Published in the Miami
Herald
Downed pilots remembered with flight, flowers
By Paul Brinkley-Rogers. pbrinkley-rogers@herald.com.
Published Sunday, February 25, 2001
When the lilies tumbled out of the sky on Saturday at a place Cuban
Americans now call Martyr's Point, there were no hostile MiGs there to blast the
flight of three small Brothers to the Rescue planes out of the sky.
Brothers co-founder José Basulto, at the controls of a Cessna 337,
led the formation, just as he did five years ago when rockets knocked down two
other planes of the same kind. Killed were his friends, Carlos Alberto Costa and
Pablo Morales, both 29, Mario de la Peña, 24, and Armando Alejandre, 45.
Radio traffic from Havana airport officials crackled over his headset as he
circled the spot, reciting a name of each of "our martyrs'' as he hurled
bouquets onto a glistening sea. The gleaming white Coast Guard cutter Legare was
on station below in international waters, its radar probing the skies for any
fighter jets from Cuban military fields near Havana, just 20 miles to the south.
The anniversary was a day full of sombre theater and tearful emotions for
the 50 Cuban American friends and family members of the lost fliers who gathered
at Opa-locka Airport to watch the planes take off in the early afternoon.
A similar memorial flight has been made every year since the shoot-down, an
act that dragged U.S.-Cuba relations to a new low and resulted in legislation
toughening the decades-old embargo. In October, the Clinton administration
agreed to release $58 million in frozen Cuban assets as part of a court-ordered
award of more than $100 million to the family members of the four pilots.
Eva Barbas, 75, the silver-haired mother of Morales, came with four red silk
roses -- one for each of the dead -- which also were dropped at the site.
Prayers were offered.
Nine-year-old Reynaldo "R.J.'' Martín, son of Ray Martín,
who was a crew member on one of Saturday's group of aircraft, hugged his mother,
Maria, and wept. She said he worried about his dad's safety.
LAST-MINUTE RULING
The flight came only hours after the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in
Atlanta ruled that Basulto could make the flight.
Randall Marshall, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union in
Florida, said the court stayed a gag order issued by U.S. District Judge Joan
Lenard that could have grounded Basulto, a witness in the ongoing Cuban spy case
in Miami that Lenard is hearing. In question was whether Basulto had violated
Lenard's order by announcing that he planned to participate in Saturday's
airborne memorial.
The lead defendant in the spy case, Gerardo Hernández, is
specifically charged with conspiracy to commit murder by allegedly giving Cuba
the flight plan of the Brothers planes.
Also flying Saturday were Aurelio Hurtado De Mendoza, who flew with Basulto,
and Billy Schuss, Raul Martínez and Guillermo Lares, an Argentine
volunteer.
Two Federal Aviation Administration inspectors, Daniel Castro and Mark
Hemmerle, checked out the planes and passed all three. They stood to one side to
watch the aircraft take off and head west toward the Everglades, and then south
to Flamingo and the Florida Keys.
OVER THE STRAITS
A few minutes out over the Straits of Florida, as they left airspace
controlled by Miami and entered airspace controlled by Cuba, the pilots tried
radioing Havana Centro -- Havana air traffic control. Sometimes when Brothers to
the Rescue planes announce themselves the Cubans reply, and sometimes they do
not, Basulto said.
But on Saturday, Havana was quick to acknowledge the flight. The controller
was also quick to warn the pilots that they were entering a zona peligroso -- a
danger zone.
Basulto said Havana claims the zone is used by Cuban military aircraft for
training, "but they don't have much money nowadays, and so their planes
don't fly much. Nowadays, the danger zone is for us.''
REPEATED WARNINGS
Both Basulto and his copilot kept a watchful look at the horizon for hostile
aircraft. A haze obscured the Cuban coast, and clouds also interfered with
visibility. But other than the repeated warnings from Havana -- very much like
the warnings issued five years ago before the missiles were fired -- no threat
materialized.
The aircraft circled at 500 feet over Martyr's Point.
Basulto recited the names of the dead fliers over the radio, meaning that
the Havana controllers got the message, too. The operator admonished him for
using the radio frequency -- also used by commercial airliners landing at
Havana's Jose Martí International Airport -- for the ceremony.
But Havana was courteous, even after Basulto declared that his friends had
been "murdered'' and appealed for "justice for this crime.''
Bringing Fidel Castro and other Cuban officials to trial for the death of
the pilots is an aim of both Basulto and the relatives.
Before the fight took off, Basulto said Gov. Jeb Bush -- who was in Miami on
Saturday to talk with members of the Cuban community -- had agreed to deliver a
letter from Eva Barbas to the governor's brother, President Bush. The letter, he
said, asks the president to indict the Cuban leader, who Basulto claims gave the
order to shoot down the planes.
Cuban exile leaders air concerns with Gov. Bush
By Lila Arzua. larzua@herald.com. Published Sunday,
February 25, 2001.
Over cups of café cubano, Gov. Jeb Bush met with dozens of Cuban
exile leaders on Saturday in Little Havana, listening to their concerns about
the embargo, human rights and U.S. policy toward the island nation.
"First, I am here to give thanks; many people here worked hard for my
brother,'' he said, referring to the strong Cuban-American support George W.
Bush received in the presidential election. After frequent policy disagreements
with the Clinton administration, the exile leaders said they are looking forward
to working with the Bush presidency.
Jorge Mas, chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation, asked that
opposition groups in Cuba be funded by the U.S. government.
"In the struggle for freedom, people want a proactive, not reactive,
policy. I do, too,'' Bush said. The gathering seemed to assuage some concerns
that the Cuban exile agenda might get lost in the maze of other interest groups.
Evidence hints of ambush in attack on Brothers plane
'What is clear from the trial is that Brothers to the Rescue were set
up.' - Joe Garcia, Executive director, CANF
By Alfonso Chardy. achardy@herald.com. Published Saturday,
February 24, 2001.
Five years after the downing of two Brothers to the Rescue planes by a Cuban
MiG, evidence is emerging in a Miami courtroom suggesting the shoot-down was no
crime of opportunity, but part of a carefully plotted trap meant to discredit
and destroy the anti-Castro group.
Today marks the fifth anniversary of the shoot-down -- a moment that comes
just as testimony in the Cuban spy trial begins to underscore the deep
suspicions Castro foes in Miami long harbored about Cuban government intentions.
Documents submitted by federal prosecutors as evidence, like once-secret
computer and radio messages between the alleged spies and their Havana handlers,
chronicle efforts by Havana's agents to sabotage Brothers to the Rescue and pave
the way for an ambush in which two Brothers pilots and two rafter spotters were
killed.
CONSPIRACY?
In fact, U.S. prosecutors say, evidence points to a conspiracy involving
Havana and one of the alleged spies to set up the Brothers pilots.
The charge also seems to validate a theory initially floated by Brothers
leader José Basulto days after the shoot-down that the event was the
outcome of a Cuban covert operation to connect Brothers to anti-Castro
terrorism. According to Basulto, Cuba had planned to claim that the Brothers
planes had been shot down while en route to an airstrike on Cuba.
Basulto is a witness in the trial in which five alleged Cuban spies are
fighting charges of trying to infiltrate U.S. military installations and Cuban
exile organizations including Brothers to the Rescue for the purpose of harming
U.S. national security.
"What is clear from the trial is that Brothers to the Rescue were set
up and that murder was committed,'' said Joe Garcia, executive director of the
Cuban American National Foundation, which also was allegedly targeted by the spy
suspects. "The trial shows an ongoing effort by the Cuban government to
create dissension and strife among those who fight for freedom and democracy for
Cuba.''
FIGHTING TERROR
The accused spies claim they were merely working to protect their homeland
from acts of terrorism by the Brothers.
One of the defendants, Gerardo Hernández, is charged with conspiracy
to commit murder in the shoot-down. Attorneys for Hernández and his
co-defendants do not dispute that their clients worked for the Cuban government.
But they told jurors that the men spied on military installations and
infiltrated exile groups to protect Cuba -- not to compromise national security.
One of Havana's spies inside Brothers, Juan Pablo Roque, reported to one of
his Cuban handlers and the FBI that Basulto had mentioned plans to manufacture a
"secret weapon'' for delivery to island-based anti-Castro foes, according
to prosecution evidence. The court document says neither Cuba nor the FBI took
the report seriously.
Most of the evidence submitted by the prosecution portrays Brothers to the
Rescue as a target for the Cuban government.
The recently declassified computer and radio messages between the alleged
spies and their Havana handlers, for example, detail elaborate efforts to set up
Brothers for the shoot-down -- including arrangements for Roque's secret return
to Cuba on the eve of the shoot-down.
SIMILAR TO THEORY
The operation laid out in the messages resembles Basulto's theory that Cuba
shot down the Brothers planes to smear the group's reputation. Basulto says Cuba
had planned to present Roque, the infiltrated Brothers pilot, as sole shoot-down
survivor and have him describe details of the "terrorist'' mission.
The only reason the plot failed, Basulto said, is that he survived the
shoot-down by turning off his plane's transponder and flying into a cloud to
evade a pursuing MiG.
Roque disappeared from Miami on the eve of the Brothers' fateful flight --
reappearing in Havana after the shoot-down and disclosing that he had
infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue. Roque is now a fugitive in the spy case.
As it unfolds, evidence emerging suggests that Cuba may have dispatched
spies to South Florida after concluding that Washington was not taking seriously
its demands to crack down on exile "terrorists'' and incursions into Cuban
airspace by Brothers planes.
CUBAN FEARS
The creation of Brothers to the Rescue in early 1991 and Basulto's role in
the group played a major part in Havana's fears. Many exiles who had received
paramilitary training in the early 1960s when the CIA financed the ill-fated Bay
of Pigs invasion went into action again in the 1990s.
Some sponsored raids against the Cuban coast. Others staged attacks at
tourist sites. Still others opted for nonviolent protests such as pro-democracy
flotillas -- and among organizers of the first flotilla on May 20,1990 was
Basulto -- a Bay of Pigs veteran.
Cuba's suspicions about the organization intensified and soon thereafter,
the suspected spies were deployed to South Florida.
One of the first to arrive was René González, now a trial
defendant, who landed at Boca Chica Naval Air Station in 1990 aboard a stolen
crop duster.
CLOSE TABS TO HAVANA
One of González's targets was Brothers to the Rescue which he
successfully infiltrated, becoming one of its pilots. Another spy suspect,
Roque, also penetrated the group and became a pilot as well. Their code names
were Castor, for González, and Germán for Roque.
Roque and González kept close tabs on Brothers and reported on the
group to Havana -- and the FBI.
Both Roque and González often gave the FBI information, but never
told the agency they were also Havana's men in Miami or that Havana was
preparing some sort of retaliation against the group, according to memos
confiscated by the FBI after their arrest.
Radio messages from Havana, submitted as evidence, indicate Cuba began
planning retaliation in December 1995 or January 1996 to deter further
incursions of Cuban airspace by Brothers planes.
By Jan. 29, the messages show, Cuba had approved Operation Scorpion -- the
official response against Brothers.
REPEATED WARNINGS
In February 1996, Havana repeatedly warned González and other agents
to avoid flying Brothers planes in the Florida Straits -- especially between
Feb. 24 to Feb. 27.
Days after those warnings, pilots Carlos Costa and Mario de la Peña
and rafter spotters Armando Alejandre and Pablo Morales were killed when a Cuban
MiG rocketed their unarmed Cessnas as they flew over the Florida Straits.
Their deaths will be commemorated today with a memorial flyover by Basulto
and other Brothers pilots over the shoot-down area.
Suspect in plot to kill Castro is hospitalized
Herald Staff Report. Published Saturday, February 24, 2001.
Longtime anti-Castro warrior Luis Posada Carriles was hospitalized late
Thursday night after he fainted in the Panama jail cell where he's being held in
connection with an alleged plot to kill the Cuban leader, officials here said.
The 73-year-old Carriles, who has a history of heart trouble and high blood
pressure, is in stable condition, said officials at Panama City's Santo Tomas
Hospital.
Posada Carriles and three Cuban-American men from Miami were arrested in
Panama in November on suspicion of plotting to kill Fidel Castro with a car bomb
during a summit of Latin American leaders.
Like Posada Carriles, the other three men -- Guillermo Novo, Gaspar Jiménez
and Pedro Remón -- are all veterans of numerous anti-Castro plots during
the past four decades.
None of the men has been formally charged with anything, but they're being
held while Panama studies an extradition request from Cuba.
Panamanian police believe the four men planned to detonate a car bomb as
Castro's motorcade passed. A Panamanian man who worked as their driver led
police to a buried suitcase of plastic explosives.
Posada Carriles faces a death sentence in Cuba, handed down after a trial in
absentia during the 1970s for the bombing of a Cuban airliner. Castro, in asking
for extradition, promised Posada wouldn't be executed.
Mother indicted for taking son to Cuba
Woman who had joint custody of child is fugitive facing charge of
kidnapping
By Marika Lynch And Alfonso Chardy. mlynch@herald.com.
Published Saturday, February 24, 2001.
A federal grand jury indicted a Key Largo woman Friday on an international
parental kidnapping charge for spiriting her 5-year-old, American-born son to
Cuba in November.
Arletis Blanco, 29, deprived her ex-husband of joint custody over their
kindergartner, Jonathon, when she took the boy across the Florida Straits in a
21-foot Mako boat and began living with her boyfriend's family in Pinar del Rio,
U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis said.
"I am proud to say that the law and the best interests of the child are
what's at stake here, and we will pursue prosecution,'' Lewis said from the
steps of downtown Miami's federal courthouse.
That may be difficult. Friday, Blanco likely became U.S. fugitive No. 92 in
Cuba. She joins a long list of American fugitives living on the island that
includes convicted and wanted aircraft hijackers, bombers and murderers.
The Cuban government, which does not have an extradition treaty with the
United States, hasn't returned one suspect since Fidel Castro took power.
Lewis acknowledged that tenuous relations between the two countries
complicated any effort to bring Blanco to trial and Jonathon to the United
States. The case has often been compared to that of Elián González,
but Lewis said the U.S. courts' decision to send Elián back doesn't
increase the odds that Cuba will return Jonathon.
"We are working with the State Department to try and find out what our
options are,'' Lewis said, declining to comment further. He said he did not know
if U.S. diplomats in Havana had tried to contact the Cuban government about
Blanco's return.
But the news barely lifted the spirits of father Jon Colombini, who has
vowed to launch an international custody battle for the boy similar to the one
fought over Elián.
"I can always hope, but I don't know what this is going to do for us,''
said Colombini, who said he talks to his son about once a week for as long as
the shaky phone connections permit.
Jonathon, who attended Islamorada's Plantation Key School, is doing well but
misses the United States and trips to the Alligator Farm with his family, his
father said.
Colombini and his Clearwater attorney, Michael Berry, who specializes in
international abduction cases, asked the U.S. attorney's office to hold off on
charges until they returned from a December trip to Cuba, where they talked to
island officials and the boy's mother about Jonathon's return. Blanco wouldn't
budge.
She told the Communist Party daily Granma she left the United States because
she wanted a better life for her son and she had uncovered an anti-Castro plot
developed by her former boss. Blanco said she fled, fearing for her life. Her
employer has denied her story.
When Colombini and Berry arrived in Cuba, "basically she spit in our
face,'' Berry said. "So we requested the U.S. attorney to follow through,
and they did.''
AN APPEAL IN CUBA
Colombini also plans to appeal to the Cuban Supreme Court, Berry said, and
is planning another trip to the island in March. A Monroe County circuit judge
has given Colombini full custody of Jonathon.
"This can build new bridges between the judiciaries of the United
States and Cuba, and further our countries to progress in international
understanding,'' Berry said.
Experts on U.S. policy toward Cuba said, however, the indictment will
pressure the Castro regime to return the woman and her child to the United
States -- but that Cuba will probably exact a diplomatic or political price.
"Not that Cuba is a slave to consistency, but in this case they are
going to have a harder time resisting when the United States makes the case to
return the woman to face charges,'' said Richard Nuccio, a special advisor to
former President Clinton for Cuba who is now director of the Pell Center at
Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I.
But Nuccio said Cuba likely will try first to engage the United States in
protracted negotiations and attempt to elicit something in return.
"I would think the Cubans will eventually return her, but they will
make us first jump through hoops and require some quid pro quo,'' Nuccio said.
Havana's current interest, he said, is persuading the United States to overturn
the Cuban Adjustment Act that allows Cuban refugees to stay after landing on
U.S. shores.
Antonio Jorge, professor of economics and international relations at Florida
International University, said that giving in to any U.S. demand will be
difficult for Havana.
"Given the nature of the Castro regime, the way they always portray
themselves as not afraid of the United States and able to resist U.S. pressures,
not give an inch, returning the woman and the child could hurt Castro's image of
radical defiance of the United States,'' Jorge said.
Groups that advocated Elián González's return to Cuba should
pressure Castro on this case, said Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban
American National Foundation.
SEEKING SUPPORT
"I hope that the World Council of Churches and other groups that
advocated with such reckless abandon family rights will now demand the father's
right to have his son back,'' Garcia said.
If Blanco returns, she faces other legal troubles. She is wanted on a grand
theft charge in Monroe County for allegedly stealing close to $150,000 from her
former employer, McKenzie Petroleum, where she was an office manager.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 