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30 Haitians Seek Refuge in
Cuba
HAVANA, 9 (AP) - At least 30 Haitians fleeing
violence in their homeland have sought refuge
in Cuba, authorities said, adding that they don't
expect a mass exodus from the nearby country.
"I can confirm the presence of 30 Haitian
immigrants in Maisi," a town on Cuba's east
coast, the Foreign Ministry said late Monday in
response to queries from The Associated Press.
The Haitians came by sea, but the spokesman's
office gave no other specifics.
Maisi is about 45 miles from Haiti's shore. For
decades, it has been a destination point for small
groups of Haitians escaping political violence
at home.
During Haiti's military regime of the early 1990s,
Cuba's communist government housed up to 1,000
Haitians at refugee camps in Maisi.
Cuba's Foreign Ministry said it doesn't expect
a flood of refugees despite political unrest after
last month's ouster of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide.
Cuban Spies Set to Appeal 2001 Sentences
By Catherine Wilson, Associated
Press Writer. Mar 9.
MIAMI - They are celebrated as heroes in their
homeland, and as spies in the nation where they
sit in prison. Thousands have marched for them
in Cuba, while prosecutors in America brand them
as agents of Fidel Castro.
Five Cubans who were convicted in 2001 on charges
of trying to infiltrate U.S. military bases and
Cuban exile groups in South Florida have their
appeal scheduled Wednesday.
The Havana-trained agents are challenging their
convictions, sentences and even the location of
the trial in Miami, the largest Cuban community
outside Havana. They are serving sentences ranging
from 15 years to life.
Attorney Leonard Weinglass, who represented convicted
agent Antonio Guerrero, called the verdict in
Miami "entirely predictable," blaming
the outcome on community prejudice and hostility
about hot-button exile issues.
The agents' case has attracted international
attention. "Free the Five" committees
in nine U.S. cities arranged rallies for their
release just before the court hearing.
Calling themselves "Cuban patriots,"
the agents denounced their trial after sentencing
as "blatantly political" and accuse
anti-Castro exile extremists of causing thousands
of deaths and injuries since Castro took power
in 1959.
The spies have the support of former U.S. Attorney
General Ramsey Clark and Argentina's Adolfo Perez
Esquivel, 1980 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alice Walker has
denounced the trial as a miscarriage of justice.
The defense position that prosecutors "made
inflammatory appeals to patriotism" and "played
to and exploited community prejudice and committed
numerous acts of misconduct is untrue," lead
prosecutor Caroline Miller responded in court
papers.
All five agents were convicted in June 2001 of
serving as unregistered agents of a foreign government.
Two spies charged with targeting U.S. military
installations from Key West to Tampa insist they
dealt only with "open source" intelligence,
or openly available information.
Weinglass noted that three of the Cuban spies
ended up with the same life sentences as two American
spies who actually divulged top secrets: Aldrich
Ames and Robert Hanssen (news - web sites). "This
is the first espionage case without a single page
of classified information," Weinglass said.
The Cuban spies, also dubbed the Wasp Network,
shared encrypted computer disks, transmitted radio
messages to Cuba and traveled on false passports
in a low-budget operation that left them begging
their Havana handlers for cash.
A second target was an assortment of militant
anti-Castro exiles suspected of playing roles
in a Cuban hotel bombing spree in 1997, who repeatedly
flew into Cuban airspace in 1994 and 1995 and
who launched covert attacks in Cuba.
Ringleader Gerardo Hernandez was sent to prison
for life for murder conspiracy in a missile attack
on two Brothers to the Rescue planes that were
shot down in international airspace north of the
Cuban coast in 1996.
His attorney Paul McKenna claims the verdict
was based on over-the-top patriotic and emotional
appeals by prosecutors mentioning Pearl Harbor
and the Holocaust and flawed jury instructions.
In addition to Hernandez and Guerrero, the defendants
also include Ramon Labanino, Fernando Gonzalez
and Rene Gonzalez, who are not related. They were
all arrested in September of 1998, and placed
in solitary confinement for 17 months.
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