Published Thursday, June 21, 2001 in the
Miami Herald
Dade men imprisoned after foray into Cuba
By Elaine De Valle. edevalle@herald.com.
Three Miami-Dade men are being held in a Cuban jail after being caught in
late April with a cache of weapons in an attempt to "execute subversive
activities in the country,'' a Cuban official announced Wednesday.
A Cuban activist in Miami confirmed the report Wednesday night.
The accusation was made by a Cuban Interior Ministry investigator on the
national television's Mesa Redonda program, in the presence of President Fidel
Castro. The investigator was discussing the conviction earlier this month of
five Cuban spies in Miami -- hailed as national heroes on the island for working
to stop just such insurgencies.
According to the investigator, the three armed men -- identified as
Ihosvanni Suris de la Torre, Santiago Padrón Quintero and Máximo
Padrera Valdés, also known as Máximo Robaina -- disembarked in
late April on the northern coast of Villa Clara province and were intercepted by
Cuban border guards.
After an exchange of gunfire, the "infiltrators'' fled to the nearby
Jutia Key, where they were arrested April 26. The were all linked by the
investigator to the anti-Castro groups Comandos F4 and Alpha 66.
The televised report stated that the men were carrying four AK-47 assault
rifles, one M-3 rifle with a silencer, three Makarov pistols, night goggles,
communication equipment, $3,028 in U.S. currency and 970 Cuban pesos.
Alpha 66 leader Andrés Nazario Sargén said he knew that Suris,
27, and Robaina, 57, had been arrested on the island, though he said the two --
active members of the group -- went independently of the organization. He did
not know that they were accompanied by Padrón, who was a member years ago
but had not been active lately.
"They did not go with our authorization, but for us that doesn't
matter,'' Nazario said Wednesday night. "When one man alone breaks
discipline to do something like this, you have to respect it and recognize they
are patriots and do what you can for them.''
Nazario said Robaina -- as he is known in Miami -- had been commander for
about a year of the group's training camp near the Everglades. He said the
organization was in touch with the men's families since their arrests nearly two
months ago and was giving them financial and emotional support.
"These men went there not to get publicity or anything for themselves,
but because they were convinced they could do something for Cuba,'' he said. "This
is a very hard thing to understand: People will ask, 'How can three people try
to get into Cuba to fight an army the size of Castro's?' But on other occasions,
one or two have infiltrated and stayed many months in Cuba to do sabotage and
then returned.
"This struggle is a struggle of small groups. If they had luck and had
been able to establish themselves in the mountains, they would have been able to
reunite with our people there and done some sabotage,'' Nazario said. "There
is a lot of merit when three men go alone to fight against the army of a
communists regime like Cuba's.''
Sabotage missions, he said, include the disruption of island communications
or transportation systems and "to burn down tourist locations'' or crops of
sugar and tobacco -- longtime pillars of Cuba's strapped economy.
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.
Cuba attacks trial of spies in 'message' to Americans
By Gail Epstein Nieves. gepstein@herald.com
Calling the recent guilty verdicts against five Cuban spies "revolting
injustice,'' the government of Fidel Castro on Wednesday attacked the trial, the
jurors and U.S. law officers as partners in a "sinister process.''
It praised the convicted men as heroes with "deep moral and patriotic
convictions.''
In its first official response to the verdicts, posted on the website of
Granma -- the official newspaper of Cuba's Communist Party -- the government
also included a lengthy "message to the American people'' purportedly
written by the convicted spies from their Miami prison cells after the June 8
verdict.
"The defendants in this trial are in no way repentant of what we have
done to defend our country,'' the letter concluded. "We declare ourselves
non-guilty and simply take comfort in the fact that we have honored our duty to
our people and our homeland.''
REGULAR CRITICISMS
Cuba-watchers responded with bemusement, saying that the article and letter,
while unusual in nature, merely parroted criticisms pronounced regularly by the
Castro regime.
"They indict the American judicial system, which is what they always
do,'' said Joe Garcia, director of the Cuban American National Foundation. "Theirs
is a system where there is no rule of law, and they're attacking the United
States?''
There was no way to independently confirm whether the letter was, in fact,
written by one or all of the spies. The men are allowed to have visits from
their lawyers and, less frequently, from some relatives and friends -- any of
whom could have taken a letter out of the federal correctional facility and
gotten its contents to Cuba.
Jack Blumenfeld, lawyer for Antonio Guerrero, said he didn't know anything
about the letter until he read it on the Internet on Wednesday; nor did he know
who wrote it.
"But whether it's a real letter from them or not, it reflects what
they've been saying for two years: 'We are just Cuban patriots, we weren't here
to harm the United States, we wanted to expose the reality of the terrorism
against our island which we believe comes from exile organizations in Miami,' ''
Blumenfeld said.
DEFENSE PRONG
The idea of spying as a means to protect Cuba from exile-sponsored terrorism
was a major defense prong at trial. Blumenfeld said he disagreed with Cuba's
position that the trial was "rigged'' and "unfair,'' but he still
thinks the judge erred by not granting defense motions to move the trial from
Miami.
A jury convicted the men on all counts, finding them guilty of being
unregistered foreign agents and using false documents.
In addition to Guerrero, the others were Gerardo Hernández, Ramón
Labañino, Fernando González and René González.
Three of them were convicted for espionage conspiracy, and one, Hernández,
was convicted of murder conspiracy in the 1996 shoot-down of two Brothers to the
Rescue planes. Four men died in the air assault. The spies' sentencing is set
for the fall.
A State Department official said the purported spy letter was predictable in
its defense and clearly aimed at a Cuban audience.
"Presumably that's in the job description for spies: they believe in
what they do,'' the official said.
IN THREE LANGUAGES
Granma released the text simultaneously in Spanish, English and French in
its online services. The text was distributed by Prensa Latina, the official
news agency, and AIN, Cuba's national information agency.
"Everything that happens in Cuba happens for a political purpose,''
said the official, who asked not to be named. "The political purpose in
this case is to somehow rally the people of Cuba, telling them, 'Look, we're
protecting you' '' with our spy networks.
José Cohen, a former Cuban intelligence agent now living in Miami,
agreed, saying the letter had to have been written by the regime to remind
Cubans that the government loyally stands by its agents -- even when those
agents are caught "in the entrails of the monster,'' as the Granma headline
put it.
Castro also might be concerned about damage control, Cohen said.
"At this moment the regime doesn't have any control over these spies.
They want to try to increase their morale, because the regime doesn't want them
to collaborate with the FBI. Then Fidel Castro would lose even more control over
them.''
Herald translator Renato Pérez contributed to this report
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 
