The Miami Herald.
Thursday, October 4, 2001
Castro tells Kofi Annan that Cuba will follow U.N. anti-terrorist plans
HAVANA -- (AP) -- President Fidel Castro pledged Wednesday that Cuba would
act in accordance with all international anti-terror treaties after last month's
attacks on the United States.
"The government of the Republic of Cuba has made the decision to
adhere, as you have requested, to the existing 12 international instruments
related to terrorism,'' President Fidel Castro wrote in a letter to U.N.
Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Castro's letter said Cuba had signed three of the dozen legal documents in
the past and that his nation's parliament, the National Assembly, would hold a
special session on Thursday to ratify nine others.
Annan last week asked all countries to agree to all 12 of the treaties as
part of a new international fight against terrorism.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon,
Castro has said the United Nations should lead any international war on
terrorism.
Castro also said Cuba would "continue its efforts in favor of obtaining
a general and integral convention against terrorism.''
The special National Assembly session will also commemorate the 25th
anniversary of the deadliest terrorism attack against Cuba: the Oct. 6, 1973
bombing of a Cuban jetliner that killed 73 people off the coast of Barbados. A
government rally is planned Saturday to remember the victims of that attack.
Earlier this year, the communist nation tried without success to persuade
Panama to extradite Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles, a longtime Castro foe, for
trial on terrorism charges in connection with air tragedy.
Posada was arrested in Panama in November after Castro arrived for a
regional summit. Posada was said to have been plotting Castro's assassination.
Posada has denied involvement in the jetliner bombing, but has admitted ties
to a series of bombings at Cuban tourist locales that killed one person and
wounded 11 others in 1977. He also has denied he had been plotting to kill
Castro.
Cuba is on the U.S. State Department's list of countries that support
terrorism, a judgment Cuba denies.
The U.S. government's arguments for keeping Cuba on the list are the alleged
presence on the island of U.S. fugitives and Basque separatists, as well as
Cuba's contacts with Colombian rebel groups.
Jetliner leased for Cuba flights
BY GREGG FIELD. gfields@herald.com
Gulfstream International, the Broward airline, has leased a Boeing 737 from
its long-time business partner Continental Airlines to handle charter flights to
Cuba, Continental said Wednesday.
The 737-300 has 124 seats and will make 22 flights weekly, said Macky
Osorio, a Continental spokesman.
"The lease is for 90 days, beginning Nov. 1,'' said Osorio.
Gulfstream officials couldn't be reached for comment.
However, the company already provides charter flights to Cuba. Although U.S.
law forbids airlines to provide regularly scheduled air service to Cuba, charter
companies are allowed to operate such flights. There are several such charter
services available in South Florida.
Gulfstream has a long history of business ventures with Continental.
It operates Continental Connection flights, providing air service within
Florida and to the Bahamas.
Other companies including American and United have made aircraft available
to charter carriers making flights to Cuba.
Reno can be sued for raid
Judge OK's claims of Elián backers
BY ELAINE DE VALLE. edevalle@herald.com
A federal judge has cleared the way for dozens of Elián González
supporters in Miami to sue former attorney general Janet Reno for injuries they
say they received during the raid to seize the boy from his relatives' Little
Havana home.
U.S. District Court Judge K. Michael Moore -- who once ruled in Reno's favor
when he said the government acted properly in denying Elián's asylum
request -- said Tuesday that Reno's position in President Clinton's
administration did not give her "qualified immunity'' from being personally
sued for injuries sustained in the pre-dawn federal strike on April 22, 2000.
Reno, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for Florida governor,
admittedly ordered the raid and has repeatedly defended the decision as the
right choice.
"A reasonable officer in Reno's position would know that the law
forbade her from directing the execution of a warrant in a manner that called
for unjustified force against bystanders,'' the judge ruled.
Two other top Clinton administrators -- former Deputy Attorney General Eric
Holder and former Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris
Meissner -- did not order the raid, Moore said when he dismissed the suit
against them.
Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit against the three officials on behalf of 52
protesters and bystanders who claim that their civil rights were violated when
they pushed the civilians aside, gassed them, beat them and threatened to arrest
them. They sued for at least $100 million and alleged that they were
intentionally targeted simply because they opposed efforts to return Elián,
then 6, to his father in Cuba.
But Moore ruled that five of the 52 plaintiffs had no legal ground to sue
because they had left the house as soon as agents arrived and were not injured.
The remaining 47 -- including Donato Dalrymple, a Broward laborer who found
the boy along with his cousin and was holding the boy when armed federal forces
burst into the house to get him -- can sue Reno, he ruled.
"They are just everyday Cuban Americans who were out there praying,
holding candlelight vigils and who did nothing wrong and yet were gassed, beaten
and had guns thrown in their faces or pointed at them,'' said Tom Fitton,
president of Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest law firm.
"We believed the law was on our side and the judge almost agreed with
us completely. It's a significant victory for the Cuban-American community
that's been abused by the justice system mostly through Janet Reno,'' Fitton
said. "They do have good faith that in this country the good win out in the
end, and now they will have their day in court.
"This is something they've been praying for for some time.''
Fitton said the Cuban-American community as a whole was victimized by Reno's
actions when she ordered the boy be seized by force: "She knew their
constitutional rights would be violated and she didn't care.''
He said his firm would consider appealing the case for the five plaintiffs
who were dropped from the suit. He also has 20 days to file an amended complaint
with more information to have Moore reconsider adding Holder and Meissner as
defendants.
"He said there aren't enough facts to make Holder and Meissner
accountable. That's something that hopefully we'll be able to rectify for the
judge.''
Moore also dismissed a portion of the ruling alleging excessive force was
used by saying the raid was "neither particularly violent, nor was the
number of law enforcement officers disproportionate to the objective needed to
maintain order.''
Charles Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department, which has been
representing Reno in the lawsuit, did not have an immediate comment.
Reno did not return repeated phone calls to her Kendall home and her office
Wednesday. She had been out of Florida earlier Tuesday, speaking at the
University of Idaho, where she said that civil liberties should not become
another victim of terrorism.
"It is important that we work hard to achieve security without
sacrificing our freedoms, that we achieve justice without sacrificing our
freedoms,'' Reno said.
She would not comment specifically about the investigation into the Sept. 11
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but said, "If we pursue
this in as careful a fashion as possible, I think we can do it without
diminishing due-process rights.''
Reno told about 1,000 attorneys, law students and faculty that attorneys
spend too much time arguing the law and too little solving problems.
A date for the trial in her case has not been set.
Herald translator Renato Pérez contributed to this report, which was
supplemented with information from the Associated Press.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 
