CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Cuba won't let ex-political prisoner leave for United States

Vanessa Arrington, Associated Press. Posted on Mon, Apr. 11, 2005.

HAVANA - Dissident Jorge Olivera has wanted to leave communist-run Cuba for years.

The independent journalist managed to get a visa to the United States in 2002, and was preparing to head north when he was picked up in a government crackdown of 75 political activists in March 2003.

After serving 21 months, Olivera was released from prison for colon problems in December. U.S. visa and political refugee papers in hand, he has been ready to leave since, but still finds himself in Havana after months waiting for an exit permit from the Cuban government.

"It's like I'm still jailed," Olivera told journalists Monday. "Here I am still, deprived of my rights."

Olivera's wife and two sons are also ready to leave the island, and started the necessary paperwork last fall to get permission from the Cuban government.

But Olivera said they couldn't get the permission all Cuban citizens need from their government to leave their homeland because he was still imprisoned.

So after his release, Olivera met personally with immigration officials. He said they told him on Jan. 6 the exit permits would be ready in one month, or a maximum of 45 days.

The maximum period passed more than seven weeks ago.

The 43-year-old said he has since met several times with immigration officials, who told him his papers are still being processed.

"I don't see a single reason that justifies this type of delay," he said. "I see this as an additional punishment, and it's affecting my health."

Olivera, who said he suffers severe stomach pains due to colon problems, says he suspects the government is stalling because he is a dissident.

But a Cuban official, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said it is not unusual for immigration procedures to take longer than expected. Because Olivera's request for an exit permit has not been flatly denied, the case should eventually be resolved, the official said.

Actually, Cuba's government has often encouraged dissidents to leave the country, especially if they stay away for good.

Olivera was among 14 dissidents of the original 75 released on medical parole last year. The opponents were sentenced to long prison terms in April 2003 on charges of working with the U.S. government to undermine Cuban President Fidel Castro's government - something they and Washington deny.

Cuba recently allowed Raul Rivero, a well-known poet and journalist who was also jailed in the 2003 crackdown, to travel to Spain, where he arrived April 1 with his wife, daughter and mother.

Several other dissidents released on medical parole are also trying to leave, Olivera said.

While Olivera waits, he worries about being arrested before his papers come through.

"I don't want the same thing to happen to me again, where I pay (for dissident activities) by going to prison," said Olivera, who was serving an 18-year prison sentence when he was paroled.

A former television producer with Cuba's state-run media, Olivera later spent a dozen years working as an independent journalist.

And after his spell behind bars, he's ready to go.

"I've given everything I can here," Olivera said.

Prisoner burned in Cuban uprising dies

HAVANA, Cuba, 12 (AP) -- An inmate who suffered severe burns in an uprising at a Cuban prison has died, officials said.

Inmates at the Combinado del Este Prison set mattresses and materials ablaze in violence that left several prisoners seriously injured on April 5, said Elizardo Sanchez, head of the Havana-based Cuban Commission on Human Rights and Reconciliation.

Sanchez said the inmate who died Monday, identified as 33-year-old Fredy Ibanez Blanco, was serving a sentence on drug-related charges. An official at a mortuary in west Havana confirmed Ibanez's body was expected to arrive there late Monday.

Sanchez said many of the injured inmates had refused to participate in the uprising, angering some of the rioters.

The disturbance, later controlled by Cuban authorities, was the second in less than 20 days at the Combinado del Este Prison, which houses thousands of inmates.

Sanchez was trying to verify reports that other injured prisoners may also have died.

Cuba's communist government issued no official report of the uprising, but has confirmed an earlier disturbance at the same prison March 19, in which there were no deaths or serious injuries.

From enemy to possible pope

Giving a voice to a church that had long been silenced, Cuban Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino is among a long list of contenders to become the next pope.

By Nancy San Martin, nsanmartin@herald.com. Posted on Wed, Apr. 13, 2005.

This is one of a series of profiles of the papabili, the pope-ready men in the College of Cardinals.

Once confined in a Cuban hard-labor camp with dissidents, petty criminals, homosexuals and other ''enemies of the Cuban revolution,'' Roman Catholic Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino has emerged as a voice in a church that was all but totally silenced after Fidel Castro seized power in 1959.

Ortega has earned some respect for his relatively independent stand on Castro's communist regime, and worked diligently to rebuild a church decimated by government restraints and teach a largely baptized but vastly untutored population.

Nearly half of Cuba's 11.2 million people consider themselves Catholics, but few are devoted practitioners in a nation where the government was officially atheist for more than two decades and often promoted other religions as a counterweight.

Seen as a deft conciliator between the notoriously divided Cuban exile community and those who stayed behind, Ortega, 68, is among several cardinals considered to be possible successors to Pope John Paul II.

COMMUNICATOR

Ortega is called an effective communicator who can bolster the enthusiasm for the Catholic faith, especially among youth.

He began to emerge as a vocal leader in 1986 when an unprecedented weeklong conference of Cuban Catholics took place in Havana. Ortega told delegates that Cuba's is a ''church whose history has shown that the light always shines after dark times.'' As president the Cuban Bishops' Conference, Ortega has issued several pastoral letters urging a political opening.

In many ways, Ortega's career mirrors the experience of the Cuban church.

Born in 1936 in the north-central town of Jaguey Grande, in the province of Matanzas, he studied at a seminary in Quebec, Canada, and was ordained a priest in the Matanzas Cathedral in 1964.

But under Castro the church-state relations soured. Many priests were forced to flee Cuba and religious schools were closed. Believers were persecuted and religious expression outside the church was prohibited.

In 1966, Ortega was forced to a labor camp where he spent about a year alongside others deemed anti-revolutionary.

For many years, the Cuban church remained timid in challenging the regime. But it began to blossom in the mid-1980s when Cuba's Communist Party began a more tolerant attitude toward religion.

CHURCH REBIRTH

Ortega was appointed archbishop in 1981 and under his leadership, there was a rebirth within the church. Mass attendance shot up and thousands took part in street processions in honor of Cuba's patron saint, Our Lady of Charity.

He was tapped by John Paul II in 1994, becoming Cuba's first cardinal in 30 years.

On most church questions, he hews very closely to the Vatican line. Ortega has urged his nation not to construct a post-communist future on the basis of hyper-capitalist principles. He also has said the death penalty, abortion, human rights abuses and the U.S. embargo against Cuba impoverish the people.

Ortega has been careful not to preach politics, choosing instead to focus on spiritual concerns and Christian values. But when he does speak out, his words are powerful.

He expressed disagreement with the death penalty in 1989, when Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa and three other military officials were executed. He also exhorted the government to investigate the sinking of a tugboat in July 1994 that led to the death of more than 40 people. And in a declaration in 1995, he asked that both the U.S. and Cuban governments cease to treat Cubans -- both on the island and in exile -- as political pawns.

But his biggest moment came in 1998, when John Paul II made a historic trip to Cuba.

Following the pope's visit, the church experienced another resurgence and grew more bold and began distributing publications that contained candid messages. Still, Cuba remains the only Latin American nation that bans parochial schools.

In 2003, Ortega called on the government to soften its traditionally heavy hand.

''The time has come to go from the avenging State that demands sacrifices and settles accounts to the merciful State that is ready to lend a compassionate hand before it imposes controls and punishes infractions,'' said a pastoral letter signed by Ortega.

Anti-Castro fugitive to seek political asylum

A Cuban exile wanted by two countries as a terrorism suspect will claim that he worked for the CIA in a petition for asylum in the United States.

Associated Press. Posted on Tue, Apr. 12, 2005.

A Cuban militant accused of plotting to assassinate Fidel Castro and blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976 when he lived in Venezuela will file a petition for political asylum by mail today in Miami, his attorney said.

Luis Posada Carriles, 77, will seek asylum based, in part, on his claim that he worked ''directly and indirectly'' for the CIA for years, attorney Eduardo Soto said.

The CIA would not discuss whether Posada ever worked for the agency, saying the CIA does not usually comment on such matters.

Foreigners who seek asylum generally get to stay in the United States while their cases are decided and could remain permanently if they can prove persecution or that they fear for their lives.

Soto plans to hold a news conference Wednesday afternoon to address questions about Posada's case. Soto told The Herald that Posada would not be at the news conference.

Soto declined to say precisely where Posada is located, or exactly when and where he entered the United States. But Posada has a number of financial backers and other supporters in the Cuban-American community.

Posada is a longtime foe of Castro who was imprisoned in Panama -- and then pardoned -- for his role in an alleged plot to kill Castro while the Cuban president attended a summit in Panama in 2000. He is a veteran of the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and was linked to a series of 1997 bombings of prominent Cuban tourist spots.

Although the United States would be unlikely to hand Posada over to Cuba, Venezuela is another matter because it has an extradition treaty. Posada is wanted for escaping from a Venezuelan prison in 1985 while awaiting the outcome of a prosecutor's appeal of his acquittal in the airline bombing case.

Soto said Posada will argue that he unjustly spent years in the Venezuelan prison even though he was acquitted twice in the bombing, which killed 73 people.

Cuba, Venezuela call for exile now in U.S.

From Herald Wire Services. Posted on Wed, Apr. 13, 2005.

Cuban leader Fidel Castro and the vice president of Venezuela are demanding that an anti-Castro militant accused of blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976 not be granted asylum in Miami.

Miami attorney Eduardo Soto, representing Luis Posada Carriles, has said the 77-year-old man is now in the United States and plans to petition for political asylum this week, saying he deserves the protection because he worked ''directly and indirectly'' for the CIA.

Soto plans to hold a news conference today to address questions about Posada's case.

In Havana, Castro called Posada a terrorist, said the U.S. government was harboring him and complained that the European Union is saying nothing about that even as it supports a U.S. campaign to win a condemnation of Cuba's human rights record at a Geneva meeting of the U.N.'s human rights branch.

''I'd like to know what the European governments think of the fact that such monstrous murderers are welcomed in the United States,'' Castro said Monday in a nationally broadcast speech. "That monster has been living there for 19 days.''

Posada and three other Cuban exiles were arrested in Panama in 2000 on allegations of plotting to assassinate Castro, but were convicted only of endangering public safety. They were pardoned last year by Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso.

Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said his nation's extradition request for Posada ''is still pending'' and added that President Bush should hand over the longtime Castro foe.

Posada was never convicted in the 1976 bombing of the Cuban airliner, which had taken off from Caracas, but escaped from jail in 1985.

He later acknowledged, and then denied, masterminding a string of terror bombings in Havana tourist spots that left one dead and more than a dozen wounded.

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