CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Lawyers lobby for dissidents

By Jay Weaver.jweaver@herald.com

A group of Cuban-American lawyers on Thursday urged a human rights commission for the Organization of American States to pressure the Cuban government to release 75 dissidents who have been imprisoned on the island.

The Cuban American Bar Association filed a petition with the 34-nation organization one month after the American Bar Association sent a letter to Cuban leader Fidel Castro expressing ''deep concern'' over the harsh sentences imposed on the dissidents.

The ABA's letter -- requested by the Miami-based legal group -- said "the rule of law requires respect for the right of human rights advocates to speak in opposition to policies or practices of their governments.''

STRATEGY

The two-pronged legal campaign against Cuba's human rights practices reflected an unprecedented effort to put pressure on Castro to release the dissidents, provide humane treatment and allow due process.

The campaign may prove to be more symbolic than anything else.

Many nations of the OAS, which suspended Cuba's membership in 1962, are opposed to discussing Castro's human rights record without also debating the four-decades-old U.S. economic embargo against the island.

POINTS OF CONTACT

Lawyer Adolfo Jiménez, a former board member of the Cuban-American legal group, said it reached out to the ABA and separately crafted its petition for the OAS' Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

''We thought these were such gross human rights violations that the ABA needed to step up and write this rule of law letter,'' said Jiménez, who is a board member of the politically influential Cuban American National Foundation.

He and other Cuban-American lawyers said the petition was a message to the dissidents that they would not be ignored.

''The Cuban regime wants the world to believe this never happened,'' lawyer Jorge Mestre said.

"We're here today to say this did happen. They are in prison for no reason other than the expression of their opinions.''

3 European leaders urge fund for opposition

PRAGUE, Czech Republic - (AP) -- Three former Cold War dissidents turned democratic leaders made a public call Thursday for Western countries to fund the Cuban opposition to Fidel Castro to help bring democracy to the communist-run island.

In an open letter published in newspapers across Europe and in the United States, former Presidents Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic, Lech Walesa of Poland, and Arpad Goncz of Hungary called for the creation of a pro-democracy fund for Cuba.

The three men said both U.S. sanctions against Cuba and the European calls for dialogue have failed to produce results.

''It is time to put aside trans-Atlantic disputes about the embargo of Cuba and concentrate on direct support for Cuban dissidents, prisoners of conscience and their families,'' the letter said.

'European countries should establish a 'Cuban Democracy Fund' to support the emergence of civil society in Cuba,'' the letter said. "Such a fund would be ready for instant use in the case of political changes on the island.''

Havel, Walesa and Goncz said the ''voice of free-thinking Cubans is growing louder,'' leading the Castro regime to resort to imprison dissidents and further curtail freedom of speech.

The three former presidents said their letter is a response to the jailing of 75 members of the Cuban democratic opposition six months ago.

They were imprisoned for between six and 28 years, some for organizing a petition -- called the Varela Project -- which called for free elections, freedom of expression and the release of political prisoners.

More than 11,000 Cubans signed the petition, which was delivered to Cuba's National Assembly in May.

''The regime is running short of breath, just as the party rulers in the Iron Curtain did at the end of the 1980s,'' the letter said.

All three former presidents were persecuted by East European communist regimes before they helped lead their countries' peaceful transition to democracy in 1989-90.

Dissident honored in Spain

BARCELONA - (EFE) -- A regional Spanish political party has awarded a medal to leading Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá for his fight for freedom and democracy in his communist-ruled homeland, the party announced Thursday.

According to the Democratic Union of Catalonia, Payá is being honored for his "struggle for individual and collective liberty, his respect for human rights and his independent political project for Cuba based on national reconciliation.''

The medal is to be given to Oscar Payá, the brother of Oswaldo, at a ceremony in Barcelona. The dissident is banned by the authorities from leaving Cuba.

Earlier this year, the European Parliament awarded Payá with its Sakharov Prize for his work.

Payá is the chairman of the Christian Liberation Movement, which organized a recent petition drive to schedule a referendum on overhauling the Cuban Constitution to ensure basic political rights.

Trade mission to Cuba sought

Duane Marsteller, Bradenton (Fla.) Herald.

MANATEE - The door to U.S.-Cuba trade has cracked slightly open, and Port Manatee wants to get its foot in.

Port officials said Monday that they want to launch a trade mission to Cuba in November, hoping to get a slice of the small but burgeoning U.S. export market to the island nation that has been under a U.S. economic embargo since 1960.

"We want to see what trade opportunities are there," said Steve Tyndal, the port's director of trade development and special projects.

He would make the trip with David McDonald, the port's director, and Manatee County Commissioner Joe McClash, chairman of the Manatee County Port Authority. Officials hope to visit Cuba the week of Nov. 17, but the itinerary and whom they would meet have not been set.

Whether they go is up to the seven-member authority, which will have up to a month to think about authorizing the potentially controversial trip. McClash and Tyndal do not need prior authority approval to travel on port-related business, but McDonald does.

One authority member said she would support the trade mission, while another was ambivalent.

"I think the time is right now to have this kind of discourse," Commissioner Pat Glass said.

But Commissioner Jonathan Bruce said he will have to "weigh his conscience" and Cuba's human-rights record before making a decision.

"When you're dealing with a regime that can be so horrible to its own people, that factors into the equation," he said. "I think we need to be sensitive about human-rights issues when we're talking about establishing trade relations with Cuba."

Trade with Cuba has been a heated political issue, especially in Florida, since the Eisenhower administration imposed trade and travel restrictions in hopes of ousting Fidel Castro's Communist government. Direct trade between the two countries was virtually nonexistent until 1992, when Congress allowed U.S. companies to sell pharmaceuticals and other medical items to Cuba.

The trade embargo was further relaxed in 2000 when Congress allowed the sale of certain U.S. food and agricultural products on a cash-only basis. Since then, Cuba has bought or agreed to buy $500 million of U.S. products, a U.S.-Cuba trade consultant said.

"Cuba now is the 35th largest purchaser of U.S. agricultural products in the world," said Kirby Jones, a Washington consultant whom port officials have approached, but have not hired, to facilitate the proposed trade mission. "That might be a drop in the bucket, but less than two years ago it was nothing."

Among those products was more than 3,000 tons of dicalcium phosphate - an animal feed supplement - that was shipped from Port Manatee to Cienfuegos, Cuba, in January. It was the port's first nonhumanitarian shipment to Cuba since the embargo was enacted.

While the shipment was historic, the port had little to do with it: It was handled entirely by the shipper and Cuba, and port officials didn't even know about the shipment until the day before.

"We need to be involved in the process to make our chances of sending cargo there a higher probability," Tyndal said.

Other ports, including Tampa, Jacksonville and Pensacola, already have conducted trade missions to Cuba that have reaped some success. So far, 17 U.S. ports have shipped goods to Cuba.

But the head of a U.S.-Cuba trade organization cautioned that Port Manatee officials might find limited trade opportunities in Cuba.

"There's a finite amount of products that Cuba will be able to source from the United States in the short term," said John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, a private, nonpolitical trade group based in New York. "Sometimes, there has been exuberance that doesn't meet reality."

The Cuban government decides what U.S. products to buy and from which ports those products are shipped, decisions based more on politics and foreign policy than on economics, he said. Cuba generally buys from companies and ships from ports in states where Cuba perceives there is political gain for doing so, Kavulich said.

He said that could benefit Port Manatee, as Florida is high on Cuba's trading list because the state is considered a key battleground in the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Cuba also has been seeking more trade with Florida in hopes of undermining the political influence of anti-Castro Cuban exiles, he said.

Port officials said economics, not politics, is driving their desire to seek Cuban trade. Several companies already licensed by the U.S. government to trade with Cuba have inquired about using the port, McDonald said.

"This is a cargo-related, trade-related trip only," he said.

CUBAN SHIPMENTS

The top U.S. ports for Cuba exports, by shipment dollar value, between Jan. 1 and July 31, 2003:

PORT VALUE
New Orleans $90,010,584
Mobile, Ala.* $18,009,474
Tampa $8,909,976
Port Arthur, Texas $4,762,390
Miami $2,172,124
Houston $884,625
Savannah, Ga. $532,121
Norfolk, Va. $488,220
Pembina, N.D. $60,325
Odensburg, N.Y. $60,000
San Juan, P.R. $12,000
*Includes ports at Gulfport, Miss.; Mobile, Ala.; and Pascagoula, Miss. SOURCE: U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council

Duane Marsteller, transportation and business reporter, can be reached at 745-7080, ext. 2630, or at dmarsteller@bradentonherald.com.

Cuban man sentenced in plane hijacking

By CATHERINE WILSON, Associated Press.

MIAMI - A Cuban architect was sentenced to 20 years in prison Friday for using two fake grenades to hijack a passenger plane from the communist island to Florida in April.

Adermis Wilson Gonzalez, 34, was found guilty of air piracy in July. The case became politically sensitive after three Cubans were executed there for hijacking a Cuban ferry a day after Wilson commandeered the Cuban Airlines plane with 31 people aboard. Ten of the Cubans aboard - including Wilson's wife and son - chose to remain in the United States.

"I am very happy to be here in the United States far away from the clutches of the tyrant (President Fidel) Castro," Wilson told the judge. "I know that God is on my side today, that God is looking at the freedom my wife and child are enjoying."

His lawyer plans an appeal. Prosecutors sought the minimum 20-year prison sentence; he could have faced life in prison.

Wilson did not testify after the judge ruled he couldn't tell the jury that he feared for his life if he surrendered control of the plane to Cuban agents.

Defense attorney Stewart Abrams had argued that the U.S. courts had no jurisdiction because any crime that may have happened did so in Cuba.

In an unusual move, U.S. District Judge Shelby Highsmith recommended Wilson be allowed to stay in the United States when his sentence ends. Typically, non-citizens convicted of crimes are deported after their sentences end.

Earlier this month, six men sent back to Cuba by U.S. authorities were convicted and sentenced to 7 to 10 years in prison for hijacking a government boat and trying to reach Florida.

Six other Cubans face trial in Key West in December over a March plane hijacking.

Cuban hijacker gets minimum 20 years for air piracy

Catherine Wilson, Associated Press.

MIAMI - An architect called Cuban President Fidel Castro a tyrant as he was sentenced to the minimum 20 years in federal prison Friday for hijacking a Cuban passenger plane to Key West using hand-painted ceramic to look like two grenades.

Adermis Wilson Gonzalez denounced the Castro government, invoked the memory of Elian Gonzalez's drowned mother and praised U.S. liberties in his first public words since his arrest April 1. An appeal is planned.

"I am very happy to be here in the United States far away from the clutches of the tyrant Castro," Wilson told the judge. "I know that God is on my side today, that God is looking at the freedom my wife and child are enjoying."

Wilson, 34, brought his 19-year-old wife Lehidy and 3-year-old son Andy with him when he forced the Cuban Airlines AN-24 to fly to Florida from his home island of Isle of Youth off the south coast of Cuba, with a long stop in Havana for food and fuel.

"I discovered there is no justice here," Wilson's wife, who is living with an uncle in Naples, said through tears after the hearing. "I can imagine that Fidel is happy today, but my life is a disgrace now."

Her son rubbed his eyes as he watched his mother cry, then amused himself by flipping a penny.

Wilson was barred from raising a political defense, and his jury found him guilty of air piracy in July after deliberating for an hour.

He told the judge through a Spanish translator that he was better off than most in Cuba and regretted the hijacking but felt it was the safest choice for his family. He referred to the 1999 drowning of Elian's mother and 10 others as they tried to come to the United States by boat. The then 5-year-old boy survived because he was lashed to an innertube and became the center of an international custody battle before being sent back.

"We should go back perhaps to the time of the child Elian and take into consideration the way in which his mother drowned. This child saw his mother drown," Wilson said. "I would never expose my family to thing like this, to life them at sea."

Wilson's hijacking came at a particularly touchy time in U.S.-Cuba relations. Three Cubans were executed for hijacking a Cuban ferry a day later, and six Cubans face trial in Key West in December over a March plane hijacking.

Wilson commandeered the plane with 51 people aboard 20 minutes into a 30-minute flight. Twenty-one passengers were released, and the plane refueled. Thirty-one people made the flight out of Havana, and two Navy jets escorted the plane to Key West.

Wilson told police how he used a ceramic cast, pins, wires and olive drab paint to make a psychological weapon and pulled the pins in flight.

Wilson was barred from telling jurors that he feared execution if he surrendered control of the plane to Cuban agents during the 15-hour layover in Havana, said defense attorney Stewart Abrams.

Wilson acted "through frustration, through anger and through the inability to advance" in Cuba, Abrams said. "Desperate times breed desperate acts."

In trial, Abrams argued that U.S. courts had no jurisdiction because any crime happened in Cuba.

Prosecutors supported the minimum mandatory prison sentence on a charge carrying a possible life sentence.

In an unusual move, U.S. District Judge Shelby Highsmith recommended Wilson be allowed to stay in the United States when his sentence is done. A standard provision in sentencing non-citizens is to order their deportation after prison.

The Cuban Interests Section in Washington did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

PRINTER FRIENDLY