CUBA NEWS
The Miami Herald

Dissident meeting usurped

A press meeting called by Cuban dissidents was broken up without violence by government supporters in what may be Havana's newest strategy in dealing with coverage in the media.

By Anita Snow, Associated Press. Posted on Sat, Aug. 06, 2005.

HAVANA - Government supporters commandeered a news media gathering called by dissidents Friday morning, using impassioned speeches and shouts of ''Viva Fidel Castro!'' to draw journalists' attention away from their opponents.

The rapid, nonviolent breakup of the morning gathering outside the European Union's mission in Havana marked a new strategy in the government's recent handling of the international media's coverage of public appearances by dissidents.

While three pro-Castro militants loudly complained on camera to international reporters about the dissidents, referring to them as mercenaries and worms, the opposition leaders who called the media out quietly slipped away.

The whole event lasted less than a half-hour.

''Well, we believe in democracy and that people can think differently,'' well-known dissident leader Martha Beatriz Roque told reporters before she and two other opposition leaders left the area while cameras and microphones focused increasingly on the government supporters who showed up to complain.

''We are really tired of these sellouts supported by the United States,'' said Lázaro Enrique Suarez, who described himself as a civilian government worker who happened to be in the area when the crowd formed outside the mission.

Suarez and two other men formed the core of the pro-Castro militants, who were later joined by five or six others, including several who displayed a red, white and blue Cuban flag.

Roque called international journalists late Thursday about the Friday morning event, described as a meeting between European Commission representatives and relatives of dissidents imprisoned in a recent pair of public protests.

The majority of the prisoners' relatives, as well as Roque and fellow dissident leaders Felix Bonne and Angel Polanco, were not allowed inside the mission. Roque said just five relatives of two of the prisoners were let in.

The EU mission released a declaration later in the day saying the meeting with relatives of political prisoners was not of a political nature, and was canceled once officials saw what was taking place outside.

Cuban authorities were enraged by the two earlier public protests and the news coverage of them. In both cases, they were broken up by government supporters in much more aggressive ways, with shouting, shoving, the surrounding of dissidents' homes and some arrests. Nevertheless, no injuries were reported in either event.

President Castro referred to the protests during his Rebellion Day speech last week, defending counter-protests. Castro said supporters will respond likewise "as long as traitors and mercenaries go one millimeter beyond what the revolutionary people . . . are willing to permit.''

Cuban torture suspect released from detention

A Cuban national held by federal immigration authorities as a torture suspect has been released. He's the second Cuban suspected of torture released this year.

By Alfonso Chardy, achardy@herald.com. Posted on Mon, Aug. 15, 2005.

A Cuban national detained by immigration officers last year on suspicion of being involved in the torture of Fidel Castro's political foes has been released, but may still face deportation.

Luis Enrique Daniel Rodríguez was freed about two weeks ago from an immigration facility in Bradenton on Florida's Gulf Coast, where he had been held for months, his attorney, Leonardo Viota Sesin, said Sunday.

Daniel Rodríguez is the second Cuban suspected of torture released this year. Jorge de Cárdenas Agostini, detained in June 2004 on suspicion of supervising a team of torturers in Cuba, was released in February from the Krome detention center in West Miami-Dade.

Shortly after, federal officials said de Cárdenas Agostini was put on supervised release because he could not be held indefinitely and they had been unable to persuade Cuba to take him back. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2001 prohibited the indefinite detention of foreign nationals whose countries refused to readmit them.

RULING DECISION

Viota Sesin said he was not sure why his client was freed.

Dean Boyd, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman in Washington, said Daniel Rodríguez was released Aug. 4 because of the Supreme Court ruling.

''Our hands are tied,'' Boyd said, adding that ICE will continue trying to deport Daniel Rodríguez. Until then, he will be required to report periodically to the immigration service.

Cuba generally refuses to take back Cuban exiles ordered deported, although Havana made an exception April 19 when it agreed to take back Juan Emilio Aboy, a Cuban spying suspect.

Daniel Rodríguez was detained July 2, 2004, when immigration officers raided his West Miami-Dade apartment. The detention came after an immigration judge ordered Daniel Rodríguez deported on suspicion of having persecuted dissidents in the early 1990s before he left Cuba for the United States. The Board of Immigration Appeals denied his appeal in December, Viota Sesin said.

UNFAIR CHARGES

Viota Sesin said his client was unfairly accused and that, in reality, he was a defector from Cuba, where he opposed the Castro regime.

''I am convinced that even though he worked for the Cuban apparatus at one time, he was not a torturer,'' Viota Sesin said.

"He may have worked for the Ministry of the Interior, but many other defectors did as well and they are living under the protection of the United States.''

De Cárdenas Agostini was detained June 8, 2004, also on suspicion of being involved in torture, an allegation denied by his attorney, Linda Osberg-Braun.

De Cárdenas Agostini is the nephew of Jorge de Cárdenas Loredo, a longtime lobbyist and political strategist in Miami who was charged with embezzlement, witness tampering and bribery in the 1990s.

De Cárdenas Loredo pleaded guilty in 1997 to one count of obstructing justice and was sentenced to one year in federal prison. After his release, he was sent to Krome to await deportation, but was released in 1999.

Nebraska trade group seeks deals in Cuba

A Nebraska trade delegation led by the governor arrived in Cuba ready to start getting down to business.

By Vanessa Arrington, Associated Press. Posted on Mon, Aug. 15, 2005.

HAVANA - A trade delegation led by Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman arrived here Sunday with hopes of clinching deals to sell beans, corn and wheat to the island during its four-day mission.

Heineman immediately entered a meeting at the Havana airport with Pedro Alvarez, the chairman of Cuba's food-import company. Alimport, to start discussing business.

''Our focus is on agricultural trade, particularly dry beans,'' Heineman told reporters in brief comments. "Nebraska has many high-quality agricultural products, and we are looking forward to opportunities to open trade with Cuba.''

BUSINESS TRIP

The Nebraska delegation includes representatives of several bean cooperatives and companies, Nebraska Farm Bureau and the Nebraska Corn Board.

A decades-old U.S. embargo against communist Cuba severely limits travel and trade with the island, but an exception created in 2000 allows food and agricultural products to be sold to Cuba on a cash-only basis.

U.S. lawmakers from Florida opposed to Cuban President Fidel Castro's government and increased U.S. trade with the island sent some letters of concern to the Nebraska officials.

Heineman pointed out Sunday that it is ''perfectly legal'' to do business with Cuba under the trade embargo but declined further comment.

''The question that you may have about international politics is the domain of the U.S. president, the Department of State and the United States Congress,'' Heineman said.

TOUGHER RULE

The trade mission comes as Cuban officials complain of a new U.S. rule requiring the island to make full payment for goods before cargo leaves American ports.

Cuba originally planned to purchase up to $800 million in goods this year from the United States, but because of the new rule, some $300 million of that has already been diverted to other countries selling food products, according to Alvarez.

Dad's Cuba flight foiled

A Miami Beach man remains at large after fleeing to Cuba with his three children. The children have been returned to their mother, and warrants have been issued for their father's arrest.

By Cara Buckley, cbuckley@herald.com. Posted on Fri, Aug. 12, 2005.

Cuba is not the most obvious spot for a Miami man to seek sanctuary, especially a parent on the lam with his three kids. But by the time Mel Dressler disappeared from the United States three weeks ago, he felt his options had vanished too.

Dressler, a jack-of-all-trades, lives in a rambling Alton Road home in Miami Beach, 1,211 miles from Philadelphia, where his ex-wife and her husband live with the children, an 11-year-old boy and two girls, ages 13 and 9. Dressler, 44, says he's worried about his children's well being, but has been on the losing side of a protracted custody battle with his ex.

A rare, troubling mid-July visit from the children left Dressler heartsick at the prospect of sending them back home to Philadelphia. So, on July 22, he made the fateful, drastic decision to put his kids aboard his catamaran and sail 90 miles across the Florida Straits to America's nearest forbidden land.

He didn't tell his new wife, Elise d'Hauthuille, where he was going, and he didn't tell his children. All they knew was that he and the youngsters were going on a nighttime sail, and that Dressler never turned back.

His eldest daughter, Dressler said, wrote the following entry in her journal: "Tricked into trip.''

INTERNATIONAL ISSUE

No one knows how many children are taken from the U.S. by one of their parents and secreted to other countries. At any time, the State Department is aware of more than 1,000 active cases, a number officials guess grossly under-represents the actual amount.

But barely a handful of known custody cases involve children taken to cuba.

Negotiating a child's return from Cuba, however rare, requires a predictably delicate diplomatic dance for the United States. Still, according to Committee for Missing Children representative David Thelen, Cuba has been more helpful in international child custody cases since the return of Elián González in 2000.

But the Dressler case had an additional twist: Though Dressler is married to an American woman, he is Canadian, and so are his children. Dressler chose Cuba because he hoped -- mistakenly, as it turned out -- that their nationality would shield him.

Child welfare advocates generally frown on parental abduction of children, saying it's highly traumatic to the youngsters and usually unnecessary, since family courts are designed to address any parent's concerns. But Dressler maintains he has been treated unfairly by courts in Philadelphia and Miami, which have not sided with him in his push to wrest sole custody of the children from their mother.

He also believed that because Cuba was not party to the Hague Convention, which requests child custody recognition from its signers, he could air his grievances in some sort of world forum without having to return the children.

''My plans are merely to try to get this into an international court,'' Dressler said shortly after reaching Cuba. "It was top of the list to protect my children.''

MOTHER DISTRAUGHT

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, the children's mother and stepfather, Monique and Richard Subbio, frantically tried to arrange for the children's return. Richard Subbio, an advisor for U.S. Rep. Robert Brady, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said he contacted the FBI, the Department of State and the Canadian and Cuban governments.

''Frantic's not the word,'' said Richard Subbio. "My wife was a mess.''

On July 27, Foreign Affairs Canada, akin to the U.S. State Department, was told a Canadian father and his three children had disappeared from the U.S. Two days later, the Canadian embassy in Havana learned that three Canadian children had arrived in Cuba with their father and without travel documents.

Cloe Rodrigue, a spokeswoman for Foreign Affairs Canada, said her office then worked with Cuban authorities to ensure the children's safety and swift return.

And so, last Friday, Canadian embassy workers, helped by Cuban officials, approached Dressler's catamaran, docked in Puerto de Vita on the Cuban coast, and removed the children from his care. The youngsters were flown to Montreal, where Richard Subbio met them. Then all four returned to Philadelphia.

''They're traumatized, but they'll be all right,'' Subbio said.

Dressler, meanwhile, has yet to return to the United States, where d'Hauthuille, his three stepchildren and his parents are anxiously awaiting his return.

He sailed to the Bahamas over the weekend, after being told he would be arrested in Cuba. He faces a bench warrant in Philadelphia, and the Miami-Dade State Attorney's office charged him with child concealment, a third-degree felony that carries a maximum five-year sentence.

Richard Subbio said he intends to file his own charges, and vows that Dressler will never be alone with the children again.

But Dressler, who has plans to sail back within the week, insists the trip was worth it. At the very least, he says, he proved his devotion to his kids.

''No one can say I don't love or care about them,'' Dressler said.

Cruise terminal contract canceled

Posted on Fri, Aug. 12, 2005.

HAVANA - (AP) -- The Cuban government ended a contract with the company administering the island's cruise terminals following remarks by President Fidel Castro that cruise ships exploit small Caribbean countries and were no longer welcome in Cuba.

A Council of State resolution signed Aug. 2 and published in last week's Official Gazette ended a seven-year relationship with the Italian company Silares Terminales del Caribe, which operated here as a mixed-enterprise business with the island's CUBANCO S.A.

Silares will no longer administer docking operations, and ownership of all equipment and infrastructure will revert back to the state, the resolution said.

The resolution didn't say whether cruise ships would be able to come to Cuba under different arrangements. The tourism ministry declined to comment.

In a May speech, Castro said fellow Caribbean states were informed that Cuba would not be accepting more cruise ships, as tourists coming in on them "leave their trash . . . for a few miserable cents.''

Cuba earlier promoted cruise ships as part of a growing tourism industry that brought more than two million visitors to the island last year, making it a major source of foreign exchange revenue. The island received about 45,000 cruise visitors in 2002 and 60,000 in 2003.

Spy trial likely to start anew elsewhere

The U.S. Attorney's Office is debating its next move in the aftermath of Tuesday's major appellate decision that overturned the convictions of five accused Cuban spies.

By Jay Weaver. jweaver@herald.com. Posted on Thu, Aug. 11, 2005.

Miami's top federal prosecutor says he will retry the five accused Cuban spies whose 2001 convictions were just overturned by a federal appeals court -- most probably next year in another city.

But U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta is weighing another potential legal move: challenging Tuesday's stunning decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

Acosta's office is reviewing the court's decision that found pretrial publicity -- from the community's anti-Castro views to the heavy media coverage to the hangover from the Elián González custody battle -- made it impossible for the Cuban defendants to receive a fair jury trial in Miami.

Even if his office decides to contest the ruling -- which strongly supports the defendants' original argument for a different setting for their high-profile trial -- it still needs final approval from the Justice Department. The deadline to challenge the decision is Aug. 30, though federal prosecutors could get an extension.

Prosecutors will likely be rejected if they ask the court to rehear the case as a three-judge panel or as a full 13-member court. The reason is spelled out early on in the panel's 93-page opinion: "The evidence submitted in support of the motions for change of venue was massive.''

Legal experts said the three-judge panel cited so much overwhelming evidence -- including a court-approved, pre-trial survey showing widespread community prejudice toward the five Cuban defendants -- that there is nothing factually for prosecutors to challenge.

''I sincerely doubt the 11th Circuit would reverse such a well-documented decision that has such extraordinary evidentiary support by survey, testimony and news articles,'' said attorney Neil Schuster, a federal criminal appellate expert.

''It's a long shot,'' said attorney Richard Strafer, who also specializes in federal criminal appeals.

Both lawyers, who were not involved in the original case, said they had never heard of a federal appellate reversal over a change of venue issue -- a more common occurrence in state court. Prosecutors would have to show that some ''extraordinary'' circumstance, fact or law is still in question to compel the full appellate court to hear any government challenge.

MOTION DENIED

In July 2000, U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard denied the motion by the five defendants -- Gerardo Hernández, Fernando González, Antonio Guerrero, René González and Ramón Labañino -- to move their espionage trial outside Miami. The judge said she believed that an impartial, 12-person jury could be selected from the community.

Her ruling followed the federal government's decision to send 6-year-old rafter Elián González back to Cuba to live with his father, raising a furor in Miami's Cuban-American community.

The six-month spy trial ended with with the five defendants' convictions in June 2001. Hernández, Labañino and Guerrero all received life sentences from Lenard. Hernández was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder for his alleged role in the 1996 shooting by Cuban fighters of two Brothers to the Rescue planes over international waters. Four people died in the shooting.

René González, a pilot accused of faking his defection to insinuate himself into Brothers to the Rescue, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Fernando González, no relation, was sentenced to 19 years for trying to infiltrate the offices of Cuban-American politicians and shadowing prominent exiles.

'EVERY BASE'

Attorney Paul McKenna, who represented Hernández, said the appellate panel's unanimous decision seems unassailable.

''They covered every base and even more than what we raised,'' McKenna said. "They have such a complete record.''

McKenna said that, if the appellate court denies the government's petition for review, the case would likely be sent back to the Miami federal court in November. The original trial judge, Lenard, could keep the case or have it reassigned.

STARTING ANEW

Either way, the case would be starting anew, as if the defendants were facing a fresh indictment. In custody since their arrests in 1998, they could seek to be released on bond in Miami, but prosecutors would argue against it because of their potential flight risk and danger to the community.

Most significant, McKenna and the other defense lawyers will ask Lenard or any other judge to conduct the trial outside Miami -- possibly Orlando, Jacksonville or Tallahassee.

SECURITY ISSUE

Other potential problems include security, not only for both sides but for the reams of classified documents used in the case. Another potential issue: some witnesses are dead and some are in Cuba.

''This is not the kind of case you can blow the dust off and just go back to trial,'' McKenna said. "It's a massive undertaking.''

Bay of Pigs plotters predicted failure

By Carol Rosenberg, crosenberg@herald.com. Posted on Thu, Aug. 11, 2005.

Five months before the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA task force plotting to overthrow Fidel Castro concluded that the invasion was ''unachievable'' as a covert paramilitary operation, according to a newly discovered unclassified document.

Indeed, historians have documented individuals expressing doubts at various times before the ill-fated mission.

But the document, a 300-page internal CIA history, reveals for the first time that the architects themselves foresaw failure during a Nov. 15, 1960, meeting to prepare a briefing for President-elect John F. Kennedy and that they recorded it in a memo.

''There will not be the internal unrest earlier believed possible, nor will [Castro's] defense permit the type [of] strike first planned,'' say notes of the meeting, according to the official CIA historian, Jack Pfeiffer. "Our second concept (1,500-3,000) man force to secure a beach with airstrip is also now seen to be unachievable, except as a joint Agency/DOD [CIA/Pentagon] action.''

Historians say it is unclear whether CIA Director Allen Dulles and his deputy passed this assessment along three days later, at Kennedy's post-election national security briefing in Palm Beach -- and whether changes were made as a result of the finding. But, with Kennedy's blessing, the so-called ''unachievable'' CIA-only second concept went forward five months later, on April 17, 1961 -- with devastating consequences.

Castro's forces defeated the CIA-trained and backed brigade in less than 72 hours; about 114 men were killed, and more than 1,100 forces were captured and held until the United States traded $53 million in food and medicine for their freedom.

Afterward, military experts blamed the fiasco on a decision to withhold air support, a bad choice of location, and U.S. refusal to provide U.S. troops as reinforcements.

''The CIA knew that it couldn't accomplish this type of overt paramilitary mission without direct Pentagon participation -- and committed that to paper and then went ahead and tried it anyway,'' said Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Security Archive and author of Bay of Pigs Declassified, who said the disclosure is new.

Even Pfeiffer, the CIA's official Bay of Pigs historian, noted the paradox in his long-classified Volume Three of the history, on the Eisenhower years:

'How, if in mid-November 1960 the concept of this 1,500-3,000 man force to secure a beachhead with an airstrip was envisioned by the senior personnel . . . as 'unachievable' except as a joint CIA/DOD effort, did it become 'achievable' in March 1961 with only 1,200 men and as an Agency operation?''

Both Kornbluh and Villanova University political scientist David Barrett were struck -- separately -- by the revelation while reading Pfeiffer's report, which Barrett discovered in June in a box marked ''Miscellaneous'' at the National Archives.

Pfeiffer, who died in 1997, wrote it at the CIA in the late 1970s from classified records and interviews with architects and operatives.

It reads like a 300-page chronicle of mission creep and misadventures in the embryonic effort to oust Castro -- from proposals to stage dirty tricks to early talks in Miami and New York between CIA agents and American executives on how to foil the young Cuban revolution.

WAS KENNEDY TOLD?

In it, Pfeiffer wrote of the Nov. 15, 1960, session of the CIA task force code-named Western Hemisphere Branch Four (WH/4), which met to prepare a summary for the deputy director for plans, Richard M. Bissell Jr., to help Dulles brief Kennedy on foreign affairs.

But no historical account shows that Bissell, who ran the project, ever told Dulles. Or that either man told Kennedy when he got his first in-depth national intelligence briefing on the Cuba crisis on Nov. 18 -- by the swimming pool at the Kennedy family's Palm Beach vacation home.

''If they thought it was unachievable, one could argue that Bissell owed it to JFK to tell him what they thought. There is no evidence that he did,'' said Barrett, who found the document while researching his latest book, The CIA and Congress: The Untold Story From Truman to Kennedy.

'COMPLETE AND FRANK'

Bissell didn't report what he told Kennedy in his own memoirs, published in 1996, two years after the once-celebrated spy master died.

''The presentation took less than an hour and was complete and frank,'' Bissell wrote in Reflections of a Cold Warrior.

"When the session ended, I drifted off to another part of the terrace while Kennedy and Dulles transacted other business.''

Says former Herald Latin America editor Don Bohning, author of The Castro Obsession, who read the Pfeiffer report, too: "Bissell seems to have had a habit of not telling people things they needed to know.''

Historians had thought that Pfeiffer's full four-volume CIA history, Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation, was still classified.

But Volume Three, called Evolution of CIA's Anti-Castro Policies, 1951-January 1961, arrived at the National Archives Kennedy Assassinations collection with just a few deletions of classified information in 1998 or 1999. Bay of Pigs scholars have only read it in recent weeks, after Barrett announced its existence by posting it on his university web page.

'A TREASURE TROVE'

And, said Kornbluh, whose National Security Archive has for years sifted through classified documents about long-hidden Latin American missions, Pfeiffer provided "a treasure trove of detail on one of the most significant covert actions and foreign policy debacles in the history of the Cold War.''

It described how the Bay of Pigs invasion morphed: from a plan to drop a small, U.S.-trained Cuban guerrilla force onto the island to incite internal rebellion into the full-blown, externally directed U.S.-Cuban exile assault.

Kornbluh added that the WH/4 analysis was so sound that it eerily foreshadowed a scathing and sometimes controversial report written by CIA Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick in the summer of 1961.

ARROGANCE BLAMED

Kirkpatrick blamed the Bay of Pigs fiasco on institutional arrogance, ignorance and incompetence, saying a major paramilitary operation of this type was "beyond agency responsibility and capability.''

Written on a typewriter in the 1970s, Pfeiffer dryly documented the earliest Cold War brainstorming sessions on how to overthrow Castro -- long before the Kennedy-era team hatched the better-known plots of Operation Mongoose.

Pfeiffer called them "wild-haired proposals.''

The CIA report also shows early Eisenhower administration contact with big business on anti-Castro operations.

It highlights the role of Republican Miami businessman William Pawley, a former U.S. ambassador in Latin America, who supported Richard Nixon's presidential bid and hosted meetings between the intelligence agency and U.S. business.

The topic: The composition of a post-Castro, U.S.-backed Cuban government.

MET WITH FIRMS' EXECS

And on Dec. 20, 1960, Pfeiffer said, Dulles met U.S. corporate leaders in New York to kick around ideas for covert operations at a particularly delicate time -- during the transition from President Eisenhower to Kennedy.

Executives included the Cuban-American Sugar Co. chairman, the American Sugar Domino Refining Co. president, the president of the American and Foreign Power Co., Standard Oil of New Jersey's vice president for Latin America, representatives of Texaco, International Telephone and Telegraph "and other American companies with business interests in Cuba.''

VARIED IDEAS

''Suggestions were made to sabotage the sugar crop -- the question being whether to burn the cane fields or ruin the refineries; to interrupt the electric power supply; and to put an embargo on food, drugs and spare parts for machinery,'' Pfeiffer wrote, quoting from a memorandum from the meeting written by Henry Holland, a former assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs.

"Dulles opposed the embargo on food and drugs, but the feeling of the business group was that it was time to get tough and, hopefully, the blame for an embargo would be laid on Castro.''

Group seeks release of 5 accused spies

A human rights group, which has championed the cause of the five men accused of spying for Cuba, is pressuring federal authorities to release them from prison.

By Luisa Yanez. lyanez@herald.com. Posted on Thu, Aug. 11, 2005

A day after a federal appeals court overturned the convictions of five accused Cuban spies and ordered a new trial, a new battle has begun for their supporters: winning their release from prison.

''We are asking for their freedom now, regardless of any pending appeals by the federal government,'' said Gloria La Riva, head of the National Committee to Free the Five, which has championed their claim of an unjust prosecution since 2001.

A VISA REQUEST

They also want the Bush administration to allow the wives of two defendants in Cuba to be granted visas to visit their husbands.

The committee is composed of grass-roots organizations from across the United States, La Riva said.

A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday threw out the June 2001 convictions against the five men, saying the anti-Castro political atmosphere and intense media coverage in Miami at the time made it impossible to conduct a fair trail.

The stunning decision rallied La Riva's group and other supporters, along with the Cuban government. It riled those who viewed the court's ruling as an insult to Miami's large Cuban-American community.

Federal prosecutors in Miami say they plan to retry the five, but a trial may not occur until next year. Meanwhile, the five men remained locked up in federal prisons around the country. Defense lawyers want the defendants released on bond pending any potential retrial.

La Riva said the defendants have every right to be released. ''As of today, they stand convicted of nothing,'' she said.

But Ninoska Perez Castellón, head of the Cuban Liberty Council and a local Spanish-language radio commentator, said the defendants would leave the country if allowed to go free on bail.

''These men are a great flight risk,'' she said. "They would probably end up in Cuba if they were released. I'm sure there's a route already in place where they could easily be smuggled back.''

YEARS IN PRISON

Each of the five men have served seven years in federal prison. Gerardo Hernández, 40, is in Victorville, Calif.; Ramon Labañino, 42, in Beaumont, Texas; Antonio Guerrero, 46, in South Florence, Colo.; Fernando González, 41, in Oxford, Wi. and René González, 49, in Marianna.

The Free the Five committee has waged a nationwide public relations campaign by staging forums, managing the website www.freethefive.org and collecting $50,000 for an ad in the New York Times that ran in March 2004. They said $11,000 came from donors in South Florida.

''We want to see them released so they can embrace their loved ones,'' La Riva said.

WITH LETTERS

The committee launched a letter-writing campaign on Wednesday to persuade the Bush administration to approve visas for Olga Salanueva, René González' wife, and Adriana Pérez, Hernández' wife, so they can visit their husbands. Both women live in Cuba.

Salanueva was deported from Miami to Cuba after her husband's arrest in 1997. Pérez has never been to the United States. The plans of relatives of the three other men are unclear.

Herald staff writer Scott Hiaasen contributed to this report

Court overturns spy verdicts

The convictions of five accused Cuban spies in a Miami trial were thrown out by an appellate court. A retrial is expected.

By Scott Hiaasen, Luisa Yanez and David Ovalle, shiaasen@herald.com. Posted on Wed, Aug. 10, 2005.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday threw out the convictions of five accused Cuban spies, finding that the volatile mix of Miami's anti-Castro political climate and intense media coverage -- both amplified in the wake of the Elián González drama -- made a fair trial in the city an impossibility.

The decision by a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means that the five Miami men -- convicted in June 2001 of infiltrating Miami's exile community and trying to pass U.S. military secrets to Havana -- will have a new trial. But not in Miami.

In its 93-page opinion, the court found the six-month trial was hopelessly inundated with news coverage and public protests, while the community was already saturated with stories about the Elián case, an immigration agent charged with spying for Fidel Castro and local bans on doing business with Cuba.

The court also said prosecutors made improper comments during the trial, as did José Basulto, the founder of Brothers to the Rescue, who implied from the witness stand that one of the defense lawyers was a Cuban agent.

''A new trial was mandated by the perfect storm created when the surge of pervasive community sentiment and extensive publicity both before and during the trial merged with the improper prosecutorial references,'' the court said.

But at least one juror said she didn't feel nearly as pressured by anti-Castro sentiment as the appeals court believed.

''As far as I'm concerned, the verdict we reached had nothing to do with the community. The verdict we reached was because of the evidence presented to us,'' Omaira Garcia said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

''I felt no pressure at all, and I'm sure the other jurors didn't either,'' said Garcia, a legal assistant.

Lawyers for the defendants -- Gerardo Hernández, Fernando González, Antonio Guerrero, René González and Ramón Labañino -- cheered the ruling, praising the court for taking a position that would no doubt be unpopular in Miami.

''I have new faith in the court of appeals and the system of laws,'' said Paul McKenna, who represented Hernández. "The trial was infected with prejudice from the beginning to the end.''

The defense lawyers first asked U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard to move the trial out of Miami in January 2000 and said Fort Lauderdale would be a better venue.

At the time, the federal government was seeking to send 6-year-old rafter Elián González back to Cuba to live with his father, raising a furor in Miami's Cuban-American community.

GOVERNMENT CASE

The verdict in the spy trial was undone in part by the government's stance in a separate civil case that spun out of the Elián case: Defending an employment lawsuit brought by immigration agent Ricardo Ramirez, government lawyers said they could not get a fair trial in Miami. They said the community had become too polarized after the INS raid that sent Elián back to Cuba.

Defense lawyers for the accused spies then used the government's pleadings to persuade the appeals court that it was unfair to hold the spy trial in Miami as well.

Former U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis, whose office dedicated thousands of hours and millions of dollars to its pursuit of the accused spies, said the trial judge went to great lengths to make sure the trial was fair.

''I think the court is wrong,'' said Lewis, now a lawyer in private practice. "What they are saying is that you can't get a fair trial here in South Florida.''

Federal prosecutors did not comment on Tuesday's decision, though they are certain to pursue a retrial of the five men, who were convicted of 23 spying-related charges.

After their convictions, Hernández, Labañino and Guerrero all received life sentences from Lenard. Hernández was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder for his alleged role in the 1996 shooting by Cuban fighters of two Brothers to the Rescue planes over international waters. Four people died in the shooting.

René González, a pilot accused of faking his defection to insinuate himself into Brothers to the Rescue, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Fernando González, no relation, was convicted of trying to infiltrate the offices of Cuban-American politicians and shadowing prominent exiles, including one-time accused airplane bomber Orlando Bosch; González was sentenced to 19 years.

The five men were arrested in 1998 as U.S. agents dismantled a Cuban spy network called La Red Avispa, the Wasp Network. Prosecutors said the ring infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue and other Miami-area exile groups, spreading disinformation and spying for Castro. Some were also accused of trying to gather intelligence about the U.S. military; Guerrero was a laborer at the Boca Chica Naval Air Station near Key West.

DISCS SEIZED

The FBI seized coded computer disks containing 2,000 messages among the defendants and their handlers in Havana, prosecutors said. Federal agents also found shortwave radio messages from Cuba warning that René Gonzalez and another pilot should not fly with the Brothers around the time of the shoot-down.

Defense lawyers essentially conceded that the five were working on behalf of the Cuban government but said they were simply trying to protect their homeland from exile groups and did not try to gather military secrets.

Tuesday's court ruling dismayed many in Miami's Cuban community, especially the relatives of the pilots from Brothers to the Rescue, an organization that flew small planes across the Florida Straits in search of rafters fleeing Cuba.

'DISAPPOINTED'

''We are extremely disappointed,'' said Maggie Alejandre Khuly, whose brother, Armando Alejandre Jr., was one of those shot down on Feb. 24, 1996. "I sat at the trial every day, and I don't think I saw any miscarriage of justice. But we firmly believe and respect the American justice system.''

Basulto said he didn't believe there was any undue influence on the jurors, none of whom were Cuban American.

''I'm very disappointed in their decision. They were convicted by a jury of their peers,'' he said. "If they are retried, they will again be found guilty.''

But the court found that, in some cases, if the climate outside the courthouse is too hostile, "it is unnecessary to prove that local prejudice actually entered the jury box.''

McKenna said he will try to get Hernández released on bail after seven years in custody. And the San Francisco-based National Committee to Free the Cuban Five said it would ask the Justice Department to allow the wives of Hernández and René González to travel from Cuba to the United States to visit their spouses.

Olga Salanueva, wife of prisoner René González, told Cuban broadcasters that she was overjoyed, according to the Associated Press. ''It's been many years since I've received such good news,'' she said.

DECISION CHEERED

In Cuba, where the five men have been portrayed as heroic patriots since their arrest in 1998, the court's decision was hailed.

''This is a victory against those who promote terrorism, against hypocrites who tout a supposed war on terror and in reality protect terrorists and jail young men who only acted to oppose terrorism in the United States,'' National Assembly speaker Ricardo Alarcon told Agence France-Presse. He called on the U.S. government to free the five men from prison.

The court's ruling comes less than a month after a U.N. panel ruled that the detention of the five men was arbitrary and in violation of international law. The judgment came from the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, part of the Geneva-based U.N. Commission on Human Rights.

It found the five were denied full access to evidence and to their lawyers, but a senior State Department official told The Herald at the time that the ruling was a ''politically motivated'' maneuver orchestrated by the Cuban government.

State Department officials did not comment on Tuesday's federal appeals ruling, calling it "a judicial and law enforcement matter.''

Some in Miami found the federal appeals court's language condescending and insulting.

The court concluded it's ruling by praising the ''traditional values'' of the Cuban-American community and saying: "We trust that any disappointment with our judgment in this case will be tempered and balanced by the recognition that we are a nation of laws in which every defendant, no matter how unpopular, must be treated fairly.''

''We are sensitive about Cuban issues, that's true, but this is insulting to exiles,'' said Manny Vazquez, an attorney for the Cuban American National Foundation. "We are a peaceful community, and yes, we want a change in government in Cuba, but we want it in a peaceful way.''

U.S. withdraws subpoena for Posada interview tape

Federal prosecutors have agreed to withdraw subpoenas against The New York Times and one of its writers in a case involving Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles.

By Alfonso Chardy, achardy@herald.com. Posted on Wed, Aug. 10, 2005.

The Department of Homeland Security has dropped subpoenas against The New York Times and one of its writers that sought tapes of an interview with Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles in which Posada admitted masterminding the bombings of tourist sites in Cuba.

Withdrawal of the subpoenas amounted to a victory for the newspaper and for Ann Louise Bardach, who had refused to produce tapes, notes or transcripts related to the 1998 interview. George Freeman, the Times' attorney, told The Herald Tuesday that Homeland Security ''just withdrew the subpoenas'' and that no deal was struck between the newspaper and the government.

''It's a huge relief,'' Bardach said in a telephone interview.

A U.S. Attorney's Office letter, dated Monday, did not rule out issuing new subpoenas "at a future point in time.''

The U.S. Attorney's Office and Homeland Security had no comment.

Homeland Security officials issued the subpoenas in May.

The tapes could have been used as evidence in any asylum or deportation proceeding against Posada, who sneaked into the United States this spring. An asylum-deportation trial is scheduled to start in federal immigration court in El Paso Aug. 29.

In a July 1998 article that appeared in the Times, Bardach and another New York Times reporter -- Larry Rohter -- wrote that Posada said he organized the 1997 bombings at Cuban hotels, restaurants and discotheques in which an Italian national was killed.

The government's case can still go forward because hearsay is admissible in immigration court.

Homeland Security has filed in the court copies of the New York Times articles and a chapter in Bardach's 2002 book Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana, in which Posada is quoted as admitting a role in the bombings.

In an interview with The Herald in Miami in May, Posada did not deny Bardach's account but refused to repeat his assertions to her.

In the book, Bardach quoted Posada as saying: "We didn't want to hurt anybody, we just wanted to make a big scandal so that the tourists don't come anymore.''

Attorneys for the Times filed a motion in Miami federal court seeking to quash the subpoenas on the ground that the information the government sought was already publicly available and that the credibility of Bardach and the newspaper would be compromised if materials gathered while reporting the story were surrendered.

''Bardach does not believe that Posada Carriles would have provided the interview if he had believed that all aspects of the interview would be delivered to a U.S. law enforcement agency,'' the newspaper's motion said.

Recent arrival from Cuba already headed to Yale

A 23-year-old Hialeah man has moved from a local community college to Yale in just three years after leaving Cuba.

By Noah Bierman, nbierman@herald.com. Posted on Wed, Aug. 10, 2005.

Luisel Peña, fresh from Cuba, sat in an English night-school class in Hialeah High School three years ago with migrant workers and others seeking a glimmer of American success.

''I didn't know where, I didn't know when,'' said Peña, 23. "I just knew I wanted to go to school and get an education here.''

Peña zipped through the steps to American prosperity. This month, he moves from the cot next to his parents' bed to a dorm at Yale University.

''It's amazing,'' said his father, Luis Peña, who took English classes with Luisel but is not yet fluent. "In only three years he can make this huge leap.''

The facts alone sound overwhelming -- he just finished community college and he's about to enter one of America's bastions of privilege and prestige. But Peña projects a calm modesty that makes his accomplishments seem inevitable.

''A lot of people think because he came from Cuba, he's disadvantaged,'' said Daphne Bareket, a close friend and former classmate. " . . . But he doesn't see himself that way at all. So I don't see him that way at all.''

Peña's story begins in Pinar Del Rio, a small city in western Cuba.

''When he was 1, the first thing he grabbed wasn't a toy, but a book,'' his mother, Maria Elena Peña, said in Spanish.

His parents divorced when he was 2. In 1992, Peña's father came to visit his brother in Hialeah and stayed, leaving behind a career as a civil engineer to work in construction.

Back in Cuba, Peña kept reading. He especially likes Italian author Umberto Eco, whom he calls one of the best living authors in the world. He studied English, learning how to read and write but he did not feel confident speaking.

Luisel's father became a U.S. citizen and visited Cuba five years ago to tell his son he wanted him to move to Miami. Luisel was indifferent. He would miss friends. But his parents believed he needed to leave the island to fulfill his promise.

Something else happened on that visit. His parents fell in love again and decided they would remarry nearly two decades after their divorce. Luisel left Cuba on Aug. 22, 2002, his mother 18 months later.

Luisel Peña -- who was 20 and didn't know anyone except his father -- took jobs at Best Buy and Spec's Music while studying English.

PICKED MIAMI DADE

He also searched local colleges on Google and decided Miami Dade College gave him the best and most affordable opportunity. When he went to the Wolfson campus to apply, an admissions clerk erroneously told him he would have to wait a year to avoid paying out-of-state tuition. He learned eight months later that was a mistake.

But Peña wouldn't end up paying anything. His grades in Cuba, entrance exam scores and an interview qualified him for a scholarship at the school's three-year-old honors college.

The honors college offers small classes, intensive academic advising and seminars. The program enrolled 363 students last year and cost about $1.5 million a year to run. Many honors college graduates go on to local universities. Others have attended Georgetown, Wisconsin, Columbia and elsewhere.

Peña read books -- architecture, chemistry and philosophy -- into the night. His mother recalls waking up hourly to brew coffee until 6 a.m. One B blemished two years of otherwise perfect report cards.

In March 2004, he earned one of 40 Miami Dade spots at a 10-day global seminar in Salzburg. The trip was a turning point. He does not like to dramatize the despair in Cuba, but the isolation there confined him, he said.

''Growing up in Cuba, you think your life is not really closely related to the life of the greater international system,'' Peña said. "It's like Cuba and outside of Cuba. There's nothing else.''

In Salzburg, he sat next to people from around the world discussing politics and economics. He returned home with a new sense of voice. He joined the model United Nations club and traveled to New York. He started a philosophy club.

And, most profoundly, he co-founded a group to bring awareness of Sudanese genocide. As president, he organized a conference that linked Miami Dade's six campuses by television. When he attended a national college genocide conference in Washington, D.C., he and co-founder Bareket were the only students from a community college.

Despite moving among increasingly worldly crowds, Peña continued to empathize with other students just beginning their American education. He got a job at Miami Dade's Wolfson campus as a tutor, helping mostly non-native English speakers write papers.

Students respond to Peña because they know he shares their experience, said Caridad Castro, coordinator of the campus writing program.

Peña applied to Yale and other top-flight national universities at the urging of Alexandria Holloway, dean of the honors college. Holloway said many of the talented, mostly immigrant students at the honors college are reluctant to apply to universities outside Miami, apprehensive about leaving family.

A RARITY

Yale has few students from community colleges. Last year, 700 students -- from four- and two-year colleges combined -- applied to transfer to Yale, said Dorie Baker, a Yale spokeswoman. Of those, only 24 were accepted.

''Clearly, they're pretty exceptional people,'' Baker said.

Peña's parents were excited about Yale, but only realized the depth of his accomplishment when they learned President Bush had attended.

Peña, who will major in philosophy and math, hopes to become a doctor or lawyer and to find a career in human rights.

Yale is granting Peña a full scholarship. But first, he has to get there.

He applied for a Southwest Airlines scholarship that offers plane tickets to needy students, but hasn't heard back from the company.

If the airline doesn't come through, Peña says he'll find some other way to get to Yale.

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