The Miami Herald.
Wednesday, September 26, 2001
Costa Rica says will give asylum to Cuban refugees
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica -- (AP) -- Twenty-five Cubans refugees who arrived
aboard a fishing boat will be given refuge in Costa Rica, Security Minister
Rogelio Ramos said Wednesday.
"There is grat problem. They are going to stay in this country,'' Ramos
told the local radio program "Nuestra Voz.''
"It is a humanitarian situation. We are dealing with four nuclear
families who left Cuba because of the lack of liberty they experienced, even
risking their lives.''
The Cubans arrived in the Caribbean port of Limon on Monday after what they
said was a 12-day trip that included a stop in the Cayman Islands. Four other
Cubans left the ship in the Caymans, saying they wanted to return home.
The 15 men, four women and six children who arrived here were from Santa
Cruz in the central Cuban province of Camaguey.
Ramos insisted that the arrival of the group, which follows a similar
incident in January, does not represent "an immigration avalanche.''
Swedish man arrested on charges of illegal entry into Cuba
HAVANA -- (AP) -- A Swedish man has been arrested for illegally entering
Cuba in an apparent attempt to take his Cuban wife's relatives off the island,
the communist government said Wednesday.
The government said in the Communist Party daily Granma that Claes Eric
Jarneberg, 56, was picked up on Sept. 4 in the port of Mariel, west of Havana.
The newspaper said that Swedish diplomats in Cuba had visited Jarneberg
since his arrest, but did not say where he was being held.
Cuba occasionally reports on the detention of Cuban-born people who live in
other countries for entering the country illegally, but this was the first
reported case in recent years of someone from another nation arrested for
illegal entry.
Jarneberg, originally from Stockholm and now living in Santa Barbara, Fla.,
arrived in Cuba on an inflatable boat with an outboard motor and the capacity to
carry eight people, Granma said.
The newspaper said Jarneberg told Cuban authorities that he was going to
visit friends in Havana and had left his personal documents behind in Florida.
Jarneberg, a taxi driver, met his wife, Magalys Rodriguez, during a 1995
trip to Cuba, said Granma. They wed when Jarneberg returned to Cuba in 1996, it
added.
The newspaper said Jarneberg took Rodriguez and her children to live with
him in the United States in 1999.
Eight of Jarneberg's relatives in the eastern Cuban province of Las Tunas
were detained the same day he was arrested, Granma said.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 
