8 CUBAN DISSIDENTS FOUND, IN GOOD HEALTH

The Miami Herald - Saturday, December 20, 2003
Author: Herald Staff

Eight Cuban dissidents who left the island almost two weeks ago and were feared to have died at sea may actually have been aboard a U.S. Coast Guard cutter since last Saturday.

The Coast Guard said Friday that eight Cuban migrants were rescued from a raft by a good Samaritan 20 miles northeast of Islamorada on Dec. 12. The eight were turned over to the Coast Guard that afternoon and were flown Friday to the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The Coast Guard would not say if it was the same group that had left Alamar, Cuba, on Dec. 8. But a member of the Cuban Liberty Council, a Miami exile organization tracking the fate of the migrants, said she was told by a U.S. government agency that the rescued migrants were the dissidents.

``They were found on the 13th, and they are at Guantánamo as of today - Thank God,'' said Liberty Council member Mirta Iglesias. She declined to name the agency that gave her the news.

Despite intense media attention the Coast Guard did not reveal the rescue until Friday.

A Coast Guard spokesman Friday said U.S. policy forbid his agency from announcing the group had been found until the Coast Guard finished its role. ``They are considered law enforcement cases, and Coast Guard policy is we don't discuss the specifics of ongoing legal cases,'' spokesman Ryan Doss said.

The eight migrants were reported to be in good health.

MIAMI

FLIERS COULD HAVE

LED TO MISTRIAL

Someone dumped about 1,000 fliers about the money-laundering case against defense attorney J.C. Elso around downtown Miami on Friday, shortly before jurors returned to the federal courthouse to deliberate his fate.

U.S. marshals and security guards scrambled to pick up the fliers - left in gutters, transit stations and on windshields. They were concerned the jurors might see them, which could trigger a mistrial in the three-week case.

One poster simply read: ``J.C. Elso Guilty?'' Another with a similar message included recent Herald trial articles.

Once in the courtroom, none of the jurors told U.S. District Judge Patricia A. Seitz they read any of them.

On Monday, Seitz expressed concerns someone might be trying to tamper with the trial after she received an anonymous note Sunday at the Coconut Grove church where she serves as a lecturer. The contents remain under seal.

Two days later, someone sprinkled a grayish powder in prosecutors' evidence files, the backs of chairs where federal agents had been sitting and on benches and sofas in the hallway outside the courtroom.

Santeria experts say the dust is used to bring a positive result for a defendant, even though Elso is Catholic.

MIAMI-DADE

2 MORE TORTURE

SUSPECTS ARRESTED

Two more Haitian torture suspects have been arrested in South Florida by immigration agents this week, bringing to at least 30 the number of alleged Haitian human rights violators detained or deported since 2000.

Officials of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said Friday that Wisly Isma and Jultaire Laguerre were detained and locked up at the Krome detention center in west Miami-Dade awaiting deportation.

Nina Pruneda, an ICE spokeswoman in Miami, confirmed the latest arrests but only had details about Isma.

In a statement, she said agents arrested Isma on Monday and took him to Krome after the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed his appeal against deportation.

The second Haitian suspect detained is Jultaire Laguerre, a former Haitian army sergeant.

He was arrested Thursday.

GROUP TO TRACK

CORRUPT FOREIGNERS

A federal task force has been established in Miami-Dade County to track down corrupt former and current foreign officials and business executives living in South Florida or who may have assets here.

The group, known officially as the foreign corruption/financial task force, began operating several months ago as a pilot program of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau that may later become national.

The task force is roughly modeled after another program, also started in Miami and later expanded nationwide, that targets foreign torture suspects living in the United States. This week, the bureau said that agents of the recently reated Human Rights Violators Unit are pursuing more than 200 cases against suspected foreign torture suspects living in the United States.

Human rights and corruption are among the two most enduring problems in the region, and experts said the U.S. effort to target both marks a strategic shift in attitude.

``For decades we overlooked these problems in Latin America because we were mainly interested in advancing our own interests,'' said Michael Bander , an immigration attorney who in the 1970s served as an American diplomat in South America.

The anticorruption task force has already acted on its first suspect: Byron Jerez, former head of the Nicaraguan tax office. His $3.5 million Key Biscayne condo and more than $150,000 in cash were seized this month under a federal court order.

In June, Jeréz was sentenced to eight years in Nicaragua for stealing $500,000 in government funds to finance Miami companies, but this month a judge cleared him of separate money-laundering charges.

SCHOOL BOARD OK'S

BUILDING REFORMS

The Miami-Dade County School Board approved a diluted set of construction reforms Friday that appears unlikely to prompt a state-appointed oversight board to release more than $100 million in school construction money.

Despite unanimous approval, several board members said they doubted the vote would lead to a compromise with the seven-member oversight board. Instead, they viewed Friday's emergency vote as a political move that would force oversight members to again publicly refuse to release the money when they meet Jan 8.