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CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald
Slip could bring Cuban
hijack mistrial
The judge in the case of an alleged
hijacking of a Cuban plane considers whether
the testimony of a U.S. Border Patrol agent
is grounds for a mistrial.
By Cara Buckley , cbuckley@herald.com.
Posted on Thu, Dec. 04, 2003 in The Miami
Herald.
KEY WEST - A seemingly innocuous slip in
the testimony of a U.S. Border Patrol agent
could result in the mistrial of three of
six Cuban men on trial in Key West for allegedly
hijacking an airplane from Cuba last March.
The potential grounds for a mistrial stem
from agreements made between prosecutors
and the defense regarding how to deal with
statements made about three defendants who
were not read their Miranda rights, and
as a result had their confessions thrown
out.
One of the men, Yainer Olivares Samon,
was repeatedly identified in court Wednesday
by passengers and crew members who said
Samon body slammed the plane's cockpit door
off its hinges.
Lawyers on both sides agreed that any statements
made by some defendants that implicated
any of the three defendants who were not
''Mirandized'' could not be read in court.
But while on the stand Wednesday, Border
Patrol agent Kerry Heck uttered two words
that defense lawyers claim violated those
principles.
Heck was recounting a statement she took
from Alexis Norneilla Morales, the incident's
purported ringleader, after the redirected
DC-3 flight touched down in Key West on
March 19. Heck testified that Norneilla
stated that he started planning to take
an airplane by force to the United States
a year prior to the alleged act. Heck then
started to say that Norneilla said he had
recruited ''these five'' -- prompting defense
lawyers to spring out of their seats, crying
foul.
Defense lawyers claimed the words ''these
five'' implicated the non-Mirandized defendants,
violating both sides' agreement.
U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King,
describing the matter as ''very serious,''
recessed the trial earlier than usual Wednesday
and will resume at midmorning today to give
both sides time to prepare their legal arguments.
Should the judge agree to the defense's
motion for a mistrial, the three affected
defendants -- Samon, Neudis Infante Hernandez
and Alvenis Arias-Izquierdo -- would be
retried at a later date.
The trial of the remaining three, Norneilla,
Eduardo Javier Mejias Morales and Miakel
Guerra Morales, would continue.
The twist followed a day of testimony from
two crew members, both still living in Cuba,
as well as an Italian who happened to be
on the diverted plane and two Cuban passengers
who opted to remain in the United States.
HANDS TIED
The crew members said their hands were
tied behind their backs, and the flight
steward said a knife was held to his throat
as he was pushed face down on the floor.
The defense tried repeatedly to show that
the Cuban government played a role in the
hijacking by pressuring crew members to
lie under oath.
Defense lawyer Reemberto Diaz showed that
while the plane's technician and flight
steward both said in court that the hijackers
threatened to kill them, neither man made
such statements to the FBI immediately after
the incident occurred.
Diaz argued that the crew members also
met personally with Cuban President Fidel
Castro on their return, which compelled
them to deny their role in staging the act.
NO RELEVANCE
King steadfastly refused to allow any mention
of the Cuban government to be brought into
the case, claiming it had no relevance in
the trial.
Three passengers also recounted the midair
drama: a Cuban mother who vomited from airsickness
with her young son beside her, a Cuban man
who knew one of the hijackers, and the Italian
tourist, who said he moved to stop Samon
from hurling himself against the cabin door,
but stopped when he learned there were others
with knives.
The two Cubans now living in the United
States said they were never mistreated on
the flight and that the suspects offered
them water, coffee and candy. They also
testified that the knives were largely hidden
from their view.
A Key West police officer also testified
that the suspects threw out their knives
willingly upon landing.
Judge delays mistrial
decision in hijacking case
By Cara Buckley, cbuckley@herald.com.
KEY WEST - A federal judge delayed a decision
today on whether to grant a mistrial in
the Key West hijacking trial of six Cuban
men, saying it was dependent on whether
the skyjacking's accused ringleader, Alexis
Norneilla Morales, takes the stand.
Defense lawyers for three suspects said
Wednesday that the trial's ground rules
had been violated by a U.S. Border Patrol
agent's testimony about post-flight interviews.
The confessions of three of the accused
hijackers had been thrown out because they
had not been read their Miranda rights,
and the defense lawyers said the Border
Patrol agent's testimony wrongly implicated
those three suspects.
But U.S. District Judge James Lawrence
King said if Norneilla testifies, he might
make allusions to the five other suspects
anyway, making the agent's statement a ''harmless
error.'' It is not known whether Morales
will take the stand.
The government rested its case against
the suspects this morning, following testimony
from two U.S. Border Patrol agents.
One agent, Kerry Heck, said Norneilla told
her that the five kitchen knives used in
the alleged hijacking were passed through
the window of an airport bathroom in Cuba
in advance and hidden in the bathroom's
ceiling. On the day of the alleged hijacking,
Norneilla said he removed the knives, hid
them in a duffle bag and spirited them aboard,
Heck testified.
With the jury out of the courtroom, defense
lawyers also argued that all members of
the entire flight crew, who opted to return
to Cuba, were in on the act all along; that
they offered no resistance to being tied
up, and that they changed their accounts
of what happened after being interviewed
by Fidel Castro himself on their return
to Havana.
As a result of hiding their role in the
staging, they were given promotions in Cuba,
the defense lawyers said. King said the
defense lawyer's theories "don't fit
inside any recognized defense.''
Clark hints he would explore Cuba ties
Though not calling for an end to the
embargo, Democratic hopeful Wesley Clark
says the U.S. should 'help the Cuban people.'
By Peter Wallsten, Miami
Herald. Dec. 03, 2003.
As his leading rivals for president hone
positions on Cuba policy that appease South
Florida's powerful exile bloc, retired Army
Gen. Wesley Clark is gaining notice for
a divergent approach: a willingness to discuss
easing the decades-long trade embargo against
the island and its dictator.
Clark stops short of saying he would lift
sanctions, but his nuanced responses to
reporters, exile leaders and even a questioner
at a nationally televised debate last month
in Boston leave little doubt that a Clark
administration could well do more than any
other in 40 years to build ties with Fidel
Castro's government.
''In general embargoes normally, usually,
they don't work, and they certainly haven't
worked in the case of Cuba as far as ending
the Castro regime,'' Clark told reporters
Monday during a visit to South Florida.
"We don't want to give a gift to Fidel
Castro. But we do want to help the Cuban
people achieve the same rights as everybody
else in this hemisphere.''
Clark, the former supreme allied commander
of NATO who led the Kosovo war and former
chief of the U.S. Southern Command overseeing
military operations in the Caribbean and
Latin America, also frequently compares
the situation in Cuba with communism in
Eastern Europe -- arguing that engagement,
rather than isolation, paved the way for
democracy.
''The Iron Curtain was something they built,
not something we imposed,'' Clark told The
Herald in September.
WORRY BY EXILES
The retired general's approach has raised
questions among some exile leaders, who
said they assumed he favors lifting trade
sanctions -- a stance that would make it
difficult for Clark, should he win the nomination,
to campaign for Cuban-American votes against
a Republican president who has threatened
to veto any bill that ends the embargo.
Clark's stance sharply contrasts with that
taken by several of his opponents for the
Democratic presidential nomination.
Most notably, former Vermont Gov. Howard
Dean, the current Democratic front-runner,
reversed his earlier opposition to the embargo
while campaigning over the summer. He cited
recent human rights abuses in Cuba and said
now is the wrong time to debate sanctions.
Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, another leading
Democratic contender, has also reached out
to Cuban-American leaders in recent months
to soothe them over his past remarks criticizing
sanctions.
Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman and Missouri
Rep. Richard Gephardt are already viewed
as strong supporters of the embargo.
While the mostly Republican Cuban-American
bloc is not likely to play a meaningful
role in the race for the Democratic nomination,
recent tensions between the Bush administration
and exile leaders give hope to national
Democratic strategists that they could make
gains next year -- gains that could prove
pivotal in the state that decided the 2000
election by just 537 votes.
While Clark's words could dampen those
hopes should he win the nomination or be
chosen as a vice presidential running mate,
advisors say his path illustrates the unique
advantages of a general with extensive foreign
affairs experience. Unlike less-seasoned
rivals, they say, Clark has the gravitas
to shape the Cuba debate without crafting
new positions simply to curry political
favor.
''If Gen. Clark wanted to play politics
with this issue, it would have been very
easy to do, but he chose not to do that,''
said James Rubin, a former State Department
spokesman in the Clinton administration
who is Clark's senior foreign policy advisor.
Clark's strategists add that the candidate
feels no obligation to elaborate beyond
broad themes to address specifics such as
the controversial ''wet foot-dry foot''
immigration policy that allows Cubans to
remain in the United States if they reach
ground before being caught by the Coast
Guard.
''He doesn't need to spell out his positions
on everything just to show people that he's
thought through foreign policy issues,''
Rubin said. "If you're someone else
who's never dealt with foreign affairs,
you might feel you need to show people your
full-throated view.''
COMPLICATED STANCE
Still, Clark's approach is proving complicated
and, in some cases, confusing, as a rookie
politician often criticized for taking vague
positions refuses to delve deeper on Cuba
than talking points.
Campaign aides abruptly ushered him out
of a press conference Monday at a Delray
Beach synagogue as a Herald reporter asked
him whether he would support lifting trade
sanctions.
''I've given you a policy framework in
which the art of diplomacy and leadership
is to work within a framework to create
a solution,'' he said.
That same day, Clark placed a phone call
to Joe Garcia, executive director of the
Cuban American National Foundation, in which
he assured Garcia that he was not necessarily
calling for an end to the embargo.
Previously, Garcia said, he and other exile
leaders have assumed that Clark favored
lifting the embargo.
But on Tuesday, after a series of calls
from Clark's campaign advisors, Garcia said
the general's views were not necessarily
inconsistent with his own.
''He denied that he wants to lift the embargo,''
Garcia said of his Monday conversation with
Clark. "What he said is that he does
not believe that unilateral embargoes work,
and any Cuban American who's lived through
the last 42 years of the trade embargo with
Cuba agrees with that.''
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