Cubas charity claim strikes out in the US
Posted on Fri, Mar. 24, 2006
WORLD BASEBALL CLASSICCuba’s charity claim strikes out in the U.S.
Major League Baseball denied Cuban claims that it donated World Baseball Classic winnings to American hurricane victims. It said Cuba didn’t win any money.BY KEVIN BAXTER AND PABLO [email protected]
WASHINGTON – Major League Baseball Thursday denied a claim by Cuban leader Fidel Castro that his government will donate proceeds from the World Baseball Classic to U.S. victims of Hurricane Katrina.
In a speech Tuesday, Castro boasted that the Bush administration’s initial attempts to bar his country from participating in the tournament had backfired, and that Cuba’s take from the tournament would go to “Katrina’s martyrs.”
His comments raised eyebrows in the U.S. Treasury and State Departments, where officials had hammered out a deal with Major League Baseball: Cuba would get no money from the tournament, and no donations could be made on its behalf.
That accord between organizers of the Classic, won by Japan in a championship game against Cuba Monday, and the U.S. government was necessary to allow Cuba to take part in the first-ever World-Cup style baseball competition without contravening U.S. sanctions against the island.
Patrick Courtney, a spokesman for Major League Baseball, which helped organized the tournament, said that the Classic’s agreement with the Cuban baseball federation clearly stipulated that Cuba, unlike the other 15 participating federations, would receive none of the tournament’s proceeds.
”To the contrary, at the insistence of the Treasury and the State Department, Cuba agreed, as a condition of its participation in the tournament, that `it will not receive any direct or indirect revenues and/or prize money,” Courtney wrote in an e-mail to The Miami Herald.
”Based on the agreement, Cuba doesn’t have a cut of the proceeds from the tournament, and there is nothing for Cuba to donate,” he added.
In fact, there’s a chance none of the countries will get paid. Initial estimates put the cost of staging the 17-day, 39-game tournament at $50 million. Gene Orza of the major league players union, said the event could wind up losing money. The participating teams, Cuba included, had their expenses paid for.
Before the Havana team left San Diego, site of the championship game, Cuban spokesman Pedro Cabrera told reporters that the team would be donating tournament proceeds to Hurricane Katrina victims and asked reporters to include that in their stories. Cuban manager Higinio Velez made a similar claim before the tournament began.
U.S. officials say privately that the Bush administration would react angrily if MLB ends up making a donation from the tournament’s proceeds to a Katrina charity.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/14173445.htm
Major League Baseball denies Castros claims
Posted on Thu, Mar. 23, 2006
Major League Baseball denies Castro’s claimsBy KEVIN BAXTER and PABLO [email protected]
WASHINGTON – Major League Baseball Thursday denied a claim by Cuban leader Fidel Castro that his government will donate proceeds from the World Baseball Classic to U.S. victims of Hurricane Katrina.
In a speech Tuesday, Castro boasted that the Bush administration’s initial attempts to bar his country from participating in the tournament had backfired, and that Cuba’s take from the tournament would go to “Katrina’s martyrs.”
His comments raised eyebrows in the U.S. Treasury and State Departments, where officials had hammered out a deal with Major League Baseball: Cuba would get no money from the tournament, and no donations could be made on its behalf.
That accord between organizers of the Classic, won by Japan in a championship game against Cuba Monday, and the U.S. government was necessary to allow Cuba to take part in the first-ever World-Cup style baseball competition without contravening U.S. sanctions against the island.
Patrick Courtney, a spokesman for Major League Baseball (MLB), which helped organized the tournament, said that the Classic’s agreement with the Cuban baseball federation clearly stipulated that Cuba, unlike the other 15 participating federations, would receive none of the tournament’s proceeds.
”To the contrary, at the insistence of the Treasury and the State Department, Cuba agreed, as a condition of its participation in the tournament, that `it will not receive any direct or indirect revenues and/or prize money,” Courtney wrote in an email to the Miami Herald.
”Based on the agreement, Cuba doesn’t have a cut of the proceeds from the tournament, and there is nothing for Cuba to donate,” he added.
In fact, there’s a chance none of the countries will get paid. Initial estimates put the cost of staging the 17-day, 39- game tournament at $50 million. Gene Orza of the major league players union, said the event could wind up losing money. The participating teams, Cuba included, had their expenses paid for.
Before the Havana team left San Diego, site of the championship game, Cuban spokesman Pedro Cabrera told reporters that the team would be donating tournament proceeds to Hurricane Katrina victims and asked reporters to include that in their stories. Cuban manager Higinio Velez made a similar claim before the tournament began.
U.S. officials say privately that the Bush administration would react angrily if MLB ends up making a donation from the tournament’s proceeds to a Katrina charity.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/14170116.htm?source=rss&channel=miamiherald_news
A former aide spills the dirt on Fidel Castro
Posted on Thu, Mar. 23, 2006
A former aide spills the dirt on Fidel Castro
A member of Fidel’s inner circle now lives in Miami and is talking up a storm. He even knows why the Cuban leader burns his underwear.BY OSCAR [email protected]
As part of Fidel and Raúl Castro’s inner circle, Delfín Fernández learned titillating secrets — everything from why the Cuban leader incinerates his dirty underwear to his cravings for pricey Spanish ham.
Oh, Fidel’s former gofer confirms, too, the heftier ”secrets” that Cuba experts have talked about for years: how the brothers assemble dossiers on foreign businessmen who want to invest in Cuba, for instance.
It’s Fernández’s knowledge about Fidel Castro’s dirty laundry, though — literally and figuratively — that has made him a cause célbre in South Florida. No detail about the Castro brothers seems too small for sharing with the world.
Fernández says chief of bodyguards, Bienvenido ”Chicho” Perez, told him the Cuban leader has his underwear burned to foil any assassination plots with chemicals during laundering.
And he knows Fidel’s capricious appetite for Serrano hams, having been sent to Spain to bring $2,500 worth of the pata negra delicacy back to Cuba. He knows well the Castro brothers’ doctors and children, having vacationed with them at lavish oceanfront homes on the island.
So what does a man with such sensitive information do once he goes into exile?
Why, he gets a steady, if unpaid, gig on a Spanish-language TV show in Miami, of course, after having been a bodyguard to international stars – among them, Antonio Banderas.
Fernández, cherubic, chatty and with a portfolio of sensitive photographs and a memory filled with intimate Castro morsels, arrived in Miami less than a year ago after living in Spain for five years. But already, he has a spot on a new TV show on WJAN-Channel 41.
“I was assigned to take care of the people closest to Fidel. So that they don’t lack anything and don’t feel threatened by anything inside or outside of Cuba. . . . When I tell about these things on television, people see me and I start making a name for myself.”
Former CIA analyst Brian Latell, a senior researcher at the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies, said this week he spent several hours meeting with Fernández in Miami earlier this year for academic research.
”A lot of the stories he told me were fascinating, and I found almost all of them to be highly credible,” Latell said.
Fernández, 44, was code-named ”Otto” when he reported to Cuban counterintelligence’s Department 11 — assigned to the Castro brothers and their closest foreign investment contacts, mostly from Spain, he said.
Fernández got the post as a trusted gofer in 1980 through his uncle, Rodolfo Fernández Rodriguez, chief of the Office of Special Affairs of the Counsel of State and one of Fidel’s most trusted confidants.
While he worked for the Castro brothers, Fernández witnessed the tactics used by Cuba’s leaders to monitor important foreign investors. His disillusionment with the regime, he said, and his ambitions for a better life compelled him to defect.
”The initial idea of Fidel was good. Batista was an assassin,” Fernández said. “What happened was, the course he took with the revolution was wrong. It has dissolved into this unstoppable, insatiable corruption without limits, a vast lie. The people are in misery. Cuba’s people have been enslaved as cheap labor for foreign businessmen.”
Fernández said Cuba’s leader always travels around Havana in a six- or seven-car motorcade led by three nearly identical black Mercedes-Benz 560s. The Castro brothers have as many as 300 cars for them, their families, their bodyguards, Fernández said.
Fidel Castro turns 80 this year, and he has become obsessed with his health, Fernández said. The Castro brothers each have their own clinics and their own doctors in Havana’s Council of State Building and in the Cimeq Hospital. Last year, Fidel Castro built a multimillion-dollar clinic a few yards from his front door, on the grounds of his Havana estate, Fernández said he learned from his island contacts. .
”So that if Castro has a heart attack or he dies, the only people who will know about it will be his family, the guards working at the time, and Raúl,” Fernández said. “Fidel never cedes control, and will never cede power.”
One example of Fidel Castro’s concern with ceding power is former Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina, applauded by some in the international community for trying to open Cuba to the world. But Robaina, whom Fernández knew well, was ultimately sacked by Castro in 1999, according to The Miami Herald and other media reports at the time.
”He was a guy with progressive ideas,” Fernández said. “But he is an example of what happens if you try to change the Cuban system from within. He was under house arrest for two years.”
Fernández paints Raúl Castro, who runs Cuba’s armed forces and by extention much of its economy, as more practical and family oriented than his older brother, an analysis echoed by Latell in his book After Fidel.
”Raúl likes the money — he has a transition plan,” Fernández said. “Fidel doesn’t. I think Raúl would want to lead an economic transformation, and ultimately find a way to retire peacefully with his family with all the money he has stolen from the Cuban people over the years and taken out of the country.”
Fernández said he carried suitcases with cash out of Cuba for the Castro brothers.
Fernández’s photographs include several of him with the children of Fidel and Raúl at one of their beachfront estates and with many high-profile Spanish businessmen.
Fernández said he defected in Spain in 1999 on a trip to Europe to drop off Raúl’s daughter, Mariela Castro Espin, in Italy to visit her father-in-law and pick up a Rotweiller in Germany for Fidel.
Fernández settled in Spain for five years, becoming one of Europe’s most successful bodyguards. Among his clients in Spain: actors Antonio Banderas and his wife, Melanie Griffith, soccer star David Beckham, Spanish actresses Ana Obregon and Esther Cañada, former Spice Girl Emma Bunton and several high-profile businessmen.
The Spanish media have embraced him, writing dozens of articles about his life as a Castro insider and bodyguard. He was also a consultant on an investigative book, Conexión Habana, by Spanish authors. Fernández said there’s a black market trade in sensitive videos of Spanish businessmen — videos made by Cuban agents.
”Fidel is an avid consumer of those materials,” he said.
Last year, Fernández moved to Miami, eager to reconnect with friends and a community that reminds him more of home: like Cuba without Castro on TV every night. He has been an outspoken critic of the Castro government since he defected.
“Cuba has a death sentence against me for high treason.”
Now waiting to get residency under the Cuban Adjustment Act, Fernández won’t talk about his own family, but he has plenty to say about the Castro clan. People can’t seem to get enough.
Oscar Haza, a popular Spanish language talk show host on Channel 41, has invited Fernández on his show at least six times, firing up the ratings when he’s a guest, said Channel 41 news director Miguel Cossío.
The ratings were so strong that Channel 41 offered to let Fernández be a permanent guest on a new daily weekday show, Arrebatados, at 6 p.m., hosted by Maria Laria.
”I’d like to start a bodyguard agency in Miami when I’m all settled down here,” he said. “I’m very grateful to the people in Miami that have been so welcoming to me.”
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/breaking_news/14163977.htm
Unclear when and if returned Cuban migrants will come to US
Posted on Thu, Mar. 23, 2006
Unclear when and if returned Cuban migrants will come to U.S.
HAVANA – (AP) — One of the Cuban migrants returned home after reaching an abandoned bridge in the Florida Keys said Wednesday it remains unclear when and if they will be able to go to the United States for good.
”We now have Cuban passports,” Junior Blanco said when reached by telephone in Matanzas, east of Havana. “We must now wait for the (U.S.) Interests Section to call us.”
Under a deal between a federal judge in Miami and the U.S. government, 14 of the 15 Cubans returned home in January will receive visas allowing them to immigrate to the United States. The Cuban passports were a necessary first step.
After obtaining the U.S. visas, the migrants must ask the Cuban government to provide exit permits allowing them to leave the island. Cuban authorities have not said if they will let the 14 leave.
The migrant group numbered 15, but one person will not immediately be given a U.S. visa because of questions about that person’s possible criminal history, an advocate in Miami said the day the deal was announced.
Under the deal, the Cubans are to receive U.S. immigration papers within 10 days of U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno’s approval of the agreement. The agreement was approved March 15 and filed March 17.
In return, the U.S. government will drop its planned appeal of Moreno’s Feb. 28 ruling that the group was illegally returned to Cuba after legitimately reaching U.S. shores.
The repatriation of the group by the U.S. Coast Guard caused a firestorm of debate in South Florida’s large Cuban exile community over U.S. migration policies for Cuban migrants.
Under the United States’ so-called ”wet foot/dry foot” policy, most Cubans who reach U.S. soil are allowed to remain, while those intercepted at sea are generally returned home.
Federal officials had said the old bridge did not qualify as dry land because parts are missing and it no longer connects to U.S. soil.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/email/news/breaking_news/14167778.htm
Fidel Castro Burns His Underwear
Thursday, March 23, 2006 3:03 p.m. EST
Fidel Castro Burns His Underwear
A former assistant to Fidel Castro and his brother Raul is now in Miami and he’s airing the Cuban leader’s dirty laundry – including why Fidel burns his underwear.
Delfin Fernandez, 44, defected in Spain in 1999 on a trip to Europe to drop off Raul’s daughter in Italy and pick up a Rotweiller in Germany for Fidel. He moved to Miami less than a year ago.
“I was assigned to take care of the people closest to Fidel, so that they don’t lack anything and don’t feel threatened by anything inside or outside of Cuba,” he told the Miami Herald.
Among Fernandez’ revelations to the Herald:# Chief of bodyguards Bienvenido “Chicho” Perez told him Fidel has his underwear burned to foil any assassination plots with chemicals during laundering.
# Fidel has a passion for Serrano hams and sent Fernandez to Spain to bring $2,500 worth of the delicacy back to Cuba.
# To fool would-be assassins, Cuba’s leader always travels around Havana in a six- or seven-car motorcade led by three nearly identical black Mercedes-Benz 560s. The Castro brothers have as many as 300 cars for themselves, their families and their bodyguards.
# Fidel turns 80 this year and has become obsessed with his health. The Castro brothers each have their own clinics and their own doctors in Havana’s Council of State Building, and Fidel has also built a multimillion-dollar clinic on the grounds of his Havana estate.
“If Castro has a heart attack or he dies, the only people who will know about it will be his family, the guards working at the time, and Raul,” Fernandez said.
# When Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina tried to open Cuba to the world, he was sacked by Castro and placed under house arrest for two years.
# Raul is more “practical and family oriented” than his older brother.
“Raul has a transition plan,” Fernandez said. “I think Raul would want to lead an economic transformation, and ultimately find a way to retire peacefully with his family with all the money he has stolen from the Cuban people over the years.”
# Fernandez said he carried suitcases full of cash out of Cuba for the Castro brothers.
He told the Herald: “The initial idea of Fidel was good. What happened was, the course he took with the revolution was wrong. It has dissolved into this unstoppable, insatiable corruption without limits, a vast lie. The people are in misery. Cuba’s people have been enslaved as cheap labor for foreign businessmen.”
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/3/23/150728.shtml?s=ic
Pants On Fire For Castro
Pants On Fire For CastroUpdated: 12:47, Friday March 24, 2006
Cuba’s Fidel Castro has such a burning desire to survive assassination he sets his pants on fire.
He is so fearful of being bumped off he orders his underwear to be burnt rather than sent to the laundry where it could be infused with lethal chemicals.
The outlandish claim is made by his former bodyguard Delfin Fernandez who has gone through a litany of the socialist dictator’s quirks on US television.
Castro’s underwear protection may not be all that strange, however.
According to the Havana Museum, he has survived 639 murder bids since coming to power in 1959.
These include the famous exploding cigar, a poison syringe hidden in a pen and a gun disguised as a TV camera.
Mr Fernandez, who fled Cuba in 1999 and has worked as a bodyguard for David Beckham and Antonio Banderas, is a regular on TV in Florida where his claims about Castro’s indiosyncracies have kept Cuban exiles entertained.
Among those claims are Castro’s love of an exclusive ham, which Mr Fernandez says he was sent to Spain to collect, and his order to compile blackmail dossiers on foreign businessmen.
Mr Fernandez, 44, also accuses Castro’s brother, Raul, of being a crook who has robbed the country of millions.
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-13515545,00.html?f=rss
Fidel Castro pays tribute to Kadhafi
Fidel Castro pays tribute to Kadhafi
Tripoli, Libya, 03/22 – Cuban President Fidel Castro has expressed profound admiration for the vision and role of Libyan leader Moammar Kadhafi in the handling of global issues, noting that Cuba would be honoured to welcome him at the Non-Aligned Movement conference in Havana next September, official sources said here Tuesday.
Speaking in Havana during a meeting with a special envoy of the Libyan leader, Castro noted that the participation of Kadhafi in the non-aligned countries conference will honour Cubans and constitute a decisive moment as the Movement taps into the great experience and wisdom of the Guide of the Libyan Revolution.
“We are certain that the analyses and perceptive ideas of Kadhafi will enrich this international meeting,” he added.
President Castro asked the Libyan envoy to convey his greetings and consideration of high esteem to Kadhafi, according to official Libyan sources.
http://www.angolapress-angop.ao/noticia-e.asp?ID=426751
Bahamas Ambassador Says Cuban Dentists Controversy Could Have Been Avoided
24th MarchBahamas Ambassador Says Cuban Dentists Controversy Could Have Been AvoidedBy Quincy Parker
The nation’s top diplomat said Wednesday that in his opinion, the problems plaguing the processing of the two Cuban dentists recently released after 10 months at the Carmichael Road Detention Centre could have been avoided.
Joshua Sears is the Bahamas’ Ambassador to the United States, and he consulted on what turned into a seemingly contentious matter with American officials in South Florida.
Congressman Connie Mack and Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of South Florida had vehemently called for economic sanctions against The Bahamas over the detention of Drs. David Gonzalez and Marialys Darias-Mesa.
“I think clearly in this case, in terms of process, some things could have happened differently which would have avoided this particular problem,” Mr. Sears said.
According to Mr. Sears, The Bahamas did consult with Cuba over the fate of the two dentists, but did not ask Cuba’s permission.
“All I would say is that, as I have said, we have a treaty obligation with Cuba and that treaty requires us to act in a particular way. So clearly, if you want to honour the sanctity of that arrangement one would clearly have to talk with them and that’s what we did,” Mr. Sears said.
“I wouldn’t say (we asked their permission to send the two Cuban dentists to Jamaica), no.”
Mr. Sears would not say how long the consultation between the Bahamas and Cuba took, but said he was sure the Cuban government was satisfied with the outcome of the matter.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Fred Mitchell, while explaining the matter to the House of Assembly on March 15, thanked Cuba’s Foreign Minister Felipe Roquez, and Cuba’s Ambassador to The Bahamas Felix Wilson, for the Cuban government’s good will and harmony in the matter.
Mr. Sears assured that the ‘exception’ made in favour of the two Cuban dentists who were released to Jamaica instead of shipped back to Cuba will not affect The Bahamas’s future immigration policy.
After being escorted to Kingston by a pair of Bahamian immigration officials, Drs. David Gonzalez and Marialys Darias-Mesa boarded a Florida-bound jet, and were reunited with their families in Ft. Lauderdale.
“The minister was very clear in his communication to Parliament that this is an exception. We don’t expect, nor do we anticipate that we will be expected to do a similar thing,” Mr. Sears said.
“This is a case where we think, certainly from our point of view, it’s an exception, but governments always have to act prudently because we have international obligations.”
In Mr. Sears’ view, the question of the two dentists was a question of maintaining the integrity of a treaty relationship while “respecting the elements of humanitarian consideration.”
While acknowledging the view that the matter ought to have been handled more swiftly, Mr. Sears said that “sometimes due process requires that kind of time.”
He also noted that the government had to consider the question of setting a precedent. He said that once a vehicle (for migration) succeeds, it presents “a tremendous attraction for people to follow.”
Regarding the vehemence of Congressman Mack and Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen, Mr. Sears pointed out that the two South Florida representatives have significant numbers of Cuban-Americans in their constituencies.
“And so what you saw being played out by them was (them) acting in response to their constituents’ interests,” he said, adding that the American officials understood “without question” the difficulty The Bahamas faced in releasing the two Cuban dentists.
U. S. Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice, the top American diplomat, was in the Bahamas on Tuesday and Wednesday to meet with foreign ministers from within the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). In a half-hour closed session with The Bahamas Cabinet, Dr. Rice reportedly thanked The Bahamas for the manner in which the matter of the two dentists was resolved.
http://www.jonesbahamas.com/?c=45&a=8178
Buena Vista singer dies in Cuba
Buena Vista singer dies in Cuba
Thursday 23 March 2006 7:29 PM GMT
Pio Leyva and singer Teresita Garcia Caturla in 2004
Pio Leyva, a singer and composer in the Buena Vista Social Club band of veteran Cuban musicians, has died of a heart attack. He was 88.
Leyva, who won a bongo contest at the age of six and made his singing debut in 1932, had suffered a stroke on Sunday and died early on Thursday morning in hospital, his daughter Rosalia said.
The colourful improviser of traditional Cuban “son” music was the latest of the band’s stars to die.
Compay Segundo, a guitarist, and Ruben Gonzalez, a pianist, died in 2003, aged 95 and 84. Ibrahim Ferrer, a singer, died last year at the age of 78.
The careers of the largely forgotten musicians were suddenly relaunched when they recorded a jam session with Ry Cooder in 1996 that became the award-winning Buena Vista Social Club album.
The recording rekindled interest in traditional Cuban music. Buena Vista was the name of a social club for older people in Havana.
The story of the band’s late-life rise to international fame was told in the Oscar-nominated documentary of the same name by Wim Wenders, the German director.
Leyva, born in 1917 in Moron in central Cuba, had a deep, country voice and was well known by the 1950s for singing in the bands of Cuban greats Benny More and Bebo Valdez.
“Music was his life. He almost sang yesterday,” Rosalia said at his wake on Thursday.
Reuters
You can find this article at:http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/57D6B2B7-019A-44AD-9AC9-1348195CA235.htm
Honduras closes borders to Cuban migrants
Honduras closes borders to Cuban migrants
Friday, March 24, 2006
Honduras appears to be shutting off one of the few routes left open to Cuban migrants hoping to escape the repressive communist system of their island state, with the refusal to accept refugees that arrived on board a cruise ship this week.
The five male Cubans had been travelling on a small wooden boat and appeared to be in good health at the time they were picked up by the cruise liner, the Norwegian Jewel, which anchored in Grand Cayman on Wednesday afternoon, officials reported. Honduran officials would not allow the group to land, indicating that effective 1 March that country will no longer accept illegal Cuban migrants.
The majority of migrants reaching the Cayman Islands shores do so on their way to Honduras, which traditionally has granted Cuban migrants short-term visas. However, the Cubans generally make their way north to the US. Under the controversial wet foot/dry foot policy, most Cuban migrants picked up at sea are repatriated to Cuba, but those who make it to US territory can stay.
The Norwegian Jewel was the second cruise ship within a week to arrive at George Town harbour with Cuban refugees on board. According to a Government release, the ship arrived around 11:00 am Wednesday, 22 March with a small group of Cubans who had been rescued at sea on 20 March while the ship was en route to Honduras.
The Cubans were not allowed to disembark in the Cayman Islands and remained on board when the liner departed Grand Cayman for next scheduled ports of call – Ocho Rios, Jamaica, and Nassau, Bahamas — before returning to Miami. Cayman’s Immigration Department officials boarded the cruise ship as part of their regular clearance duties and confirmed that members of the group were all in good health.
As none met entry requirements, officials did not allow the Cubans to disembark. Immigration officers returned to the ship prior to its departure late Wednesday, 22 March, to ensure that all members of the group remained aboard. In the meantime, eleven Cuban migrants who had arrived previously were returned to Cuba that same day in accordance with Government policy.
The twenty-eight Cubans picked up by a Carnival cruise ship last week that were refused permission to land in Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Mexico and Texas, were to be handed over to the US Coast Guard Monday, and were expected to be repatriated.
Cruise ships and commercial shipping vessels must alert US authorities ninety-six hours in advance when they plan to arrive at a US port and provide a complete passenger list. Cuban migrants picked up by cruise ships are deemed “wet feet” and are generally not permitted to land unless they can show they qualify for asylum.
Meanwhile there was still no sign on Wednesday of the 28 Cuban asylum seekers who disappeared from the Civic Centre where they were being held in Breakers last Sunday. The Cuban escapees had permission to leave during the day but were expected to return in the evening.
The group of 28 included 27 (eleven females, nine males and seven children) who had arrived in Grand Cayman on 9 December, 2005. Also missing is a Cuban man, Juan Guerra, who arrived on 13 April, 2005, and subsequently spent almost a year incarcerated while he sought political asylum in the Cayman Islands. He was recently relocated to the centre from HMP Northward.
They are not the first Cuban migrants to disappear from Cayman custody. Washington Post correspondent Mary Jordan alleged in a July 2004 article that nine Cubans had bribed their way out of jail in the Cayman Islands and paid smugglers to take them to Honduras.
http://www.caymannetnews.com/cgi-script/csArticles/articles/000004/000445.htm
No sign of missing Cubans
No sign of missing Cubans
Thursday, March 23, 2006
A Cuban refugee vessel anchors off Cayman BracTuesday morning
As nine more Cuban migrants pass through the Cayman Islands’ waters Tuesday morning, authorities still appear to be scratching their heads over the disappearance of 28 Cuban asylum seekers Sunday. The Cuban escapees, who were being accommodated at the Breakers Civic Centre, had permission to leave during the day but were expected to return in the evening.
The missing Cubans include a group of 27 (eleven females, nine males and seven children) who had arrived in Grand Cayman on 9 December, 2005. Also missing is a Cuban man, Juan Guerra, who arrived on 13 April, 2005, and subsequently spent almost a year incarcerated while he sought political asylum in the Cayman Islands.
He was recently relocated to the centre from HMP Northward. They are not the first Cuban migrants to disappear from Cayman custody. Washington Post correspondent Mary Jordan alleged in a July 2004 article that nine Cubans had bribed their way out of jail in the Cayman Islands and paid smugglers to take them to Honduras.
From an interview in Honduras with Cuban migrant Luis Machado Hernandez, Ms Jordan told the story of his group’s journey from Cuba and the alleged bribery incident.
The Washington Post reported that, in the Cayman Islands, “They were caught, locked up and told they would be returned to Cuba. After a few days, their relatives from Spain and the United States arrived.
“One of the men was allowed to fly to Spain, and the American relatives paid bribes to get the eight others freed after 28 days in jail. They also paid $10,000 to a smuggler to carry the men the rest of the way to Honduras. “It was a miracle,” Mr Machado was quoted as saying.
“We had seconds’ notice that we were leaving. We just ran out of jail.” The article continued: “They set off in the smugglers’ 30-foot boat the first week of June. Before dawn on their fifth day at sea, Machado said, the smugglers suddenly announced that they were just off the Honduran coast and that the Cubans should jump.”
Mr Machado then told Ms Jordan that the smugglers said, “Go! Swim!” and sped off.
The nine Cubans that arrived Tuesday anchored off the north coast of Cayman Brac, at the end of Sandpiper Drive in Stake Bay Point. A customs vessel with immigration and customs officers arrived around 8:00 am to communicate with those on board.
According to a Government press release, the wooden craft departed Cayman waters in accordance with the occupants’ expressed wish to continue their journey.
Initially found drifting in their small boat, the group managed to repair the engine for their wooden craft, which according to reports appeared to be seaworthy.
A Customs boat monitored the vessel’s departure out of Cayman waters.
http://www.caymannetnews.com/cgi-script/csArticles/articles/000003/000398.htm
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