CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Dissident offers new democracy proposal

From Herald Wire Services. Posted on Sun, Dec. 14, 2003.

HAVANA -- Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá is calling for a national dialogue, providing a detailed document he says could be used as a guide for a democratic transition.

The document, obtained by The Associated Press on Saturday, states that it should not be seen as a replacement for the Varela Project, another effort Payá has headed seeking rights such as freedom of speech and assembly for Cuban citizens. It also suggests that the document is not a final proposal, but merely a draft that can be used for talks on changes in Cuba's centralized political and economic systems.

According to the document, among the possibilities to be discussed would be the creation of a "National Council of Government Transition.''

The document calls for changes throughout Cuba's socialist system -- from its health and education programs to the armed forces and the state-run mass media. It was unclear who would be asked to participate in the national dialogue.

Payá could not be reached for comment on the proposal.

Cuban dissidents feared lost at sea

Five days after a raft of dissidents fled Cuba, there's been no trace of them, sparking concern on both sides of the Florida Straits.

By Tere Figueras. tfigueras@herald.com. Posted on Sat, Dec. 13, 2003.

A group of seven Cuban dissidents who fled the island in a makeshift raft Monday have not been heard from since and are feared lost at sea, according to the Cuban Liberty Council.

''They left in a homemade raft,'' said Luis Zuñiga, president of the Miami-based Cuban Liberty Council. ``The seas are high, so you can only imagine.''

Among those missing: Bárbaro Antonio Vela Crego, the president of the January 6 Civic Movement, or Movimiento Civico 6 de Enero, who faced 20 years in prison for his opposition to the Castro regime, said Zuñiga.

He and six other dissidents slipped away from the city of Alamar, east of Havana Bay. Their vessel was powered only by pieces of cloth patched together to form a sail and had no engine, Vela's wife told the Cuban Liberty Council.

The Coast Guard had no information on the group and said no migrants had been repatriated to Cuba this week, said Petty Officer Carleen Drummond, an agency spokeswoman.

Vela was frequently harassed for his activities, including work with Oscar Elias Biscet, a nonviolent opposition members sentenced in April to 25 years in prison, Zuñiga said.

''He was told they were coming to arrest him, and that he would spend 20 years in jail,'' Zuñiga said. ``The day after he left, the police came to his house looking for him.''

In addition to his wife, the dissident left behind a 20-year-old daughter ''and other family that depended on him for support. That is a quandary many in the opposition face,'' Zuñiga said.

Other movement members fleeing with Vela: Juan Tamayo Muñoz, Claudio García Porcades, Julio Armando López Calma and Juan Carlos Nuñez Guerra. Two other dissidents, Michael González González and Eugenio Lavastida Alonso, were also on the raft, according to the Cuban Liberty Council.

Vela signed a 2001 ''Appeal from Havana'' on behalf of his group, the National Council of Civil Resistance. His signature was alongside that of Oswaldo Payá, leader of the Varela Project for human rights and democracy in Cuba.

Hijack verdict a personal one for courtroom

Lawyers defending six Cuban men convicted of air piracy identify with their clients because of their own families' passage into exile.

By Cara Buckley, cbuckley@herald.com. Posted on Sat, Dec. 13, 2003.

KEY WEST - Defense lawyers fought back tears. Family members strained to understand snippets of a foreign process played out in a foreign tongue. And one little girl, dressed in her Sunday best and squirming on a hard courtroom bench, wondered why she was not allowed to run into her father's arms.

For the people who knew and loved the six Cuban men tried and convicted Thursday for hijacking a DC-3 aircraft to Key West, the eight-day trial resonated infinitely deeper than the antiseptic theater of legal motions, objections and denials that formed the trial's building blocks.

For three-quarters of the defense team, representing six young Cubans desperate to flee their homeland was deeply personal, and wounding.

''It could have been my son,'' Israel Encinosa, the lawyer for Alvenis Arias Izquierdo, said Wednesday, eyes reddened, moments after delivering his closing argument to the jury.

Encinosa was one of three defense lawyers whose families had fled Cuba when they were children, finding passage aboard the Freedom Flights in the late 1960s.

One of the lawyers, Ana Jhones, who represented defendant Miakel Guerra Morales, was an infant when her family took the flight into exile. Encinosa was 10 years old. He visited Cuba with three defense lawyers in August in a failed bid to gather evidence for the trial. It was his first time back in almost 40 years.

Reemberto Diaz, the cynic of the defense team, nearly wept after delivering an impassioned closing argument on behalf of his client, Yainer Olivares Samon. ''Today is the most important day of his life,'' he told jurors. "This was a freedom flight. Please give us freedom.''

Later, on a sun-dappled sidewalk blocks from the courthouse, Jhones and Encinosa stood in quiet reflection. ''When I saw Remby [Diaz] cry, I almost lost it,'' Jhones said.

The parents of a fourth lawyer, Mario Cano, who represented Eduardo Mejia Morales, arrived from Cuba in 1950 aboard a DC-3, the same type of plane the six men diverted to Key West.

The defendants, now convicted, were ''shocked'' after being arrested for redirecting the domestic flight, using kitchen knives and duct tape to bind the crew, from Cuba to Key West on March 19, Jhones said.

For the 12 jurors, the defense argument that the hijacking was a ''freedom flight'' done with the crew's complicity proved no match for the mountain of evidence amassed by prosecutors, including confessions from three defendants. The minimum sentence for their air piracy conviction is 20 years.

Four of the hijackers' wives, who knew nothing of the plan, and two of their children accompanied the men on the flight, and are now starting new lives in Florida.

Mejia's wife, Emma Lopez, and Guerra's wife, Yusleidis Marquez, spent most of the trial huddled together on a courtroom bench, dabbing their eyes with handkerchiefs and popping Tic-Tacs.

Lopez, 29, and daughter Dalia, 7, live with a member of her husband's family in Miami. Lopez is the only one in her family living in Florida, and hasn't found work.

'ALWAYS TOMORROW'

Lopez took Dalia out of school to attend the trial Tuesday. She shielded her from the sight of Mejia and the other defendants shuffling into court, handcuffed together, and told her that Daddy was dressed up because he was taking a course.

Mejia's eyes drank his daughter in.

'She asks when Papi is coming back, and says, 'Mami, you always say tomorrow,' '' said Lopez hours before the verdict was reached. Afterward, she wept at the prospect of telling Dalia that her father wasn't coming back.

Marquez, 24, first lived with her brother-in-law in Miami, then moved to a friend's home in Tampa and is taking a day-care course.

Bumny Arebalos, the wife of the hijacking's ringleader, Alexis Norniella Morales, is living with his extended family in Miami, caring for their 5-year-old daughter.

Samon's wife, Zaida Miranda, 24, lives in Miami too.

For Angel Morales, older brother to both Norniella, who worked as a veterinarian in Cuba, and Guerra, who performed atop a bicycle in a musical troupe, the eight-day trial marked an agonizing passage of time.

Angel Morales, 33, gained entry to the United States three years ago after winning a visa by lottery. He lives in Miami and works as an electrician.

The sudden departure of his brothers with their wives and one child on the diverted plane last March left his mother, Cristina, crazed with worry, alone in Nueva Gerona on Cuba's Isle of Youth.

HOPE DWINDLES

''I'm afraid to talk to her, I can't,'' Morales said Monday, four days before the verdict was reached. "Every day that passes, my hope gets smaller and smaller.''

Morales raged against the verdict outside the courthouse Thursday afternoon, as Lopez, Marquez and Miranda clutched each other, wailing. After the cameras and reporters drifted away, they disappeared from Key West's leafy streets.

''I feel for these men and their relatives,'' one juror, Roger Bayly, wrote in an e-mail.

"But I took an oath to uphold the law. I tried to find them not guilty as I suspect there are extenuating circumstances in the case. I searched for the smallest shadow of reasonable doubt and I really wish there would have been something, but the law is clear, and they said what they said. I feel I did the right thing.''

6 Cubans guilty of hijacking

In federal court in Key West, a jury finds that six young Cuban men seized a domestic Cuban flight and diverted it to the United States. All are found guilty of air piracy.

By Cara Buckley, cbuckley@herald.com. Posted on Fri, Dec. 12, 2003.

KEY WEST -- Six young Cuban men were found guilty of air piracy in Key West Thursday, after jurors rejected their claim that the act was a ''freedom flight'' masterminded by airport crew.

The conviction carries a minimum prison sentence of 20 years.

As the judgment was read, the faces of the defendants -- Alexis Norniella Morales; his brother, Miakel Guerra Morales; his cousin Eduardo Mejia Morales; and their friends Neudis Infantes Hernandez, Alvenis Arias Izquierdo and Yainer Olivares Samon -- registered shock. Some wept into their hands.

In the courtroom's gallery, three of their wives, who were on the hijacked flight, began to sob.

''It was beyond our control,'' said Jeffrey Williams, one of the 12 jurors. "I really sympathize with those people, but I couldn't do anything about it.''

Thursday's verdict, the fruit of six hours of jury deliberation, ended a grueling nine-day trial in which the court heard starkly different accounts of what transpired March 19:

Prosecutors insisted that the diversion that night of a domestic Cuban DC-3 plane to Key West was a meticulously plotted, ''old fashioned hijacking'' carried out with butcher knives, duct tape and string.

But the defense called the act a ''freedom flight'' masterminded by an airport security guard with the complicity of the copilot, Gustavo Salas. Five butcher knives tossed on to the airfield in Key West were props in a ''show,'' the defense argued, and the defendants believed that the flight's 37 passengers and crew, except for their wives, were ''on board'' with the plan.

WITNESSES FROM CUBA

The Cuban government produced four crew members for the trial, including the pilot, Daniel Blas Corria Sánchez, who testified that Norniella, the alleged ringleader, pressed a knife to his throat after the hijackers broke down the cockpit door. The flight's steward and technician said their lives were threatened after they were bound at knifepoint.

After the verdicts were read, the defendants, shackled in handcuffs, were driven from the courthouse in a white police van. Defense lawyer Mario Cano said each defendant would appeal.

''All the clients are extremely heartbroken and disappointed, but they still have faith in the judicial system that the appellate process will see them through,'' said Cano, who represented Mejia.

Reactions from family members were more pitched.

Outside the courthouse, beneath graceful bougainvillea and palm trees, Mejia's wife, Emma Lopez, dissolved into angry tears. ''Nobody realizes the abuses that we live with in Cuba,'' she wailed as television cameras zoomed in.

Prosecutors said the jury's verdict sent ''a clear message'' that the United States would not tolerate hijackings. After a second hijacking, Cuban President Fidel Castro charged that the United States is too lenient on hijackers and treats them as heroes.

However, that hijacker, Adermis Wilson Gonzalez, was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a federal court in Miami in September.

''Although we are sympathetic to people wanting to come to the United States, we will not tolerate violence or the threat of violence in order to do it,'' said Assistant U.S. Attorney Harry C. Wallace on Thursday. "We will vigorously prosecute those people who endanger people on flights in order to come to the U.S.''

Both sides pieced together wildly divergent accounts of what happened before and during the 75-minute flight, which was scheduled to go to Havana but ended up in Key West under the escort of two U.S. F-15 fighter jets.

STORY OF THE KNIVES

Competing explanations were given for how five butcher knives were smuggled aboard and wielded; about whether the plane carried extra gas to fuel its flight to the United States; about whether an ax was used; about whether the cockpit door was body-slammed by the hijackers or helped off its hinges by a complicit crew; and about why maps of South Florida were found in the cockpit, which the prosecutors described as normal, and the defense as a red flag.

Both sides were also handicapped going into the trial.

Confessions from three defendants were thrown out because the FBI failed to read them their Miranda rights.

Defense lawyers were not able to interview witnesses in Cuba, and the Cuban government refused to produce nongovernment witnesses. Nor could the defense mention Cuba's political or economic conditions, a defense tactic used in earlier hijacking trials that ended in acquittals.

Up to the last moment, Judge James Lawrence King denied each of the defense's requests for a mistrial. Thursday morning, juror No. 12 attempted to shake Wallace's hand, a breach of protocol, the defense argued, that should result in mistrial or the juror's removal. But at 12:40 p.m., King denied both motions. Five minutes later, King learned that a verdict had been reached.

Each defendant was charged with four counts: air piracy, interfering with a flight crew, and conspiracy to commit both. Norniella, Guerra and Infantes were found guilty on all four counts; Mejia and Olivares were found guilty of everything but interfering with a flight crew; and Arias was found guilty only of air piracy, the most serious offense.

ACTIVISTS SADDENED

Cuban activists reacted to the verdict with sadness.

''All we've done today is convict victims,'' said Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation. "I don't condone hijacking, but what kind of hijacker brings his wife on board, his family along? They weren't trying to destroy a building, or slam into a military installation. They were trying to escape.''

Sentencing is set for Feb. 26 in Miami.

Fates of dictators follow no pattern

Whether they die in power or are eventually thrown in prison or killed, the fates of the last century's dictators have proven to be a mixed bag.

By Robert H. Reid, Associated Press. Posted on Mon, Dec. 15, 2003

Some ended up in prison; others were butchered at the hands of their own people. A lucky few lived out their days in comfortable exile or in positions of privilege in the lands they ruled.

India's independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi said that dictators "for a time . . . can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall.''

That hasn't always proven true. Among others, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, North Korea's Kim Il-Sung, China's Mao Zedong, Francisco Franco of Spain and Syria's Hafez Assad all died in power. Fidel Castro is still going strong in Cuba.

Albania's Enver Hoxha and Augusto Pinochet of Chile arranged comfortable retirements before leaving power.

The global record of bringing tyrants to justice has been mixed. Only one -- former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic -- has stood before an international tribunal to answer for his regime.

Milosevic's trial is still under way at an international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. Liberia's Charles Taylor has been indicted for war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone but has not been arrested.

Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega is serving a 40-year term in a federal prison southwest of Miami for racketeering, drug trafficking and money-laundering after U.S. troops entered his country and arrested him in 1989.

But history's master tyrant, Adolf Hitler, escaped retribution by committing suicide in Berlin before Soviet troops could capture him in 1945. Pol Pot, whose Khmer Rouge regime was responsible for the deaths of up to 2 million Cambodians, died in the jungle in 1998 as remnants of his vanquished movement were preparing to hand him over to an international court.

For nearly 25 years, Nicolae Ceausescu wielded vast powers as the Communist boss of Romania. Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, were executed by a firing squad on Christmas Day 1989 after revolutionaries toppled his regime.

That seemed a merciful end compared with that of Samuel Doe, the shy, soft-spoken master sergeant who overthrew Liberian President William Tobert in 1980.

Power and corruption soon got the best of him, and after 10 years of dictatorial rule, Doe was himself overthrown -- tortured, mutilated and brutally slain.

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