Published in the Miami
Herald
Family's journey ends in jail
Liz Balmaseda. Published Monday, June 11, 2001
The threatening phone calls were frequent and ominously detailed, says the
Cuban refugee mother. The callers managed to reach her in Honduras, where she
and her family had taken refuge after spending nearly two years at the U.S.
Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.The callers said they were going to abduct
her 5-year-old daughter.Arelys Valladares Prado, a 35-year-old mother of two
whose family has endured a lengthy odyssey in search of asylum, wasn't sure if
the callers were serious. But she says she took the calls as a warning. She kept
her daughters, age 5 and 15, close to her at all times in the family's small
apartment on Tegucigalpa's pedestrian mall.When the calls intensified, she says,
Valladares Prado realized hers was a family without a country. Where could she
turn? Not to the U.S. government, which detained her, her husband and daughters
in Guantanamo during merciless months before dumping them in Honduras. Not to
the Honduran authorities, whom she says gave her no help in the matter. And
certainly not to the homeland she fled for political reasons -- "Clearly,
Cuba doesn't want us,'' she says.
A TRIP NORTH So she turned to her husband, Osvaldo Valdivia, with a
desperate idea: Let's go to Mexico.On May 15, she and her husband, a 39-year-old
mechanic, rounded up their daughters and boarded a bus with another Cuban
refugee family, the Pupo Hernandezes. They headed north toward Guatemala and
then Mexico.There, the difficult trek of Valladares Prado's family, which I have
documented in this column since January, took a harrowing turn. After days of
exhausting travel and little food, they reached a Mexican town where Valladares
Prado bought some supplies for her children.But apparently, something was wrong
with the milk she bought. Her youngest daughter went into convulsions."She
vomited like 18 times. At one point, she stopped breathing,'' recounts the
mother. "We took her to a clinic right there in the town. It was terrible
-- we almost lost her.''When her little girl was stabilized, her family
continued the trek toward the capital. But on May 29, Mexican immigration
officials stopped their bus in Chiapas and asked the passengers for documents.
They arrested Valladares Prado, her husband and daughters and transported them
to an immigration detention center in Mexico City.
STILL HOPEFUL Traveling separately, the other refugee family, which includes
two sons, age 11 and 12, was also detained, on a separate bus.Now Valladares
Prado sits in a cell with her daughters and five other refugees, separated from
her husband, who is detained in another wing.Still hoping for asylum in a
country where her family can feel safe to start over again, she has applied to
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for protection as a political
exile.Speaking from the detention center by phone Sunday, she said she awaits a
response on her request this week. Months after the U.S. government found her
claim of persecution to be credible, she is still seeking shelter.In the
meantime, she faces another kind of scrutiny from her youngest daughter,
Daylenis Valdivia. In Guantanamo, the little girl had shown signs of emotional
trauma. She was terrified of uniformed guards, says her mother. Valladares Prado
promised her things would be different when they left the naval base."But
now she looks at me and tells me, 'You lied to me, Mami. The police is still
here,' '' says the mother. "I don't know what I can tell her anymore. She
is very angry.''
Juror: Spy trial nearly stalled
Alternate learned about one holdout
By Luisa Yanez. lyanez@herald.com.
The Miami federal jury that convicted five Cuban spies came close to a
hopeless deadlock, an alternate juror told The Herald on Sunday.
Miguel Torroba said that one juror held out against finding the lead
defendant guilty of murder conspiracy in the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown.
"They got that verdict at the last minute,'' said Torroba, offering the
first glimpse of what transpired last week as the 12 jurors deliberated for five
days.
"Only one juror wasn't sure of the murder charge,'' he said.
Torroba, 46, said he learned of the jury discord in e-mail exchanges with
the foreman over the weekend. Torroba and two other alternates were dismissed
from jury duty on Monday, as deliberations began.
"He wasn't 100 percent sure,'' Torroba said of the dissenting juror,
whom he would identify only as male.
The sticking point, he added, was whether spy master Gerardo Hernández
played a role in the 1996 shootdown of four Brothers fliers by Cuban MiG fighter
jets.
Hernández was alleged to have passed on crucial information to
handlers on the island about Brothers' flight plans, a charge defense attorneys
denied. Hernández was the only one of the defendants charged in
connection to the deaths of Armando Alejandre Jr., Carlos A. Costa, Mario de la
Peña and Pablo Morales.
The unconvinced juror held firm for most of Friday as the 11 others waited,
Torroba learned.
"I was told that the group was getting ready to go back inside the
courtroom and tell the judge they were deadlocked,'' said Torroba, a
self-employed furniture maker from northeast Miami-Dade.
Then, the tide changed in the jury room. The juror joined the others and
they handed down all guilty verdicts, reached in a Miami federal courtroom.
Torroba would not reveal what the foreman told him that persuaded the juror to
change his mind.
The five defendants heard the verdicts at 5:09 p.m. in a packed courtroom.
Torroba said all jurors seemed to be in agreement on convicting on 22
espionage-related counts but that they disagreed on the one count of conspiracy
to commit murder against Hernández.
That count, said Torroba, proved troublesome for some jurors, unconvinced by
the evidence presented by federal prosecutors during the six-month trial.
The juror that held out till the last moment was not alone in wavering on
the murder count, Torroba was told. At the start of deliberations, at least
another juror had doubts about the murder-related charge, Torroba said.
But that unidentified juror eventually relented.
"Whoever held out, did not hold out,'' said Jack Blumenfeld, one of the
defense attorneys. "It ultimately didn't change the final outcome.''
But Blumenfeld added he wasn't surprised the conspiracy to commit murder
charge against Hernández was troublesome. "There was no evidence
presented in trial to support that he passed any flight information.''
Blumenfeld said he has no idea who the dissenting juror might be. "At
the end, when they were reading the verdicts, I didn't look at the jury, so I
can't say if anyone seemed unhappy.''
Assistant U.S. Attorney Caroline Heck Miller, a lead federal prosecutor on
the case, had no comment Sunday on the deliberation dilemma.
How the other jurors made up their mind is a mystery. Many of the 12 jurors
contacted by The Herald over the weekend refused to comment and indicated they
had a pact not to discuss details about their jury room deliberations.
"It was a grueling six months, I'm just glad it's over,'' said juror
Eugene Yagle, 66, who refused further comment.
Wilfred Loperena, 54, another juror, said through a relative he did not want
to talk.
But Torroba, who did not deliberate with the others, was not part of the
pact of silence.
"The judge told us we could talk if we wanted,'' Torroba said on
Sunday. "I hope I'm not doing anything wrong by telling you all this.''
He said his former fellow jurors updated him on the outcome of the trial
because the group had grown close.
"We got along very well,'' Torroba said. "We're thinking of
getting together for a reunion. For me it was like a school year, where you make
friend and then you're sad to say goodbye.''
After months of seeing them everyday, the defendants didn't appear sinister.
"They seemed like nice, regular guys,'' said Torroba, a native of
Venezuela.
The five were among 14 people originally involved as members of La Red
Avispa, the Wasp Network, the biggest Cuban spy ring known to have been
dismantled in the United States.
Hernández's co-defendants, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino,
Fernando González and René González will be sentenced in
early fall. Hernández, Guerrero and Labiñino face maximum
sentences of life in prison. The two Gonzálezes, who are not related,
face maximum penalties of 10 years behind bars.
Groups work to preserve Cuba archives
Paul Brinkley-Rogers. pbrinkley-rogers@herald.com
They are called the Notary Protocols, and to historians and lovers of
ancient manuscripts this vast, moldering record of life in Cuba dating to 1578
is a treasure of knowledge more precious than any hoard of Spanish doubloons.
But the 10 million pages of the protocols -- which could shed light on early
settlement in Spanish Florida and on shipments of Africans sent to the United
States as slaves -- are housed in the non-air-conditioned National Archives of
Cuba in Havana where heat, humidity and insect attacks threaten them.
Their uncertain fate is why an unlikely alliance of book fans, preservation
experts and archivists in the United States has been quietly at work, attempting
to rescue the vast collection of documents relating births, deaths, marriages,
church records, tax receipts and business deals over the centuries.
Jeanne Drewes, an archivist at Michigan State University who helped ship an
entire mobile book repair lab to Havana this month, says the situation with the
supply strapped Cuban archives is grim. "An 82-year-old woman was copying
with a pencil on very bad paper the content of one document to preserve the
intellectual content. It just broke my heart.''
Leading this effort to help -- which transcends the decades of enmity
between the two nations -- are archivists at the University of Florida.
The school signed a contract in March with Archives Director Berarda
Salabarría to start copying the 15.5 linear miles of the protocols,
contained in 6,658 oversize tomos (volumes) and legajos (files) -- onto CD-ROM.
The university still has to raise the $10 million to $15 million for the
project, but it says it has won support from the U.S. government and Florida's
congressional delegation, including those who vigorously oppose Fidel Castro's
government.
Asked whether U.S. Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, a Miami Republican, gave
his endorsement, an aide said Friday he had not. But the congressman did not
block the signing after Florida Rep. Marco Rubio, R-Coral Gables, showed him a
letter in March from UF Provost David Colburn telling him about the project and
saying: "We want to be sure that no one is offended if we pursue this
matter.''
Díaz-Balart, however, fired back in a handwritten note: "My
position is that we should have no relation with any institution of the
dictatorship -- no relation until it is with free Cuba.''
Also trying to assist is a New Orleans-based expert on jazz pioneer Jelly
Roll Morton and several rare-book dealers who have donated repair materials. The
Washington-based Marine Conservation Center, which has been helping Cuba study
its pristine reefs, has been shipping old oak bookcases from the Smithsonian
Institution to the Archives. Experts from Johns Hopkins and Yale universities,
and from the Amherst, Mass.-based Northeast Document Conservation Center, have
visited Havana to offer classes in copying and preservation techniques.
URGE TO PRESERVE
Alfred Lemmon, custodian of the early jazz collection at the Historic New
Orleans Collection, began photocopying the 30,000 pages of the Fondo Floridas
papers at the Archives -- an early record of Spanish settlement on the Gulf
Coast -- in 1994. He said the urge to preserve negates the bad politics between
the two countries.
"You are aware of the political differences by being there in Havana,''
he said. "But when I was with my colleagues [at the Archives] we spoke the
same language -- how to save those items. It just transcended politics.''
Cuba is one of several Latin American countries trying to protect documents
and eager to make use of modern scanning, CD-ROM, microfilm and paper
preservation techniques. In March, the Mexican government asked New York
City-based Marylou Nichols to assemble experts to appraise antique books in the
Mexico National Archives because Mexico's government would like to insure the
collection. Officials in Cartagena, Colombia, also are seeking advice.
Cuba, the U.S. experts say, is committed to making the CD-ROM copies and
even the originals available to scholars. The Notary Protocols, they say, are an
important part of Cuba's patrimony and the Havana government, short on supplies,
has done its best to try to preserve the documents. It regularly fumigates the
1944-vintage Archives building near the waterfront in Old Havana.
Many of the documents have been deteriorating for decades. A letter in the
archives describes how officials were worried about attacks by bugs and mold as
early as 1830.
"The climate in the [four] rooms where the protocols have been placed
on shelves is very similar to rooms in Egypt,'' said John Ingram, director of
UF's P.K. Yonge Florida History Collection. He said the university hopes to get
a pilot project off the ground in January to copy 70,000 pages if it can put
together the more than $300,000 cost.
"The rooms are very hot. It is like the conditions for papyrus. With a
microclimate like that, the protocols could last for years. But they were
assembled from all parts of Cuba where they sometimes were damaged by rain and
insects.''
Some page fragments look like pieces of the Dead Sea scrolls. The ink on
other pages has become nearly illegible. Ingram said that Bruce Chappell, a UF
paleographer (expert in ancient script), will work on the project and help train
both American and Cuban scholars to understand the writing on the pages.
ON SLAVERY
Ingram said African Americans should be especially interested in the trove,
which includes bills of landing for shipments of slaves arriving in Havana. "Havana
was a central embarkation point for a large number of African Americans sent to
Florida and other parts of the U.S.,'' he said.
Historians trying to understand early Florida history from the Spanish era,
which ended in 1821, may also find clues. Most documents from that period housed
in Florida settlements were destroyed by fighting and by the climate, he said.
In addition, Ingram said, "the documents really do open up a window to
many facets of life in Cuba we don't know about.''
They include, he said, wills, inventories, records of baptisms, baptisms,
marriage certificates, and records kept by clergy. But 25 percent of 50 volumes
inspected by UF researchers in March "were in a very precarious state,'' he
said.
CAUTION ESSENTIAL
Michigan State's Drewes -- who has been a key organizer of other efforts to
save the protocols since her days as preservation librarian at Johns Hopkins
University Notary in the mid-1990s -- says the UF team will have to proceed
cautiously when it opens the volumes to photograph them.
"They don't copy very well,'' Drewes said, citing the fact that some
libraries copying old documents in the United States have sliced them apart to
do the task.
She said she witnessed how damaged some of the protocols are on one visit to
Havana when a staff member at the Archives opened up an early Spanish
hand-colored map. It was in tatters, full of insect holes. Drewes said she was
overcome by tears.
But she applauds the UF project.
"We care about the intellectual content of these materials,'' she said.
Group of Cuban mothers decries conditions for political prisoners
Published Friday, June 8, 2001
HAVANA -- (AFP) -- A group of Cuban mothers unveiled a display of personal
photos and documents Thursday to draw attention to the plight of what they said
are 428 political prisoners in communist-ruled Cuba.
"We want the world to know what we mothers are suffering, even if the
government says there are no political prisoners -- yes there are, and the whole
world knows there are,'' said Noris Durán, whose son Lázaro
Constantino Durán is serving a four-year term for "enemy propaganda
and dangerousness.''
"We ask the government of Cuba to please put an end to this,'' Durán
said of the exhibit entitled "The political prison in Cuba: 1959-2001'' --
a patchwork of dissidents' pictures, a sketch of a Havana jail and a roster of
prisoners. It's displayed in the cramped apartment of Aida Valdés, who
has been jailed five times.
The group hopes to call attention to the women's plea for the government to
immediately release 15 women and about 50 political prisoners suffering from "illnesses
not compatible with jail, like cancer, epilepsy, diabetes and tuberculosis,''
Valdés said.
Cuba's political prisoners, Durán said, "have not set off any
bombs or committed any sabotage'' but rather committed the crime of "thinking
differently than the system.''
Valdés, who described herself as the leader of about 50 female
members of the National Association for Current and Former Political Prisoners,
said her organization has concluded 428 people are held as political prisoners
in some 216 prisons, dubbed "farms.''
She claimed that in the more than 40 years of Fidel Castro's rule, more than
16,000 people have been targets of repression, including those "murdered in
prison.''
Valdés said the show, timed to commemorate the second anniversary of
a 40-day hunger strike by dissidents on behalf of political prisoners, was in
place of a street demonstration banned by authorities.
Another woman said a group of mothers meets every Sunday in a Havana church
to pray for their children and then leaves together, walking silently through
the streets for several blocks as a kind of subdued protest.
Earlier, foreign reporters were invited to a dissident hunger strike nearby
but police blocked them from the building.
"If you are not [building] residents, you cannot go in,'' a police
officer said outside 34 Tamarindo Street, in Havana's 10th of October district.
Exiles call for Castro's indictment in air deaths
By Gail Epstein Nieves and Alfonso Chardy.
gepstein@herald.com. June 9, 2001
A Miami federal jury on Friday hammered five Cuban intelligence agents with
across-the-board guilty verdicts on 23 spying-related charges -- a stunning
decision that overwhelmingly endorsed U.S. efforts to sanction Fidel Castro's
government not only for espionage but for the murders of four Brothers to the
Rescue fliers.
Relatives of the Miami men who perished in the 1996 Brothers shoot-down by
Cuban fighter jets quietly rejoiced as a courtroom clerk read aloud the "guilty''
verdict for the count of murder conspiracy, returned against spy master Gerardo
Hernández.
Maggie Khuly, the sister of shoot-down victim Armando Alejandre and a
devoted note-taker during the six-month trial, doubled over in her seat. Mirta
Costa Mendez, sister of victim Carlos Costa and another trial devotee, threw her
left arm over Khuly's back in a warm embrace.
"A sweeping win, a sweeping victory for the United States of America
and for these families standing behind me,'' proclaimed U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis,
flanked on the courthouse steps by some of the victims' relatives and a jubilant
prosecution team: Assistant U.S. Attorneys Caroline Heck Miller, John
Kastrenakes and David Buckner, and FBI agents Al Alonso and Jose Orihuela.
"Gracias a Dios,'' (Thanks to God),'' said Eva Barba, mother of
deceased flier Pablo Morales. "This is what I have been waiting for. This
is justice.''
The five defendants and their lawyers -- who had been expecting at least
partial acquittals from a jury with no Cuban Americans -- grew increasingly
solemn and fidgeted in their chairs as the verdicts unfolded.
3 COULD GET LIFE
Three of the men -- Hernández, Ramón Labañino and
Antonio Guerrero -- face maximum sentences of life in prison. Two others --
Fernando González and René González, who are not related --
face maximum penalties of 10 years behind bars.
U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard set a separate sentencing for each defendant
on Sept. 24-26 and 28, and Oct. 2.
The verdicts were pronounced at 5:09 p.m. to a packed courtroom in downtown
Miami. The decision ended a complicated trial that provided unprecedented peeks
into Cuba's enduring Cold War-era spying mentality -- a mind-set in which
defending Castro's "revolution'' was a noble cause to be accomplished with
technology, lies, manipulation -- even murder.
The verdicts were the first legal determination that the four Brothers
victims were indeed murdered -- "the unlawful killing of human beings with
malice aforethought,'' the indictment states -- even though the term has been
used since the start.
There was no official reaction from Havana late Friday.
The five men were among 14 people originally arrested in September 1998 as
members of the La Red Avispa, the Wasp Network, the biggest Cuban spy ring known
to have been dismantled in the United States.
Evidence showed that ring members, some using fake identities, tried to
infiltrate U.S. military installations and Cuban exile groups in an effort to
feed military and political information back to Havana.
In thousands of pages of decoded communications between Havana and the
agents, the evidence showed they also were tasked with spreading disinformation
about exile leaders, fomenting internal dissent within exile groups, sabotaging
Brothers planes and ruining Cuban-American politicians.
DEFENSIVE MISSION
Defense attorneys disputed the charges. While they acknowledged that the men
were Cuban intelligence agents, they claimed that they were sent to South
Florida to protect Cuba from a U.S. attack and from "extremist'' Cuban
exiles believed responsible for a series of hotel bombings in Havana.
But most of the trial focused on the Brothers shoot-down, which defense
attorney Paul McKenna blamed on the group's co-founder, José Basulto.
McKenna called Basulto's repeated incursions into Cuban airspace "provocations.''
Shortwave radio transmissions between the spies and their handlers in Havana
showed that in the days leading to the fatal air attack, Cuba was preparing for
a violent confrontation with Brothers' planes and even warned its Miami-based
agents not to fly on the Brothers' planes.
Prosecutors argued that the messages showed Gerardo Hernández had
prior knowledge of the pending attacks, but McKenna said there was no proof.
McKenna also argued unsuccessfully that the shoot-down occurred in Cuban
airspace.
After the verdict, McKenna said he was puzzled by the jury's decision and
credited the government for including the shoot-down charge in the indictment.
The murder conspiracy count, added to the case after the original indictment,
was the most emotionally and politically charged accusation in the case.
"It was a very complicated case,'' McKenna said. "The only thing I
wondered about in my own mind was the jurors never had a question. But . . . in
our system when they speak, the buck stops there.''
Jack Blumenfeld, lawyer for Guerrero, said he thought the trial had "turned
in our favor, but I think there was just an overwhelming amount of evidence that
the government had. I mean, for God's sake, they investigated this for years
before they arrested anybody.''
Jurors deliberated for 28 hours over five days. An amiable group, the
members bonded so well that they could be heard laughing from their private room
during trial breaks. They even had a pet fish, Larry, named for the chief court
security officer in Judge Lenard's courtroom.
No jurors could be reached Friday night.
'INDICT CASTRO'
Basulto and the Cuban American National Foundation applauded the verdicts
and immediately reasserted their demands that the United States indict Fidel
Castro for the shoot-down.
"Brothers to the Rescue had nothing to do with this, even though in
this trial they tried to blame us for this,'' Basulto said on the courthouse
steps. "Now we need the support of our community to ask the president of
the United States . . . to indict Fidel Castro criminally, who is really the one
responsible.''
Joe Garcia, executive director of the CANF, said: "There should be
nothing standing in the way of prosecuting Castro. There is proof now that
operatives of the Cuban government were involved in the murder of U.S.
citizens.''
Lewis, the U.S. attorney, would not comment on his office's plans regarding
Castro, but said the investigation is continuing.
"The evidence showed beyond any reasonable doubt that there was a
conspiracy to murder these men, that one of the defendants in South Florida was
involved in that conspiracy, that that conspiracy was hatched in Havana, in
Cuba,'' he said. "The blame and the fault lies now clearly at the feet of
the Cuban government.''
WILL NOT STAND IDLE
Lewis also said that while the case confirmed fears that many Cuban exiles
have harbored for years, in the end, the FBI and his office protected the
community from "Castro's tentacles.''
"There have been spies among us,'' he said. "Let the verdict serve
notice, though, we will not stand idly by and allow any foreign government to
wreak its havoc upon our way of life.''
Héctor Pesquera, head of Miami's FBI office, directed "a very
special message'' to Cuba's leader, telling Castro that sending his agents to
the United States "to conduct intelligence operations against the citizens
of this country will not be tolerated.''
Heck Miller, the lead prosecutor, paid emotional homage to the shoot-down
victims as she addressed reporters after the verdicts.
"This is a day of justice, a day of vindication of our justice system,
of our jury system and I only want to say God bless the United States, God bless
the memory of Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre, Mario de la Peña and Pablo
Morales.''
Herald staff writer Carol Rosenberg contributed to this
report.
After verdict, families of dead fliers still at odds
Victory in court was sweet for those consumed for so long by the
tragedy, but old wounds still linger.
By Paul Brinkley-Rogers. pbrinkley-rogers@herald.com.
Published Saturday, June 9, 2001
On the concrete steps of the courthouse where the six-month drama played
out, the dozen family members of the four murdered fliers stood in two rows, one
behind the other, and linked hands as if in prayer.
This was a moment to exult: the defendant Cuban spies guilty on all counts,
including a charge of murder conspiracy for one of them.
But these tense and impassive mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers of the
dead, who applauded the U.S. attorneys, did not reach out to everyone linked to
the case.
They did not hold hands with the emotional trio to their right, hands linked
in a show of their own solidarity: José Basulto, leader of Brothers to
the Rescue, who flew the lead plane on the day of the shoot-down but who managed
to escape the MiG fighters and make it back to Opa-locka; Eva Barba, mother of
dead pilot Pablo Morales; and Pablo's sister, Nancy Morales. Both Barba and
Morales have remained loyal to Basulto.
"I don't talk to him,'' said Mirta Costa, mother of dead flier Carlos
Costa, so Basulto could hear her as they walked to the courthouse steps from the
office of the U.S. Attorney.
Some family members of the fliers long have blamed Basulto for their loved
ones' deaths. Mirta Costa gave Basulto a piercing look as they walked. He stared
straight ahead.
Victory in court was sweet for those consumed for so long by the tragedy,
but old wounds still linger. Asked if the guilty verdicts were a vindication for
him and Brothers to the Rescue, Basulto shot back: "Brothers does not need
vindication!''
Yet when questions from reporters turned the talk at the press conference to
the possibility of indicting Fidel Castro, suddenly there was unity.
Basulto, Barba and Morales leaned forward and applauded the questions
vigorously, and so did the other family members. All of them, Basulto included,
wore buttons on their chests showing the smiling faces of their dead loved ones.
Mirta Costa Mendez, sister of Carlos Costa, said the case had been hard on
all of them. It had been especially tough, she said, when the defense put on its
case, "and we had to hear painful things about the Cuban community.'' But
she did not mention the defense's attempt to pillory Basulto.
"There were good days, and there were bad days,'' Costa Mendez said.
"Worst was when we heard the MiG pilots talking [on tape recordings
played in the courtroom] for the first time. I was horrified about how joyful
they were,'' she said, eyes glistening. "It was so painful when they showed
their airplane with two stars [painted on the fuselage for the two planes they
destroyed]. I guess that was their prize for the shooting.''
Maggie Khuly, an architect and sister to dead pilot Armando Alejandre, said
the court victory "was not all we want.'' She started talking about
vengeance being applied to Castro. In the background, Basulto was telling
another reporter the same thing.
"We want more criminal indictments,'' she said forcefully. "We
talked about that with the [Clinton] administration, and we will be speaking to
the current administration about the same thing.''
At the same time, Basulto was saying, "Our hope is this is just the
beginning of the indictment of Fidel Castro.'' But the two did not nod in
agreement.
On the edge of the group, Michael Costa Mendez, 21, carried a sign showing
photos of the dead topped, in a tribute to their sacrifice, by the words: Que no
sea en vano (That it not be in vain).
Costa Mendez was only 16 when his uncle, the strapping Armando Alejandre, a
veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and Vietnam, died.
On that day, his mother was leasing him a car, but when word of the mid-air
attack came, they rushed to Opa-locka airport to wait for more news. He was then
a baseball player, a junior at Westminster High School, but he took the loss of
his uncle so hard that he transferred to a school in Boca Raton to get away from
it for three years.
Before he left, he played one more game as an outfielder for his school on a
road trip to Sebring. His teammates did not expect him to take the field because
he was so upset, but he came in to pinch hit and got a hit.
"In the dugout, they all applauded me for the effort,'' said the
Florida International University history major. "But I would have given
anything to be with him. To be together again.''
Verdicts justify suspicions of many area exiles
By Carol Rosenberg. crosenberg@herald.com. News Analysis.
Published Saturday, June 9, 2001
For activists in the crusade to topple Fidel Castro, Friday's sweeping
espionage convictions of five spies from Havana proved to outsiders what some
have been arguing all along.
Sometimes, what appears to be sabotage really is sabotage. And dirty tricks
do exist.
Or, as Joe Garcia, the 38-year-old executive director of the Cuban American
National Foundation put it: "Yes, Castro is among us.''
Born in the United States, Garcia said he grew up skeptical, too. "In
America, we're not used to being spied on. It's not like the '50s, when J. Edgar
Hoover was in everybody's closet,'' he said.
But he and other activists argued that Cubans and non-Cubans should no
longer ridicule as "paranoia'' some exiles' suggestions that they were
being watched.
Messages from Havana to the spies, intercepted by the FBI and used as
evidence at the trial, showed that the agents were tasked to stir up infighting
among exile groups and Cuban-American politicians' campaigns.
Defense lawyers argued that the intelligence agents were mostly snooping on
militant groups -- characterizing Garcia's influential CANF as one of them -- to
prevent Miami-inspired terror attacks on the island.
"I do think it's tremendously unfortunate,'' said Garcia, a lawyer, "that
the Cuban community was once more characterized for someone else's interest. We
were victimized in order to get someone off.''
DEFENSE TROUBLING
Although the verdicts suggest the tactic didn't succeed, some Cuban leaders
were troubled by the nature of the defense, saying the spies' U.S.-paid lawyers
were trying to score points on Castro's behalf.
The men used the trial to parade Castro's gripes against the exile community
inside a downtown Miami courthouse. Cuban government witnesses were considered
credible enough to be questioned in Havana and have their sworn testimony
included in a U.S. court record. And, another sore spot, no Cuban Americans were
among the jurors who heard the case.
"Can you imagine having a Cuban official swearing on the Bible to tell
the truth?'' said Ernesto Betancourt, a former Radio Martí director, who
was troubled by defense arguments.
Acquittals could have given "a tremendous boost to Castro's
propaganda,'' he said.
On learning about the convictions, he said Friday night: "I am
extremely pleased. I think the legal system was able to withstand Castro's
efforts to confuse it. It was quite a defeat for Castro.'' Betancourt said Cuba
sent agents to infiltrate the radio station during his 1984-1990 tenure.
In the end, the six-month trial cast a spotlight on Cuban spy craft, with
jurors buying the government's case that the squad colluded to steal U.S.
military secrets.
But the defense claimed no secrets had actually been obtained, and lawyers
cast the spy ring's members as bit players in the four-decade struggle between
Cubans across the Straits of Florida.
"I think most people were disappointed in these spies,'' said
sociologist Lisandro Pérez at Florida International University, who
argued the trial de-mystified the world of Cuban espionage.
IMAGE OF THE SPY
Stereotypically, he said, Cubans in Miami imagined the spy from the island
as "slick, a seducer of women, handsome, with cellular phones'' -- a
lothario along the lines of Juan Pablo Roque, who was indicted as a
co-conspirator in the Brothers to the Rescue shoot-down and who returned to Cuba
a day before the Feb. 24, 1996, MiG attack on the planes.
Spy master Gerardo Hernández was, in fact, convicted of conspiracy to
murder in the shoot-down Friday, for supposedly warning Roque to avoid the
doomed air mission.
But those tried "looked bush league. They had to support themselves,''
Pérez said.
Veteran defense attorney Al Krieger, who once defended New York mob boss
John Gotti, said the case didn't generate much cloakroom conversation at the
federal building.
Krieger said many in Miami are "a little jaded by all the anti-Castro
expressed sentiments. How many times can you hear it? How many times can you be
exposed to it without being just tired of it? I don't think many people perceive
Castro as a threat to the United States.''
Moreover, the trial never captured national political attention, said
University of Miami professor Joaquín Roy, stripping it of any suggestion
that its outcome would have consequences in the struggle for control of the
island.
"Compare this with the real sensitive issue of how to deal with
Colombia, and Cuba disappears off the screen,'' said Roy, who teaches
international relations.
To some degree, the case hardened suspicions in the Cuban activist
community, said Ramón Saúl Sánchez, founder of the
Democracy Movement whose anti-Castro flotillas were a target of infiltration.
STEREOTYPES
"Certain things that came out of this trial and certain traits and
activities and lives might deepen stereotypes in terms of looking at people more
suspiciously,'' he said, explaining that movement old timers are a bit more
skeptical of recent arrivals from Cuba.
By demonizing exiles and demythologizing the work and lives of Cuban spies,
attorney Pedro Freyre said, the agents' lawyers were using the long established
courtroom ploy of "the best defense is a good offense, so you crucify your
opponent.''
Freyre, chairman of the organization Facts About Cuban Exiles, said the
trial may have unfairly contributed to the stereotype that Cubans in Miami are
militants bent on war with Castro.
"The problem is, you should consider that the situation in Cuba has
lasted 40 years and the level of violence is minimal. More people died in a bad
weekend in El Salvador,'' during its civil war than across the four decades of
Cuban-exile activism, he said.
Indictment of Castro possible, experts say
By Carol Rosenberg. crosenberg@herald.com. Posted at 7:49
a.m. EDT Sunday, June 10, 2001
If the Bush administration chooses to pursue it, Friday's Cuban espionage
convictions could provide a framework for the murder indictment of Fidel Castro
in the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot-down, legal experts said Saturday.
U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis raised the specter of an eventual indictment by
declaring that the convictions, particularly of spymaster Gerardo Hernández,
proved "beyond any doubt there was a conspiracy to commit murder that had
been approved of and ordered by the highest levels of the Cuban government.''
Lewis, who is acting head of the prosecutor's office until President Bush
appoints a permanent chief, refused to answer a direct question on whether he
would ask a grand jury to indict the Cuban leader.
Instead, he told The Herald, "We'll continue to pursue aggressively the
investigation and let the chips fall where they may.''
Ever since Soviet-made Cuban air force MiGs rocketed two Brothers to the
Rescue planes over the Straits of Florida on Feb. 24, 1996, relatives of the
dead fliers have demanded that Castro be indicted for murder. Killed were
Armando Alejandre Jr., 45, Carlos Costa, 29, Mario de la Peña, 24, and
Pablo Morales, 29, the only victim who was not a U.S. citizen.
Brothers founder José Basulto, the Cuban American National Foundation
and politicians, notably Republican Florida Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart,
have championed indicting Castro during both the Clinton and current Bush
administrations.
Saturday, former U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey, a Democrat who served under
President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno from 1993 to 1996, said
Friday's sweeping convictions "make it less unthinkable'' that a South
Florida grand jury may someday return a Castro indictment.
He elaborated: "The government was able to prove that the shoot-down
was murder. Citizens in our community were murdered and that's a finding. That
cannot be ignored. The duty of the U.S. government is to continue to proceed to
establish the culpability of others.''
LOOKING BACK
Advocates argue that a model may be found in the February 1988 drug-running
indictment of Panama's Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega. Then-President George Bush
eventually sent U.S. troops to Panama City in December 1989, where they
apprehended Noriega after a standoff around the Vatican Embassy where he was
hiding.
But former prosecutors knowledgeable about the workings of the Justice
Department said significant procedural impediments have been placed in the path
of such an indictment today, because the Noriega indictment took Washington by
surprise. In 1988, it was orchestrated entirely in Miami by the office of
then-U.S. Attorney Dexter Lehtinen, without prior consultation with the Reagan
administration.
Since then, Justice Department guidelines have required U.S. attorneys to
notify headquarters about any strategies that might lead to an indictment of a
world leader -- a process that would allow Attorney General John Ashcroft to
veto or raise objections to charging Castro.
An attorney general would likely consult the State Department and National
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and might ultimately let President Bush rule
on an indictment, an option the White House did not have in the Noriega case.
"Ultimately it comes down to the president,'' said former U.S. Attorney
Bob Martínez, a Republican who succeeded Lehtinen and served in 1992 and
1993. "The president doesn't have to become personally involved in the
case,'' but he said several departments would need to discuss in advance any
Castro indictment, including Secretary of State Colin Powell or his proxies, who
might object.
Indicting a head of state is "a complicated situation that would put
the State Department on the spot,'' Coffey said.
One issue is that, dictator or not, Castro has been recognized by
international organizations as the head of state of Cuba, a recognition that the
United States also conferred by allowing him to travel to New York to address
the United Nations and nearby church groups. Noriega, at the time of his
indictment, was armed forces chief and "strongman,'' who Panamanian
President Eric Arturo Delvalle tried to fire after his indictment.
"In my experience, the Department of State has been a constant source
of impediment on the enforcement of our federal criminal laws against foreign
heads of government,'' said Martínez, who applauded Lewis' office for the
successful spy case prosecution.
Martínez said he supports the idea of indicting Castro -- and
believed even before this week that there was sufficient evidence to bring the
case to a grand jury. But he added on Saturday that there is a necessary and
recognized internal tension in Washington over such indictments because "a
national government needs to be in control of foreign relations.''
Recognizing there might be a tug of war inside the Beltway over an
indictment, Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National
Foundation, urged President Bush and his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, to each
order indictments.
"The government should impanel a grand jury and see if an indictment is
forthcoming,'' said Garcia, who is a lawyer. Separately, he said the governor,
who recently announced he would seek reelection, should "take the necessary
steps under state law to indict the parties responsible, including Fidel
Castro.''
Saturday, Díaz-Balart, also a lawyer, said: "Everyone with any
common sense knows that Castro ordered the Brothers to the Rescue murders.''
He called Friday's successful spy convictions "a fundamental building
block toward putting on the case against Castro.''
WOULD AGENTS 'FLIP'?
Yet even advocates of indictment say one would be unlikely before the
September and October sentencing of the Cuban intelligence agents who were
convicted Friday.
Then, said former prosecutors who discussed the case on condition they not
be identified by name, federal prosecutors would see if any of the three agents
who are facing life prison sentences might "flip'' -- meaning turn on their
bosses and testify convincingly before a secret grand jury on what they knew and
how far in advance they knew of the killings.
Prosecutors are probably pinning their hopes on Gerardo Hernández,
the former prosecutors said. The Cuban intelligence captain who posed as
cartoonist Manuel Viramontes in Miami, might be able to implicate those higher
up in the chain of command.
Hernández was convicted of conspiracy to murder for knowing in
advance about the shoot-down, and had clandestinely traveled between South
Florida and Havana in the months before the MiG attacks. He also was accused of
warning away from the doomed flights two other Cuban agents -- Juan Pablo Roque,
who defected back to Havana a day before the shoot-down, and René González,
who was convicted of being an agent on Friday.
Coffey would not discuss tactics toward securing a grand jury indictment of
Castro but said a key would be establishing "sufficient evidence with a
degree of possibility to convict'' the Cuban leader.
"You can't put on a witness called 'Everybody knows,' '' he said.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 