Cuban President Fidel Castro speaks on TV, March 5, 2002. Castro commented on the scandal around the Mexican embassy in Havana, stormed last week by a group of 21 Cubans in a hijacked bus. The men were later expelled by authorities. REUTER
Posted on 03/02/2002 2:42:34 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
HAVANA (Reuters) - The fate of 21 young Cubans in custody after storming the Mexican Embassy with a hijacked bus earlier this week remained uncertain on Saturday, as a break-in at the U.S. mission jangled nerves on the island.
"I haven't heard anything about him. ... I'm afraid about what might happen," Marisol Ruiz, mother of one of the 21 detainees, Michel Iroy Rodriguez Ruiz, told Reuters at her home in the outskirts of Havana.
Cuban rights activists also said they were worried for the 21 men, who were peacefully expelled from the Mexican Embassy by special forces before dawn on Friday to end a 30-hour standoff. Most are thought to be in Havana's Villa Marista jail.
Cuba has not said what it plans to do with them, but they are expected to face public order charges. Sixteen of the 21 were on a bus that crashed through the perimeter gate of the embassy compound, sparking violence between police and a crowd drawn by rumors Mexico was offering exit visas.
The other five slipped in on foot. Four of the group of 21 are injured and thought to be at a military hospital.
In a separate incident on Saturday, a young man, apparently under the influence of alcohol, jumped over the wall of the U.S. Interests' Section, in what looked like another forced attempt to leave Cuba.
Following an interview with immigration officials, however, he left of his own volition, according to U.S. officials and witnesses. "During the interview, he asked to go home, and we facilitated his way to his residence," U.S. Interests' Section spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos told reporters.
INCITED BY WASHINGTON?
Elizardo Sanchez, who heads Cuba's Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, said he hoped the men evicted from the Mexican Embassy would be treated fairly and not face reprisals. "We are very concerned," he said.
The men's action threw international attention once again on the frustrated desire of many Cubans to leave the Caribbean island ruled by President Fidel Castro (news - web sites) since 1959.
Cuba's ruling Communist Party says they and others wanting to leave by illegal means are criminals incited by Washington and anti-Castro foes in the Cuban American community. But critics say they are simply fed up with harsh economic conditions, emigration restrictions and an authoritarian one-party political system.
A number of such break-ins on diplomatic premises have taken place in recent decades, although the Mexican Embassy bus crash was the most dramatic since the mid-1990s.
Ruiz said her son, with a criminal record for arms possession in 1994 and trying to enter the Spanish embassy in 1996, left for the Mexican Embassy on Wednesday night when he heard rumors it was opening to visa-seekers. She did not know if he was on the bus or was one of the five who entered on foot.
POLICE CHARGE INTO CROWD
"Since he was a boy, he's thought about leaving. He doesn't like living here. He tried to enter the Spanish Embassy; he took to the sea twice on a raft but they turned him back," she said. "When he has the chance, he'll keep trying to get out."
Sanchez, Cuba's best-known dissident, also expressed concern for those arrested during the melee after the break-in when baton-wielding police charged into a crowd, dragging men into waiting Ladas. Cuba has said there were 150 arrests, but rights groups say there were far more.
"By saying they were 150, they are hiding the magnitude of the affair," Sanchez said, expressing his hope all those arrested outside the embassy would be released in coming days.
Mexico, which requested the Cuban operation before daybreak on Friday to expel the 21 intruders, has called them criminals who did not request asylum on political grounds but merely wanted to leave the island for economic reasons. But it has urged Cuba to give them "humanitarian treatment.
"We've been finding out about the fate of these people. There are indications of a judicial, fair and correct treatment, and that's what Mexico expects," Mexican Ambassador Ricardo Pascoe, who witnessed the eviction as a guarantee against excess violence, told a news conference on Saturday.
Cuba said the crowds seeking to enter the Mexican Embassy on Wednesday were motivated by the U.S. government-funded, anti-Castro radio station Radio Marti, based in Florida.
It broadcast into Cuba remarks by Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda that its embassy was "open" to all Cubans, but both Havana and Mexico City said his words were distorted.
Although Cuba and Mexico were both satisfied by the outcome, some commentators and anti-Castro groups have complained that Mexico did not give them a proper asylum hearing and abandoned the 21 men to possible reprisals.
Cubans seized from Mexican Embassy (Was this Castro's payback for Fox meeting dissidents?)
I'm glad G.W. Bush told the president of Paraguay (?), after he asked Bush to "lighten up on Castro," that he (Bush) didn't deal with tyrants.
(Paraphrased except for the tyrants, and I'm not sure which S.A. pres. it was, but you get the idea.)
Mexico's hollow rhetoric: Cubans turned over to police state [Excerpt] For all the Mexican government's talk about human rights, it did little to protect the rights of the 21 Cubans who sought refuge in its Havana embassy. For all of Mexico's embrace of well-known Cuban dissidents, the Mexican government handed the voiceless young men to a police state famous for beating and torturing political prisoners.
Given Cuba's information monopoly, little can truly be known about who these men are. They may be ordinary Cubans who, like most, can't see a future in a corrupt, totalitarian system. Some may have ''criminal'' records, not unusual where speaking your mind is a crime. Yes, some even may be Cuban intelligence agents. [End Excerpt]
How about" Crime in Florida was the cause." LOL!
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