Published in the Miami Herald
Ousted envoy to continue protest in Canada, Cuba says
From Herald Wire Services. Published Monday, February 28, 2000, in the Miami Herald
HAVANA -- The government indicated Sunday that a Cuban diplomat expelled as a spy from the United States will not return immediately to Havana but will remain in Canada and continue a hunger strike to back up his claim of innocence.
Despite reports that Jose Imperatori, 46, would return Sunday night to Havana on a Cubana de Aviacion flight from Canada, the Cuban government said Sunday afternoon that Imperatori had asked Canadian authorities for a visa to ``stay long enough to find an honorable solution to the problem
created by the grave and embarrassing deeds that have occurred.''
Havana also said Imperatori is continuing his hunger strike in Canada to protest the espionage accusations.
``He continues to decline food as a way of pointing an accusing finger at the defamation committed against him,'' state television said. It said Imperatori ``was removed [from his home Saturday night] in five minutes without even being told where he would be taken.''
Imperatori had been declared persona non grata because of alleged spying, but had refused to obey an order to leave. Late Saturday morning, Imperatori announced his plan to defy the State Department expulsion order so he could contest allegations linking him with U.S. immigration official
Mariano Faget, who has been charged in Miami with spying for Cuba.
Imperatori, until Saturday a consular official in the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, was escorted from his Maryland apartment by FBI agents Saturday night, taken to the airport and put aboard a government plane to Montreal.
From there he traveled to Ottawa and was staying Sunday at the Cuban Embassy.
Meanwhile on Sunday, in Havana's Vedado neighborhood, scores of teenagers shouting ``Down with the lie!'' rallied outside the home of Imperatori's family.
The diplomat's mother, Matilde Garcia, watching the small demonstration by students waving Cuban flags outside her white two-story home, said she looked forward to her son's arrival.
``We are absolutely fine and we are confident that everything will turn out well,'' she said.
WIFE IN HAVANA
His family said they weren't sure when he would arrive in Havana.
Imperatori's wife, Raquel Fundora, and the couple's 3-year-old son returned to Havana on Friday night before their diplomatic immunity expired.
``It is incredible that a person who wants to demonstrate [his innocence] . . . is not allowed to,'' Fundora said, referring to her husband's attempts to prove he had done nothing wrong.
Fernando Remirez, head of Cuba's diplomatic mission, acknowledged that Imperatori had maintained contacts with Faget, but said they were no different from the kinds of aboveboard relationships the mission maintains with many Cuban-Americans and other Americans.
Imperatori gave Remirez his resignation as consular affairs officer Saturday morning, leaving himself without diplomatic immunity before the 1:30 p.m. Saturday deadline.
Both Imperatori and Remirez have been adamant in their insistence that the Cuban Interests Section does not spy and is used solely for improving relations with the United States.
Rafters allowed to stay in U.S.
Survivors of raft journey from Cuba will stay here
By Elaine De Valle And Eunice Ponce . eponce@herald.com. Published Sunday, February 27, 2000, in the Miami Herald
The survivors of a nine-day rafting voyage from Cuba that killed their two companions will be allowed to stay in the United States because they are so burned and blistered that they had to be taken from a Coast Guard cutter to a hospital on shore.
The move means the men can live in the United States under the ``wet foot/dry foot'' policy that allows Cubans who reach dry land to stay, but repatriates most picked up at sea.
Though relieved the men are alive, the survivors' South Florida relatives said they became upset after the rafters told them several Coast Guard officers taunted them when they were aboard the cutter, saying they would never reach the United States.
``They treated them so badly. They told them, `Look, there's Miami Beach. You wanted to see it, didn't you? There it is, but you're not getting off this ship,' '' said Beatriz Alvarez of Flagami, the sister of survivor Oscar Lazaro Garcia. ``And they said, `If you have a wife and kids back home,
why didn't you bring them?' ''
Not true, said the Matagorda's commanding officer, Lt. Scott Sharp.
``I was in earshot of the migrants the entire night, and that just didn't happen,'' he said. ``It upsets me a bit to hear that.''
Survivors Jeiner Alvarez, 21, Oscar Lazaro Garcia, 27, and Jorge Nicolas Gonzalez Aguerebere were listed in stable condition Saturday at South Shore Hospital. Ernesto Ramos Molina, 29, remained in intensive care. The Coast Guard had originally reported that Ramos, who was hospitalized Friday,
was 19.
RESIDENCY HERE
All will be eligible for residency under the Cuban Adjustment Act, said Maria Elena Garcia, Immigration and Naturalization Service spokeswoman.
``Once they get released from the hospital, it's just routine, they would go to Krome Detention Center for processing, and then they would be released to their families,'' Garcia said.
The two others, Jorge Travieso Lopez, 36, and Victor Manuel Bermudez Pabon, age unknown, were dead when rescuers responded to a call from a private vessel that saw the men about five miles off shore.
The medical examiner's office confirmed Saturday that Travieso and Bermudez were the two men who were found dead. Family members for Bermudez had not been found, said Yvonne Ledesma, a forensic investigator.
A cause of death could not be provided. ``Unclassified at this moment,'' she said.
BELONGINGS TAKEN
One of the survivors, Gonzalez, told relatives of the other men that the Coast Guard officers had taken all his papers, on which he had the names and numbers of his relatives in the States. On Saturday, he still had not been able to reach anyone. The only name he could remember was his aunt's,
Amelia Gonzalez Perez, who supposedly lives in Miami.
Sharp said the rafters' personal belongings were being held at the Miami Beach Coast Guard Station for pickup by U.S. Border Patrol agents.
The rafters also told relatives that they believed they were held aboard the cutter for about 14 hours, despite their severe injuries, because the Coast Guard had wanted to repatriate them. They said they were given only a bottle of water and ice cream to eat.
Lt. Cmdr. Ron LaBrec said the rafters were not brought ashore immediately because, at the time, the medical staff thought their needs could be addressed aboard the cutter.
``The one guy that was med-evaced right off the bat, he was really in bad condition. They weren't able to get an IV in him on the cutter,'' LaBrec said, referring to Ramos. ``The other three guys seemed to be fine. They were talking, they were eating and drinking.''
Sharp said the men were given rice and beans to eat.
About 3 a.m. Saturday, the decision was made to bring them ashore.
``I guess they had a lot of sores and lesions from being out in the sea,'' LaBrec said.
BURNED RAW
Alvarez said her brother's extremities were covered with pus-filled blisters, including one that ran from his heel to the top of his calf. The skin of his buttocks and genitals was raw, and he was severely burned all over.
``He looks as brown as this purse,'' she said. ``They all look like skeletons, and when you touch their skin, it's rough.''
Alvarez and Garcia's cousin, Leslie Alvarez, said all six left wives and babies at home, some as young as 3 months old.
``They're just desperate, because they're seeing that the situation doesn't improve over there,'' Leslie Alvarez said. ``My cousin just had a baby, and I had to send them clothes so they would have something to dress the baby in when they left the hospital.''
Travieso, one of the men who died, also leaves behind a wife and three children, including an 18-month-old boy.
``I had hope until the last minute,'' said sister Yolanda Romero, wiping tears from her face Saturday afternoon. Not until someone at the medical examiner showed her photos of her brother would she believe that Travieso had died.
Carmen Lopez, 78, Travieso's mother, sat motionless, swallowed up in a chair in the white living room of the family's East Hialeah home. Her hands crossed in front of her, she stared emptily up at the ceiling and spoke not a word until someone brought her soup.
``I can't eat. How can I eat when he's gone and he can't be here to eat with us?''
Romero fielded calls and visitors all afternoon.
SHATTERED DREAMS
``My little brother,'' she cried into the phone to a friend. ``Such dreams I had waiting for him. But you know that's how Cuban life is. It's too many coming. Someone is always lost. This time it was one of ours.''
She lashed out at the Cuban government for making her brother's life miserable. It was Travieso's fourth attempt to leave the island: He was not allowed to come with his sister when she left during the Mariel crisis and was caught twice, and jailed once, after trying to leave illegally.
But Romero also found some solace in her grief.
``He's gone, but he was free. He felt free at least for a few days,'' she said. ``I know that until the last minute he was saying, `Forward, forward, we're free.' I know in his heart he was happy.''
I secretly visited Cuba, Broward's Deutsch says
By Carol Rosenberg. crosenberg@herald.com. Published Saturday, February 26, 2000, in the Miami Herald
U.S. Rep. Peter Deutsch -- in what is thought to be the first visit to Cuba by a member of Congress from Florida -- posed as a tourist for two days in Havana this week to clandestinely meet with dissidents.
The Weston Democrat, an outspoken critic of Fidel Castro, said Friday that he had traveled under his own name but left his congressional identification card behind and wore a Florida Marlins baseball cap to blend in. He dropped in unannounced on 15 well-known dissidents, he said.
Deutsch, 42, a longtime supporter of the U.S. embargo against Cuba, used his name and U.S. passport to check into the Nacional Hotel but said he believed his presence was never detected by Cuban security authorities.
At the Nacional, he bumped into a Washington-based U.S. journalist and, separately, an anti-embargo colleague from Congress, Rep. Maurice Hinchley, D-N.Y. The journalist and Hinchley were on officially sanctioned trips.
``It was incredibly interesting and useful. I have a much better perspective, it's a bizarre place,'' Deutsch said in a telephone interview on his return to Washington. ``I don't think there's a person there that wants to be there, except for maybe high government officials.''
Deutsch said his trip violated Cuban laws because he was not really a tourist and sought out dissidents. But it was legal from a U.S. standpoint because he obtained a Treasury Department permit.
Deutsch, whose congressional district includes portions of Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe counties, arrived on a package tour from Cancun at about 11 p.m. Tuesday and left Friday morning.
``It's an evil empire,'' he said. ``People hold hands in the street and have wonderful families and everything else. But the government is a repressive entity in every aspect of their life.''
Deutsch decided to take the trip as a tourist, he said, after being refused a formal visa to go by the Cuban government several years ago. His visit was sponsored by The Center for a Free Cuba, a pro-democracy group that encourages Cuban dissidents.
MEDICAL SUPPLIES
Deutsch brought with him hypertension medicine and vitamins for some of the dissidents, he said, as well as a bra for a woman cancer patient.
A colleague also brought along leaflets portraying a smiling Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old child at the center of a custody dispute, he said, because he had heard that Cubans see only unhappy pictures of the child in Miami.
Center for a Free Cuba Director Frank Calzon said none of his nonprofit's $500,000 U.S. Agency for International Development grant was used for the Deutsch trip. Rather, Calzon paid for the trip with donations from Cuban-American supporters and others.
The Cuba package tour cost about $700, Deutsch said. Calzon also picked up the tab for a round-trip ticket between Washington and Cancun, which Deutsch said he would report under Capitol Hill disclosure rules.
Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., was surprised Friday to learn of the secret mission but said his South Florida colleague had told him ``for a couple of years now that he planned to go to Cuba to meet with dissidents and see how he can help the internal opposition.''
OPTIMISTIC OUTLOOK
Asked whether he thought the trip was a good idea, he replied: ``Hopefully, there will finally be a United States congressman who will not come back either brainwashed . . . or having had a pro-Castro agenda.''
Trips by members of Congress to Cuba have become more frequent in recent years, but most have been either part of official congressional delegations or as guests of the Cuban government. Most Congress members come back opposing the embargo as counterproductive.
Rather than make appointments in advance, Deutsch said he used freelance taxis and had drivers drop him off a block or more from the dissidents' homes. Then he would arrive, unannounced, after walking the wrong way up a one-way street.
Among those he met -- and videotaped for possible future broadcast -- were dissidents Gustavo Arcos, Raul Ribero and Elizardo Sanchez. He also met a physician named Hilda Molina, who repeatedly has been denied a permit to visit a daughter and granddaughter in Argentina. ``Obviously, the issue of
family reunification is very topical now,'' he said.
Published Saturday, February 26, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Cuba says diplomats will fight spy charges
Havana offers political compromise
BY CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS. Herald Washington Bureau
HAVANA -- A day before today's deadline to recall an accused Cuban spy from the United States, the Cuban government said the official is willing to surrender his diplomatic immunity to fight the allegations against him in U.S. courts.
In addition, a second Cuban diplomat is prepared to return to the United States from Cuba to disprove spying allegations against him, Cuban authorities said.
But in a more conciliatory tone, the Communist Party newspaper Granma published a report Friday urging the United States to drop its allegations against the Cuban diplomat still in Washington and offering a compromise.
``Let the U.S. government declare him innocent of this spying accusation which has gone around the world, let a decent time go by, and then we will request his return to Cuba,'' it said.
The extraordinary offers came a day before a State Department deadline for the vice-consul of Cuba's mission in the United States, Jose Imperatori, to leave the country. The FBI suspects that a senior U.S. immigration official in Miami accused of spying, Mariano Faget, had improper contacts with
Imperatori and his predecessor, Luis Molina.
Cuba so far has refused to recall Imperatori, saying he has done nothing wrong. American officials called Havana's position unprecedented and said they would expel Imperatori if he remains in the United States after 1:30 p.m. today.
STATUS EXPIRES
Thereafter, Imperatori ``will no longer have diplomatic status. He can be deported like an illegal alien,'' said a U.S official familiar with the case. He called Cuba's offer ``just a maneuver to try to make the U.S. look bad.''
U.S. authorities expressed confidence in their evidence, but said they did not have to make a legal case before declaring someone persona non grata.
In the past, Cuba has spirited away suspected spies with little challenge and has never offered its officials for U.S. prosecution.
But Cuban officials this week flatly denied that any of the three FBI suspects are spies. They asserted that an order by President Fidel Castro barred use of the Cuban mission in Washington for intelligence purposes. The accused diplomats want to clear their names, according to Ricardo Alarcon,
president of the National Assembly.
``They are prepared to face the allegations, to ask the other side to present the evidence against them,'' Alarcon said in an interview. ``Let's have them make public what they have.''
Referring to the Cuban-born Faget, Alarcon added, ``They are accusing a U.S. citizen, who has served apparently more than 30 years, of being nothing less than a traitor to his nation. It's a very grave charge.''
TRUMPED-UP CHARGES
Alarcon asserted that the spying allegations were crafted by Cuban exiles and FBI officials in Miami to divert attention from the highly publicized case of Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old Cuban boy who is the subject of a custody battle across the Florida Straits.
``It was an attempt to undermine the position of the [U.S.] immigration service in the Elian Gonzalez case,'' Alarcon said. He blamed Cuban exiles, and the Cuban American National Foundation, the leading anti-Castro lobby group, for stirring up the spy case to delay the boy's return.
Elian Gonzalez was plucked from Florida waters Nov. 25 after his mother and 10 other would-be refugees died at sea. U.S. immigration officials and Attorney General Janet Reno want to return the boy to his father in Cuba, but the boy's Cuban-American relatives in Miami have turned to the courts
to keep him in Miami. Havana is equally keen for his return to Cuba.
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