Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 10, 1995 TAG: 9505100075
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cox News Service
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The Cubans, all men, were picked up near Little Cayman island last Thursday by a cruise liner, then later transferred to a U.S. Coast Guard vessel.
On Tuesday, they were taken aboard the U.S. Coast Guard cutter ``Durable'' to a Cuban naval station at Bahia de Cabanas, 35 miles west of Havana. There, they were met by U.S. diplomats before being turned over to Cuban authorities.
The government of Cuban President Fidel Castro has assured the Clinton administration that returnees would suffer ``no adverse consequences or reprisals of any kind,'' a State Department official said.
The migrants are eligible to apply for legal entry into the United States, and have been counseled in how they might proceed, the official said, though others fear the migrants could face persecution back home.
``They will be mistreated, persecuted and imprisoned,'' Miriam E. Malpica, mother of two of the rafters, wrote in an impassioned letter asking the White House to allow the migrants to enter the United States. The letter was publicized Tuesday by the Cuban American National Foundation, a highly influential anti-Castro lobby based in Miami.
The move also sparked protests in Miami and Washington, with anti-Castro groups decrying repatriation as a betrayal.
Dressed in T-shirts and patterned shorts, the 13 former rafters looked fit and tanned after their journey, the Reuters news agency reported from Cuba.
``It went very well,'' said Catherine Moses, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Interests Section, the American diplomatic post in Havana. ``They are all going home tonight.''
A Cuban official waiting at the dock, Communist Party ideology department head Rolando Alfonso, told Reuters that the group would be taken to a processing center in Havana for a medical check-up.
by CNB