Posted at 7:04 a.m. EDT Tuesday, July 3, 2001.
The Miami Herald
MIAMI -- (AP) -- The daughter and stepson of a doctor who defected to the
United States last year after slipping away from a Cuban medical mission in
Zimbabwe were scheduled to arrive here today.
Giselle Cordova, 4, and Yusniel Hernandez, 11, will arrive before noon on an
American Airlines flight from Cancun, Mexico, Dr. Leonel Cordova said. The
children will leave Havana at 7 a.m., change planes in Cancun and then head to
Miami, he said.
Giselle's mother, 34-year-old Rosalba Gonzalez, was killed last month in a
motorcycle accident a few blocks from her home in Cuba. Cordova had said prior
to her death that he obtained visas for his wife and the two children.
Yusniel had lived with Cordova almost his entire life before the doctor's
defection. The boy's natural father, 33-year-old Lazaro Hernandez, recently gave
his legal authorization for his son to live with Cordova in Miami.
Cordova arrived in South Florida last August after a dramatic two-month
journey that began when he and a fellow Cuban doctor slipped away from the
medical mission they were working for and sought refuge at U.S. embassy in
Harare.
They were referred to the U.N. High Commission on Refugees, but disappeared
the day of their hearing before a Zimbabwean asylum committee.
Later, the doctors accused Zimbabwean security officers of kidnapping them
and helping Cuban diplomats try to force them on a flight to Havana.
Air France refused to let them board during a stopover in South Africa after
the doctors slipped a note to a crew member saying they were being kidnapped.
The doctors were returned to Zimbabwe and jailed, while the U.N. refugee
agency demanded their release under international law. Cuba said the doctors
betrayed the medical mission to aid Zimbabwe's health service but denied any
involvement in the alleged kidnapping.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 
