CUBANET ... CUBANEWS

December 26, 2002



Cuba News / The Miami Herald

The Miami Herald, December 31, 2002.

Anti-Castro group claims shooting of spy in Cuba

By Elaine De Valle. Edevalle@Herald.Com

An anti-Castro paramilitary group claims it shot -- but did not kill -- a former spy who lived in Miami and was linked to the Cuban military's shoot-down of two Brothers to the Rescue planes.

Rodolfo Frometa, director of Comandos F-4, said his group was involved in the Dec. 19 shooting of Juan Pablo Roque. He said Roque was in serious or critical condition at a Havana hospital, but the incident could not be independently confirmed.

Roque's bodyguard was killed, as was the gunman, identified as Ramón Sosa, 32, an operative in one of Comandos F-4's clandestine cells within the island, Frometa said.

''We are the only exile organization that has publicly declared being after Juan Pablo Roque to execute him for the crime he committed and for having laughed at this country,'' Frometa said. "We have been following his paces. We know where he works, where he lives, who his lovers are, because our intention is to eliminate him.''

Cuban government representatives at the Washington, D.C., Cuban Interests Section did not return calls from The Herald.

Roque left his wife, Ana Margarita Martinez, and disappeared from his Kendall home in February 1996. He reappeared in Havana a few days later, after Cuban MiGs shot down two civilian planes belonging to the search-and-rescue group.

In interviews on Cuba's state-run television, he characterized the Brothers group as terrorists.

''It looks like they want him to pay for what he did, for his betrayal,'' Martinez said.

Jilted wife of Cuban spy hopes auction will help pay judgment

By Elaine De Valle. Edevalle@herald.com

As Ana Margarita Martinez sips a steaming café con leche at La Carreta restaurant on Bird Road, nearby diners whisper among themselves.

"That's the spy's wife.''

"The one that sued Cuba?''

"The one with the plane?''

"Yeah, that one.''

"Isn't she rich?''

Only in theory.

When Martinez, the jilted wife of a Cuban spy, won a $27 million judgment in court, people thought she had it made.

But more than a year after a Miami judge ordered the Cuban government to compensate her for what turned out to be a sham marriage to Juan Pablo Roque, Martinez, 41, hasn't seen one dime.

Now, an old Russian biplane could change her fortunes -- if only slightly.

The Antonov-2 in which a family fled Cuba for Key West is set to be auctioned off Jan. 13 toward the judgment.

It won't be a windfall. The biplane, owned by the Cuban government, is valued at about $40,000. But even minus various costs, the balance would be a lot for an unemployed single mother.

Roque and Martinez were married in 1995, two years after he arrived in Miami from Cuba. Roque disappeared from their Kendall home on Feb. 23, 1996. A day later, Cuban MiGs shot down two Brothers to the Rescue planes, killing four fliers. On Feb. 26, Roque turned up in Cuba and admitted in a television interview that he had been sent to Miami to infiltrate the exile community.

Martinez was left laden with debt, but quit her job as a bank secretary nearly two years ago because it bored her and she wanted to concentrate on being an activist for the anti-Castro cause.

CREDIT WORTHLESS

The mortgage for the house where she lived with her two children was foreclosed and she purchased a small town house -- but in her mother's name because her credit is worthless. She has been living on her retirement fund and money from occasional marketing and public relations jobs.

''My financial situation changed drastically when it became a one-income household. And I really was not functional. I was a mess,'' Martinez said.

A book she wrote with Diana Montane about her marriage and the betrayal did not sell well, perhaps 1,000 copies, she said.

In two rulings last year, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Alan Postman ordered the Cuban government to pay Martinez $27.17 million for her pain and suffering as a victim of Roque's spy scheme and in punitive damages because Roque used his sham marriage to infiltrate South Florida's Cuban exile community and Brothers to the Rescue, the volunteer pilots who search the seas for Cuban rafters.

FROZEN ASSETS

Lawyers for families of the men killed in the shoot-down of the Brothers planes won a groundbreaking lawsuit against the Cuban government in 1997 under the same 1996 antiterrorist law that allowed Martinez to sue. Last year, they were able to tap into $93 million of Cuba's frozen bank assets held in New York to cover some of the $187.5 million in compensatory damages and sanctions.

The funds are part of $178.2 million in ''blocked assets'' -- including frozen royalty money paid by AT&T to the Cuban government -- that have been in U.S. bank accounts since Castro seized control of the island more than four decades ago.

WHY WAIT?

So why must Martinez wait?

The State Department and Treasury Department did not return several phone calls. But the administration has said in the past that awarding judgments from the frozen assets of other countries might inhibit the U.S. government's flexibility in foreign policy and national security matters.

''It's all a lengthy process,'' said Martinez' attorney, Fernando Zulueta. "Banks themselves are prohibited from dispersing any money because they are blocked assets.''

He said it took relatives of the Brothers members nearly four years to collect any money after they won their judgment.

In the meantime, Martinez brushes off solicitors who think she's already wealthy.

''They try to sell me things and ask me for donations. At one point they were trying to sell me a penthouse on the beach,'' she said.

STUDENT LOANS

Her daughter is at St. Thomas University on a volleyball scholarship and student loans. Her son, a senior at Braddock Senior High School, has been warned there is no college fund for him, either.

'Oh, I told him already, 'Listen, kiddo. You better get a scholarship or you're in bad shape,' '' she said.

She hasn't had luck with romance. She finds it hard to trust men. One man she got close to asked her to stop giving interviews and using her status to support Cuban dissidents on the island. She can't, she says.

''If I'm going to feel limited where I think I have a calling, then I'll stay on my own,'' Martinez said.

She spends much of her time sending mass e-mails to promote Cuban artists in Miami or to spread news about Marta Beatriz Roque and Elias Biscet, two of the island's high-profile opposition leaders. She's also a regular on Havana Rock, a Sunday show on La Poderosa (WWFE-AM 670), aimed at Cuba's youth.

'BETTER PERSON'

''If I could have had a normal life, I would have rather had the white picket fence and the nice man,'' Martinez said. "But this has led me to become a better person.

''It super-sensitized me to the Cuban cause. I sympathized before, but I was never involved. I was raising my kids,'' she said.

"Now I have a desire to play a part, a very minor part, in favor of the Cuban opposition movement.''

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