The Miami Herald
Exile boaters could be charged
Three spent hour in Cuban waters
By Luisa Yanez. lyanez@herald.com. Published Monday, July
16, 2001
Members of the Democracy Movement may learn as early as today whether the
U.S. attorney's office in Miami will file criminal charges against them for
illegally sailing into Cuban waters to stage a weekend memorial, the group's
leader said Sunday.
"They told us we would be notified soon if criminal proceedings will be
initiated against us,'' said Ramón Saúl Sánchez, 46, no
stranger to conflicts with the U.S. government over access to Cuban waters. His
anti-Castro group is well-known for protest flotillas and acts of civil
disobedience.
Sánchez is challenging federal rules, or decrees, in place since 1998
that say that no vessel departing from any Florida ports, except in the
Panhandle, can enter Cuban territorial waters without a permit.
Saturday morning, Sanchez, the group's founder, and members Alberto Pérez,
58, and Pablo Rodríguez, 48, broke away from a five-boat flotilla on
their 23-foot, twin-engine boat dubbed "My Right to Return Home'' and
rushed into Cuban waters, ignoring bullhorn warnings from a U.S. Coast Guard
cutter to stop.
Their mission: To drop wreaths and say prayers at the site where 41 Cubans
drowned after their tugboat was allegedly sunk by a Cuban gunboat on July 13,
1994.
Sánchez's latest protest comes at a time when the White House is
expected to announce a series of get-tough measures on Cuba.
But hours before the flotilla departed on Friday, Sánchez said he
learned that Bush would not address the proclamation that bars entry into Cuban
waters to organizations such as his.
"Once we saw nothing would change, we decided to stage our nonviolent
protest,'' said Sánchez, who feels Cuban waters should be open to exiles.
Now, the three could face 10 years in prison, fines of up to $10,000,
seizure and possible forfeiture of their vessel, if convicted.
Aloyma Sanchez, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office, said her office
had no comment on whether the exiles will be criminally charged, or what will
happen to their seized vessel.
The Coast Guard first detained the men at sea, towing their boat. They were
released once in Key West, on orders from the U.S. attorney's office.
Attorney Joseph Geller, who in the past has represented the Democracy
Movement in its efforts to reclaim other confiscated vessels, said he's not sure
how the government will react to the latest incident.
"We just don't know what their intentions are right now,'' Geller said
of the possibility of criminal charges. "It's premature to reach the
conclusion that because the men were released, they won't be charged. We might
find out Monday what will happen next.''
A legal defense team will be put together, if necessary, Sánchez
said.
Another question mark is the fate of the boat the men used to cross beyond
the 12-mile limit into Cuban territorial waters. The boat was recently donated
to the Democracy Movement, Sánchez said. He would not identify the donor.
The Coast Guard did not release ownership information on Sunday.
"We're waiting to hear from the U.S. attorney's office what they want
us to do with the boat,'' said Coast Guard spokesman Robert Suddarth. Plans for
U.S. Customs to take custody of the boat are on hold.
The Coast Guard said it was enforcing the federal rules that any captain of
a small private, noncommercial vessel that enters Cuban waters without
permission is in violation of the South Florida Security Zone proclamation
issued by former President Bill Clinton in 1998. That proclamation came in the
wake of the shoot-down two years earlier of two Brothers to the Rescue planes.
Four fliers were killed in that incident.
Sánchez said the decree, which has not been challenged in court, is
being selectively enforced.
"The Coast Guard is enforcing this presidential decree against us
only,'' Sánchez said.
Fellow movement member Rodríguez said he's ready to defend himself.
"I would do it again,'' he said of Saturday's hour-long sneak into
Cuban waters. "I know it's a law, but I don't think it's a good law.''
It's not the first time Sanchez and his group have tangled with the
government over an attempted incursion.
On Dec. 10, 1998, the U.S. Coast Guard seized the group's 35-foot boat,
Human Rights, just south of Key West because its crew was headed to Cuba without
seeking permission.
Spy work celebrated at museum in Havana
Published Monday, July 16, 2001
Herald StaffHAVANA -- To hear Cuba's spy masters tell it, their intelligence
agents have had nothing but success -- albeit with a few deaths of their own --
in foiling U.S. and Cuban exile attempts to destroy Fidel Castro and his
42-year-old revolution.
It is a tale explained at the museum of the Ministry of the Interior, or
MININT, whose Directorate of Intelligence state security organization was
responsible for the spy ring that operated in the Miami area until the FBI made
arrests in 1998.
The Havana museum, little known outside of Cuba, commemorates 40 years of
Cuban intelligence work. The entrance fee is $2.
The exhibit includes James Bond-style poison pens the CIA allegedly used to
try to kill Castro, hollowed out rocks used by American diplomats to hide
messages to Cuban counter-revolutionaries, and firearms and explosives that the
Cubans claim were seized from saboteurs sent by Miami exile groups.
"Ask most Cubans about these attempts on Fidel's life and they know all
about these gadgets,'' said a diplomat who asked not to be named. "These
things are part of the history of the revolution and most of it -- the bombs,
the chemicals to make Fidel's beard fall out -- are the real thing.
"He says himself (in 1999) they've tried to kill him 637 times. He's
probably not kidding.''
CIA spokesman Mike Tadie said the agency did not wish to talk about Cuba's
assertions that intelligence officers are based at the U.S. Interests Section in
Havana, or about the cases of two American officials the Cubans said they
photographed doing espionage in the 1980s and whose pictures are on display in
the museum.
Appropriately enough, the museum is housed in eight rooms in an elegantly
restored villa at Fifth Avenue and 14th Street in Havana's Miramar district. The
residence is also the headquarters of the First Chief of Operations of State
Security, the top spy position once held by General Abelardo Colomé
Ibarra, a fan of espionage novels who also runs MININT.
'SINISTER SCHEMES'
Stern-faced, matronly guides shake their heads disapprovingly before each
exhibit documenting individual "sinister yanqui schemes and plans,'' and
surveillance cameras follow every movement of visitors.
"This was terrible, terrible,'' said a silver-haired guide, motioning
toward an exhibit dealing with young Elián González, who she said
is "a very happy boy now. But in Miami he was a prisoner of forces
sponsored by the CIA.''
It includes Cuban intelligence officer José Imperatori, expelled by
the United States in the winter of 2000, about a month after he escorted Elian's
grandmothers in the United States as they made emotional appeals for the boy's
return to Cuba.
One topic the museum does not mention is the June 8 conviction of five
Cubans for spying.
The show traces Cuban intelligence work back to 1868, when Federico Pérez
Carbó -- whose code name was Leónidas Raquín -- spied on
Cuba's colonial masters from Spain.
But its main focus is on intelligence efforts since Castro came to power in
1960.
U.S. SPIES IN CUBA
Between 1978 and 1987, MININT agents detected 151 U.S.-financed spies --
almost all of them of Cuban ancestry -- recruited by American diplomats assigned
to the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, the exhibit claims. It said that
network was detected because 27 of the spies were actually Cuban double agents.
Washington and Havana do not have diplomatic relations, but their "interests
section'' offices in both cities serve as de facto embassies.
Of the 69 accredited diplomats at the U.S. mission between 1977 and 1987, 38
were actually CIA agents, the show maintains. There were 418 diplomats with
temporary accreditation in the same time period, and 113 of these were from the
CIA.
One series of photos shows Clyde Myron Benford, a second secretary with the
U.S. Special Interests Section specializing in politics and economics, placing a
football-size, plastic "rock'' in some brush beside a highway in 1986.
Benford, the exhibit said, placed money and instructions inside the hollow
object -- which is displayed in a glass case -- for Cubans recruited by the CIA.
Another group of photos shows Second Secretary Richard Michael Davidson, who
was stationed in Havana from 1979 to 1981, leaving items for his Cuban recruits
inside a wrecked car in a Pinar del Rio junkyard. Videotapes of both diplomats "engaged
in espionage'' have been aired on Cuban television.
"Are there spies among the diplomats now?'' the guide was asked.
"Many, I am sure,'' she said. "Otherwise, what would their purpose
be here?''
"Is Cuba spying on the United States?''
"Naturally, we want to protect our country,'' the guide said, echoing
the claim by lawyers for the five convicted Cuban spies that they were only
trying to infiltrate exile organizations and were not spying on the U.S.
government or the U.S. military.
Castro told CNN that the most surprising thing about the case was "that
the most spying country in the world is accusing the most spied-on country in
the world of espionage.''
ACTS OF TERRORISM
Such U.S. efforts, the exhibit said, were responsible for countless acts of
terrorism, sabotage and attempts on Castro's life. "They have already
killed me about 100 times,'' Castro quipped in a speech earlier this year.
The United States also caused, Havana said, an epidemic of a Southeast Asian
strain of dengue hemorrhagic fever in 1981 that made 344,203 Cubans sick. Of
these, 116,143 people were hospitalized. The mosquito-borne virus killed 158
people, including 101 children. The U.S. State Department has denied causing the
epidemic.
Many of the attempts on Castro's life are well-documented.
"The enemy knows it is all true,'' a European reporter was told by
museum director Lt. Col. Jose Angel Sáliva earlier this year.
Some exhibits make use of official documents from the United States.
They often feature transcripts from congressional hearings into CIA
operations in Cuba, especially those in the wake of the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs
invasion. Such hearings have ended with U.S. officials asserting that Washington
is no longer trying to kill Castro.
But such attempts on Castro's life are continuing, José Pérez
Fernández, a MININT colonel, declared in 1999 as a Havana court heard a
$181 billion civil lawsuit filed by Cuba against the U.S. government for
damaging the island nation's economy. "They are a sickly obsession,'' he
said.
Diagrams in the museum show how in one U.S.-sponsored failed plot, a man was
to throw a grenade at Castro from the top of bleachers as the Cuban leader sat
in the front row to watch a ball game.
EXILE EXHIBIT
Another exhibit explains how Cuban exiles allegedly planned to kill Castro
last year at the Ibero-American diplomatic summit in Panama. Some of the
supposed assassins are in jail in Panama, which has rejected a Cuban request to
extradite the prisoners to Cuba for trial. The Cubans claim the alleged
ringleader, Luis Posada Carriles, is responsible for the bombing of a Cuban
airliner in 1973 near Barbados in which 73 people died.
Yet another deals with the case of seven Cuban exiles suspected of planning
to use a long-range 50-caliber sniper's rifle to shoot down Castro's plane as it
arrived at a Latin American meeting in Venezuela in 1997.
Painted portraits of four Cuban agents for MININT, killed in 1992 by a band
of Cuban exile raiders, hang on a wall over their bloodstained clothing. One
exhibit is dedicated to Rogelio Iglesias Patino, who was killed in 1983 when his
boat sank as he attempted to land in Florida "to fulfill a mission within
the columns of the enemy.''
One room shows surveillance videos of U.S. agents at work in Cuba.
Another video shows in graphic detail how Castro's personal security is
maintained:
Tunnels lead from a main Castro residence at Jaimanitas -- on a one-way
street alongside Marina Hemingway -- to roads giving him access to the nearby
Ciudad Libertad military airstrip and to an underground bunker designed to
protect him against air attack and naval bombardment.
"The commander-in-chief is under constant attack, and we must be
vigilant,'' a fiercely patriotic guide told two American women from a California
organization dedicated to solidarity with Cuba's revolution, who were asking
about Castro's safety.
"Everything you see at the museum is reality,'' she said. "Here,
we do not lie.''
Elián featured in museum of Castro doctrine
From Herald wire services. Published Sunday, July 15, 2001
CARDENAS, Cuba -- Boasting that "the battle of ideas cannot be lost,
and it will not be lost,'' Fidel Castro joined Elián González on
Saturday in opening a new museum exhibit about Cuba's successful efforts to
bring the boy back from the United States last year.
The Cuban leader praised his government for persevering in its custody
battle for Elián, who was rescued and taken to the United States after
being shipwrecked off the coast of Florida.
"It was the greatest battle that our people ever fought,'' Castro said
of the custody fight.
Castro spoke after a private meeting with Elián in the Museum of the
Battle of Ideas here in the boy's hometown, about 85 miles east of Havana. The
new exhibit fills one of the museum's five rooms.
It includes a bronze statue of Elián, some of his personal items,
letters and postcards to him from Cuban schoolchildren, and a wide selection of
photos and newspaper articles about the boy's return to Cuba.
The museum is in a colonial-era building that has been a fire station and a
conventional historical museum. It has been remodeled over the past 10 months
and has been reopened under the new name.
"The battle of ideas'' was a Castro phrase that originally referred to
Cuba's campaign to retrieve Elián, but recently has come to describe an
ideological campaign to reinforce the values of Cuban communism among the
island's younger generation.
"The battle of ideas cannot be lost, and it will not be lost,'' Castro
wrote in the visitors' book at the museum Saturday.
The same museum held an exhibition before Elián's return to Cuba that
included pictures drawn by his Cuban classmates. A later exhibition showed
Mother's Day cards drawn by Elián and four classmates who visited him in
Washington.
Elián, now 7, was found floating in an inner tube off Florida in 1999
after a boat carrying Cuban emigrants sank, killing his mother and 10 other
people. His rescue touched off a custody battle between his father in Cuba, Juan
Miguel González, and other relatives in Florida.
A raid by U.S. authorities to seize him from the Florida relatives outraged
many Cuban exiles in Miami. The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled in his father's
favor, and Elián returned to Cuba in June 2000.
3 illegally enter Cuban waters
Democracy Movement leader Ramón Saúl Sánchez and
two others were temporarily detained during a planned protest to commemorate the
1994 sinking of a tugboat.
By Eunice Ponce. eponce@herald.com. Published Sunday, July
15, 2001
The U.S. Coast Guard detained Democracy Movement leader Ramón Saúl
Sánchez and two members of the organization with little fuss Saturday
morning after they illegally entered Cuban waters during a planned protest to
commemorate the 1994 sinking of the 13 de Marzo tugboat by Cuban gunships.
Sánchez, Alberto Perez and Pablo Rodriguez were taken aboard the
Coast Guard cutter Spencer and brought to Key West, where they were released at
the request of the U.S. attorney's office in Miami.
Their 23-foot speedboat is being held by the Coast Guard at its Key West
base until word arrives Monday from federal officials on its fate.
The speedboat was part of a five-vessel flotilla that left from Conch Harbor
Marina in Key West early Saturday morning for the yearly memorial service for 41
would-be Cuban refugees killed in the 13 de Marzo incident -- an incident
survivors and the Cuban exile community call "a massacre'' and the Cuban
government calls "an accident.''
Also sailing were the Democracia, carrying 20 people, the Human Rights and
the Shark, carrying six each, and the Family Ties, carrying five. Those boats
stayed in international waters, Coast Guard spokesman Robert Suddarth said.
Suddarth said the group had been warned beforehand not to enter Cuban
waters.
"It was a scheduled flotilla; we had a cutter down there in the area,''
Suddarth said. "The Coast Guard went to the flotilla beforehand and did
notify them where they were allowed to go and what would happen if they violated
that.''
Violators are subject to having their boats seized, a fine not exceeding
$10,000 and imprisonment for up to 10 years.
But Sánchez said he told Coast Guard officials that the group was
planning to challenge, "in a proactive, innovative way,'' the South Florida
Security Zone, based on former President Bill Clinton's Presidential
Proclamation 6867, which requires small, private vessels to obtain a permit if
they intend to enter Cuban seas.
Sánchez says he believes that law is being selectively enforced to
target his group's activities. He cites the Coast Guard's own counts, published
on its website, showing that while 3,000 permits have been issued, only three
have been denied, all for the Democracy Movement.
Sánchez said the group named the speedboat, "My Right to Return
Home,'' with a large banner with the name in both English and Spanish.
"They saw that,'' he said. "If they failed to click, sorry. But I
want to stress that we have a great amount of respect for the Coast Guard --
they are people of their word, and until now they have respected ours.''
Sánchez said he had no trouble from the Cuban coast guard while he
and his two companions tossed flowers into the water for those killed on the
tugboat, and sang the Cuban national anthem.
This is not the first time Sánchez has had a boat confiscated. In
December 1998, the U.S. government seized the Human Rights after Sánchez
refused to promise that he wouldn't take it into Cuban waters. After Sánchez
staged a 20-day hunger strike in May 1999, the boat was returned.
Bush vows crackdown on travel to Cuba
Published Saturday, July 14, 2001
WASHINGTON -- President Bush announced Friday a crackdown on unlicensed
travel to Cuba and said his administration would boost funding for groups on the
island opposed to President Fidel Castro.
Bush also tapped a veteran Miami radio broadcaster to head Radio and TV Martí
and told him that his "number one priority is to overcome jamming of the
outlets so that all Cubans have "access to accurate news and information.
In recent years, travel to Cuba by U.S. citizens has increased, spurred
partly by media reports portraying the island as an exotic locale that may be
overrun with tourists once its communist government falls. Much of the travel is
in defiance of U.S. law, which strictly regulates who may travel to Cuba and
spend U.S. dollars there. Bush pledged to "enforce the law to the fullest
extent to prevent "unlicensed and excessive travel to Cuba.
Some 200,000 U.S. citizens now travel to the island each year, about 120,000
of them Cuban Americans on legal family visits. In recent months, officials in
the Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control have toughened
enforcement of travel restrictions, issuing fines of up to $7,500 to violators.
In his five-paragraph statement on Cuba, Bush said he would also enforce
limits on remittances to the island, and act to ensure that "humanitarian
and cultural exchanges actually reach pro-democracy activists in Cuba.
"I will expand support for human rights activists, and the democratic
opposition; and we will provide additional funding for nongovernmental
organizations to work on pro-democracy programs in Cuba, Bush said. He added
that the White House will "oppose any attempt to weaken sanctions against
the Castro regime until it frees political prisoners, allows free speech and
holds free elections.
The announcement drew a mixed reaction from three Cuban-American
congressmen. "The steps [President Bush] has announced are unprecedented in
their clarity and determination, said Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, a Miami
Republican. Fellow Miami Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen hailed Bush for "reiterating
his support for programs that will help bring freedom to the Cuban people.
The only Cuban-American Democrat in Congress, Rep. Bob Menendez of New
Jersey, said that Bushs "words and promises are hollow unless he decides
next week to uphold a Helms-Burton provision that would allow U.S. citizens to
file suits against those who benefit from properties confiscated after Cubas
1959 revolution.
Radio, TV Martí head named
Published Saturday, July 14, 2001
Veteran Miami Spanish-language radio broadcaster Salvador Lew will head the
Office of Cuba Broadcasting, which operates Radio and TV Martí, the White
House announced Friday.
Lew, a Cuban Jew who turned 72 in March, said he hoped to strengthen
programming at both outlets.
"I hope with the help of God that we will bring Radio Martí back
to what it was -- or better, Lew said, adding that listenership appears to have
slipped dramatically at the station. "Radio and TV Martí have been
deteriorating for a long time.
Lew, who underwent quintuple bypass surgery earlier this year, has both
management experience and a prominent background in broadcasting.
Author: Cuban tug's sinking was avoidable
By Wilfredo Cancio Isla. El Nuevo Herald. Published Friday, July 13, 2001
Cuban authorities could have prevented the tugboat 13 de marzo from even
leaving the Port of Havana seven years ago today, thus avoiding a tragedy in
which as many as 41 would-be defectors died, a new book contends.
According to author Jorge García Mas, who investigated the event in
Cuba for more than five years, the Interior Ministry knew about the escape plan
and mobilized its forces for an open-seas interception.
The Sinking of the Tugboat 13 de marzo, published by the Cuban Studies Fund
of the Cuban American National Foundation, appears in bookstores next week. García
Mas is not related to the foundation's chairman, Jorge Mas Santos.
The book provides confirmation of the trap in an interview with Jesús
Martínez, captain of the Polargo 5, one of three government vessels that
carried out the interception. Martínez is believed to have played a key
role in the maneuvers that led to the sinking of the 13 de marzo on the morning
of Wednesday, July 13, 1994.
Martínez told García that, although he was off duty the
previous day, he was summoned urgently by his superiors and told that "an
operation is going to take place.''
"If State Security knew that the departure would take place, why didn't
it prevent it? That's cruelty,'' said the García, who lost 14 relatives
that day.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 
