution by suing Cuba
David Green. dgreen@herald.com. Published Saturday,
December 1, 2001
Three years ago, Bonnie Anderson trekked to the shabby graveyard in Pinar
Del Rio, Cuba, where her father lay buried. His grave was gone.
That was just the latest in a series of outrages the Castro government
committed against her family, Anderson says.
First, a Cuban firing squad shot her father, Howard F. Anderson, in 1961
after the government convicted him of smuggling arms to anti-Castro groups. Then
the Castro regime refused to ship home his body. Then his remains were dug up
and thrown out.
After 40 years of grief, her family is seeking redress in court: On Friday
morning the Andersons filed a wrongful death civil lawsuit against the Cuban
government.
The suit -- one of a growing number against foreign governments that the
United States says sponsor terrorism -- alleges the Castro government violated
its own laws by prosecuting Anderson in a sham trial. The regime executed him
for an offense that under Cuban law ordinarily carried a maximum of nine years
in prison, the suit says.
That constituted a terrorist act, the suit asserts, and the Cuban government
should pay Anderson's widow and her children damages.
The Cuban Interest Section in Washington, D.C., refused to comment Friday.
The Anti-Terrorism Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1996 allows victims to
sue foreign countries for civil damages in U.S. courts. However, the nations
must be classified by the State Department as sponsors of terrorism -- as Cuba
is.
Legal experts say the Andersons can win. The Cuban government most likely
won't show up to defend itself, experts say, granting the Andersons an automatic
legal victory.
"The trick is collecting the money,'' says Joel Perwin, an attorney who
represented the relatives of three Brothers to the Rescue pilots shot down over
international waters in 1996.
The relatives sued the Castro government in federal civil court in Miami. A
judge eventually awarded them more than $90 million from funds frozen by the
United States since the Cuban trade embargo in the early 1960s.
Whether the Andersons see such largess, the family says, is not the point.
"Whatever comes out of this,'' said Anderson's son, Gary, 55, "I'll
finally have a chance to stand up and say, 'Fidel mato a mi papa' '' -- Fidel
killed my father.
WORLD UNRAVELS
Howard Anderson moved his wife and, at the time, his only child to Cuba in
1947. He ran a small string of family-owned gas stations, factories and a Jeep
distributorship there.
Tall and blond, Anderson was an avid fisherman. Sepia-toned photos show him
in a small boat and frolicking on the beach with his young wife.
But their world began to unravel when Castro took power in 1959. The
political atmosphere turned turbulent. Castro spewed hours of anti-American
vitriol in marathon speeches.
Anderson temporarily moved his wife and four children to a Miami hotel. But
he returned to Havana to tend to his businesses. In March 1961, military agents
arrested him on charges of smuggling arms into Cuba.
His family later learned that he was indeed part of the anti-Castro
struggle.
"He was not a paid CIA agent,'' Bonnie Anderson told the Herald in
1991. "He did favors for the CIA. He carried messages back and forth. He
brought in radios. Many people in the American colony down there were active in
helping American intelligence gather information and also providing assistance
to the underground.''
Anderson's two-day trial started on April 17. To his misfortune, the
CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion was launched the same day.
As the military tribunal detailed its accusations against Anderson, air-raid
sirens wailed in the background. Anti-aircraft guns boomed. With the invasion
underway, anti-American hysteria seeped into the courtroom, according to trial
transcripts and observer accounts.
"The prosecutor stood up on the table and shouted things like, 'Death
to the American!' '' Fernando Zulueta, the Andersons' attorney, says.
SENTENCED TO DEATH
Within hours the tribunal sentenced him to death.
As Anderson sat in his cell after the verdict, he penned a letter to his
family.
"I find myself quite calm and find that I am not in the least afraid or
nervous,'' he wrote. "I hope and pray that you will forgive me for the
troubles that I have caused you in the past and especially this present big
one.''
Shortly before dawn on April 19, soldiers got him from his cell, led him
outside and offered him a blindfold. He refused.
Those watching from the windows of nearby cells remembered hearing Anderson
whistle as the firing squad took aim.
In the years since his death, his family has moved on. His widow remarried.
His daughter, Bonnie, became a journalist -- writing a lengthy account for the
Herald of her 1978 pilgrimage to her father's grave.
The city of Miami named a small street in Flagami as Howard F. Anderson Way.
But the wound his death caused his family has never quite healed. The
lawsuit, the Anderson family says, is an attempt to address a grief they have
been nursing for 40 years.
"It brings back memories . . .'' said his widow, Dorothy Anderson
McCarthy, 79, of Pompano Beach, wiping away tears. "I've waited a long
time. I think we're finally getting justice.''
Related
information
Executions and deaths
after 1959 / Aguada de Pasajeros
Loss of Life Resulting from
the Cuban Revolution
Human
rights group claims executions on rise in Cuba / CNN
CUBA: A worrying
increase in the use of the death penalty / Amnesty International
Cuba: Death
penalty / Human Rights Watch
Civil Rights - Death Penalty
in Cuba / Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba
Statement by
the Presidency on behalf of the European Union on Cuba / European Union
Report Card On Human Rights / CBS
Report on Cuba
Death Penalty Dialogue / www.ocf.berkeley.edu/
Desperate Cubans at mercy of smugglers, U.S. says
Published Saturday, December 1, 2001. By Gail
Epstein-Nieves, Luisa Yanez And Jennifer Babson. jbabson@herald.com
KEY WEST -- For Jorge "Bombino'' Aleman and the six men who helped him
smuggle 99 migrants in at least five trips across the Florida Straits, federal
agents say, the profits were handsome and the cargo -- Cubans desperate to reach
the United States -- expendable.
Then a female passenger on one of their trips died, and federal agents began
an investigation that would put Aleman out of business and under arrest.
Folded into a 187-count indictment against the seven men is the outline of a
criminal smuggling organization in which migrants were at the mercy of men whose
primary concern seemed to be collecting the $8,000-a-head payments they charged
Miami relatives.
Grimfaced and manacled, Aleman and five of his accused fellow smugglers
faced a federal court magistrate Friday.
A Key West grand jury indicted Aleman and another man for the death of Cira
Rodriguez and slapped 186 other counts on Aleman and various other smugglers for
illegally transporting 99 Cubans to the Keys between October 1999 and June 2001
for money. Aleman, 36, and Gaspar Coll Gonzalez, 32, could face the death
penalty if convicted in Rodriguez's death.
NO BOND FOR 2
U.S. Magistrate John O'Sullivan declined to grant bond for Aleman and Coll.
O'Sullivan set $100,000 bond for four defendants who solely face smuggling
charges -- Noel Ruiz-Perez, 32; Juan Raul Garcia, 35; Angel Arguelles, 34, and
Arturo Noa-Marrero, 38.
Federal authorities have yet to take the seventh man, Yoel Gonzalez-Acosta,
into custody.
For federal agents, the 10-month investigation into Aleman and his
associates became a maddening mystery that took them from Anguilla Cay, where
they dug for Rodriguez's body in vain, to Cuba last October. Interviews with
sources familiar with the investigation and material contained in the
indictments detail five smuggling incidents:
The Angelfish Creek Load: On Oct. 17, 1999, Jorge Aleman, Yoel
Gonzalez-Acosta and Noel Ruiz-Perez picked up nine Cubans, four of them
children, in a 26-foot Stingray boat from the Cayo Sal area in the Bahamas. The
group was dropped off at Angelfish Creek in Key Largo.
The Indian Key Load: On Feb. 20, 2000, Aleman and Juan Raul Garcia, picked
up 19 Cubans, including one boy, from the Boca de Sagua area of Cuba and
transported them to the shore of Indian Key in Monroe County.
The Abandoned Boat Load: On April 28, 2000, Aleman and Angel Arguelles
transported 29 Cubans, including five children, to the area of Burgundy Drive in
Key Largo using a 32-foot Condor speedboat. Aleman and Arguelles abandoned the
boat near the Blue Water Trailer Park in Key Largo.
The Anguilla Cay Incident: On Jan. 14, 2001, Aleman and Gaspar Coll
Gonzalez picked up 22 Cubans from a remote stretch along Cuba's Villa Clara
province in a 26-foot Powerline boat. As Cuban authorities began to chase,
Aleman threw seven passengers into the water to slow his pursuers. The remaining
15 -- including Cira Rodriguez, who was unconscious after sustaining a head
injury during the trip -- were left on Anguilla Cay in the Bahamas to await
another boat that was to take them to the U.S. Rodriguez died. After running out
of food and water, the rest of the group -- including a young girl -- survived
on cactus and snails. About five days after they were left on the island, "unidentified
co-conspirators'' of Aleman's picked them up in a speedboat and took them to Key
Largo. Rodriguez was left buried in the Bahamas.
The Tavernier Load: On June 1, 2001, Aleman and Arturo Noa-Marrero took a
30-foot Condor boat to Cay Sal Bank in the Bahamas, a frequent transit point for
smugglers. Three days later, Aleman transported 28 Cuban migrants, two of them
boys, to Tavernier.
Juan Raul Garcia, who was named in the Indian Key incident, has had a brush
with U.S. authorities before. He was caught by the Coast Guard three years ago
with 19 smuggled Cubans aboard his pleasure cruiser.
Garcia wasn't prosecuted, federal sources said, because his passengers were
either friends or relatives. Prosecutors concluded the case would be difficult
to try in Miami, where many residents are immigrants themselves or have helped
spirit family out of Cuba.
The Coast Guard returned 17 of Garcia's passengers to Cuba within days. Two
others, his sister Marialena Garcia and her infant daughter, were taken to a
hospital in Key West after the baby developed a high fever. They were allowed to
remain in the U.S.
SISTER IN COURT
On Friday, the same sister who was rescued on the seas accompanied Garcia's
wife, Maria Gonzalez Garcia, 29, to the courthouse for Garcia's hearing.
"We received a phone call that his family was lost,'' Garcia's wife
recounted about the 1998 incident. "He took the boat and found them at sea.
He's been reporting to immigration every month and everything has been fine, but
now they're starting this B.S. again.''
Juan Raul Garcia had a boat then. Authorities seized it even though they
didn't charge him.
"They should go find something else to do,'' Garcia's wife said. "He's
working, he's with his family, with his children. I have a 3-year-old and a
5-year-old at home. Today my son, Josue, woke up asking where his father was to
take him to school.''
Gonzalez Garcia insisted that her husband has "nothing to do with'' the
charges lodged against him.
"I only know Bombino,'' she said, referring to Aleman. "He's a
friend of ours, but my husband has nothing to do with his problem.''
VIOLENT PAST?
Aleman -- who described himself in court as a self-employed boat mechanic
with no savings -- may have had a violent past, according to a woman who said
she was his landlord until sometime this summer.
Ana Maria Reitor, 67, Aleman's former landlady in Leisure City, said federal
agents knocked on her door in recent weeks inquiring about her former tenant.
The agents told Reitor that Aleman had shot someone on her property last summer
in a dispute over money he believed he was owed for smuggling Cuban migrants,
she said.
"The agents said that a man with relatives in Cuba had visited Aleman
here, in the back apartment he rented, and that they had argued about money and
that Aleman got mad because the man would not pay him and he shot him in the
shoulder,'' she said.
Reitor said that her daughter and son-in-law, who were at home when the
alleged incident occurred, didn't hear anything unusual.
Aleman lived in Reitor's one-bedroom apartment with his wife, Ania, a
beautician, and her teenage son from another marriage, according to Reitor.
CAMOUFLAGE OUTFITS
Aleman, a short, burly man who is losing his hair, never told Reitor what he
did for a living, but often wore camouflage-like clothing. "I thought he
was in the Army or something,'' she said.
She also recalls a large, red boat Aleman parked in front of her home only
once.
Said Reitor: "His wife told me she had been saving money to buy a
little house, but that her husband had taken the money and bought the boat.''
Cuban deals reflect storm's impact
Purchases from U.S. suggest hurricane relief needed urgently
By Nancy San Martin. nsanmartin@herald.com. Published
Sunday, December 2, 2001
The amount of food the Cuban government has agreed to purchase in
groundbreaking deals with U.S. vendors -- in addition to the large quantity of
medicine it wants to buy -- suggests that the island was more severely battered
by Hurricane Michelle than it has publicly acknowledged.
The government has not yet provided a detailed accounting of the damage, but
in rice alone, Cuba is purchasing enough of the long grain to feed the entire
population for at least a couple of weeks, or the residents of the hardest hit
regions for several months, experts say.
Bids also are under way to replenish hospital supplies to treat everything
from yeast infections to asthma and even stock up on chemotherapy agents for
cancer patients.
For U.S. farmers and wood and medical suppliers scrambling for contracts,
the deals reached since mid-November have raised hopes that as much as $30
million worth of sales are in the offing, and that this won't be a one-time
endeavor.
EXCITEMENT BUILDING
The delivery of the products will begin as U.S. business leaders prepare to
meet with high-level Cuban officials at a conference in Cancún, Mexico,
in January to discuss trade relations.
``The phone has been ringing off the hook,'' said Paul Golden, who is
organizing the conference in Cancún, scheduled for Jan. 30 to Feb. 2.
``Everybody wants to know if this is a good time to start networking with the
Cubans. It's not really clear whether this is strictly a one-time buy or if both
sides are taking steps, but everybody has a sense that we're building momentum
for change.''
But even as Cubans and Americans shake hands over signed contracts, the
bickering continues between the Cuban government and U.S. antagonists. Last
week, President Fidel Castro led an anti-U.S. rally of about 300,000 people in
Havana to protest U.S. policy, and Cuba remains on the State Department's list
of countries that support terrorist activities.
AN OPENING IN TRADE?
``This is a tug of war between moderates who want an opening [in trade] and
hard-liners both in Cuba and here,'' said Uva de Aragón, assistant
director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.
``I don't think they are going to get very far. I don't see anything there that
is going to make a big difference or have a big impact, but this [sale
agreement] is certainly something to watch.''
Kirby Jones, a consultant for firms interested in doing business with Cuba,
said the deals reached so far are just the beginning. He was in Havana last week
to set up additional chicken contracts and is searching for firms that can
supply medical needs.
``Regardless of the circumstances of why, this is an extraordinary event,''
Jones said. ``It is an exceptional exception. The door is now open. It's like
toothpaste in a tube -- once it's out, it's hard to get it back in.''
MIGRATION ISSUE
Meanwhile, the political climate is sure to heat up again as U.S. and Cuban
officials sit down for another round of migration talks Monday.
Despite the continued animosity between the Cuban government and its
opponents on this side of the Florida Straits, the need for hurricane relief is
rekindling interest in trading with a country that was a strong market for U.S.
goods before Castro came to power in 1959.
The contracts signed so far are set to use the ports of Houston and New
Orleans for shipping. Cuba relied heavily on Texas and Louisiana to import rice
after World War II.
Cuba has already signed a contract for 20,000 metric tons of long-grain
white rice. That is significant, considering that Cuba imports about 80 percent
of the 600,000 metric tons of rice it consumes each year, said Eric Wailes, an
agricultural economist at the University of Arkansas, who has done studies on
Cuba as a potential market for rice.
Cuba has been relying on Vietnam, China and Thailand for its rice. The
400,000 metric tons of rice it imports from these countries is about equal to 20
percent of total U.S. rice exports.
``For the U.S. to get rice in there represents a major breakthrough for the
rice industry,'' Wailes said. ``The U.S. can be a major competitor. Cuba would
become, almost immediately, one of the major markets. U.S. rice industries
should be very excited about this opportunity.''
In addition to rice, other purchases already agreed to by Cuba include an
unspecified amount of wood products and more than 115,500 metric tons of
chicken, wheat flour, yellow corn animal feed, powdered milk, soybeans, cooking
oil, soybean oil and hard red winter wheat, according to the New York-based
U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council.
The supplies are scheduled to begin arriving as early as the middle of this
month, and contracts with at least four companies stretch through February.
MEDICAL PRODUCTS
In addition, Cuba is seeking out U.S. companies to purchase millions of
units of medical products to replenish inventories depleted as a result of
Hurricane Michelle. The products vary from dextrose, used to boost sugar levels,
to cyclophosphamide, a chemotherapeutic agent.
``It sounds like stock is low or this stuff is wiped out,'' said Jeffrey
Bernstein, medical director of the Poison Information Center at Jackson Memorial
Hospital.
"This is all very typical stuff all hospitals would use. They're
clearly stocking a hospital, not a clinic, and probably a pretty big hospital or
several hospitals.''
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald
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