Published Tuesday, November 21, 2000, in the
Miami Herald
Father: Boy taken to Cuba
Feds investigate alleged kidnapping
By Luisa Yanez. lyanez@herald.com
A Key Largo woman and her boyfriend apparently have fled to Cuba with her
5-year-old boy, spurring a federal investigation into a case reminiscent of the
Elián González saga.
The boy's Homestead father, who has joint custody, reported the case to the
FBI in Miami, which has contacted the State Department to try to get the boy
back through diplomatic channels.
"She didn't say a word to me about taking Jonathon. Didn't leave me a
note. Nothing,'' said Jon Kenneth Colombini, 31, kitchen manager at Gusto's
Grill and Bar in Florida City.
As in the Elián case, Colombini said he had no hint that his ex-wife
was going to take his son away.
He said his ex-wife, Arletis Blanco, 28, and her boyfriend, Agustin Lemus,
37, both of Key Largo, headed for Cuba on a boat last week with his son
Jonathon, who attends kindergarten at Plantation Key Elementary. The couple, who
worked at MacKenzie Petroleum in the Keys, also also took along their
18-month-old daughter.
Colombini said his ex-wife and her family of four, including his son, jumped
on a 21-foot Mako pleasure boat headed for Cuba. Blanco and Lemus were both born
on the island.
After searching for days for his son, Colombini said he finally received a
call from his former brother-in-law, who gave him the first news about what had
become of his son.
"That's the first time I heard about Cuba,'' Colombini said. "He
told me relatives there called and said everyone was alive and well.''
Officials with the State Department said Blanco has legal problems in the
United States.
Now helping Colombini in his plight to get his son back are federal
officials from Miami to Washington to Cuba, where U.S. Interests Section
employees in Havana for a week have been tracking down the boy, a State
Department spokesman said Monday.
"We're trying to confirm the boy's whereabouts, and we think we have a
handle on where he might be,'' said the official, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity.
In Miami, the FBI has assigned an agent full-time to the case, spokeswoman
Judy Orihuela said. The FBI said it had tried to keep the case low-profile.
"The idea was to handle this with little fanfare in the hopes of
bringing about a quick resolution,'' she said Monday.
A spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section in Washington said Monday he was
unaware of the case.
"I have no information about what you're talking about,'' spokesman
Luis Fernandez said.
The boy's disappearance comes as the one-year anniversary of Elián's
arrival in South Florida approaches Saturday.
The custody fight for the boy between his father in Cuba and his relatives
in Miami lasted nearly seven months. Elián had left Cárdenas,
Cuba, with his mother and her boyfriend, who both died in the crossing. His
father, Juan Miguel González, said his ex-wife took the boy, then also 5,
without his permission.
Colombini said he's uncomfortable with the link between his son's case and
Elián.
"I don't like the comparisons to Elián, but I know everyone sees
the similarities,'' he said.
State Department officials said Jonathon is among the 900 children annually
who are illegally taken by parents to live in foreign countries and whose cases
are handled by the Office of Children's Issues.
But Colombini, who lives with his wife, Marcy, and son Austin in Homestead,
said State Department officials have told him his case is unique.
"They've never worked a case like mine,'' Colombini said. "Who
would take a child from the U.S. and go live in Cuba? That's why I want my son
back. I want what's best for him.''
Panama suspect has ties to Dade
Anti-Castro figure was indicted in '76 Milián case
By Glenn Garvin And Frances Robles. ggarvin@herald.com
PANAMA -- Panamanian authorities believe the mysterious fourth man arrested
last week as part of a supposed plot to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro is a
Miami resident named Gaspar Jiménez, a convicted anti-Castro terrorist
and a suspect in one of the most notorious, unsolved bombings in recent Miami
history.
Jiménez, 65, served time for an attempted kidnapping and murder of
Cuban diplomats in Mexico, and was indicted -- though the charges were later
dismissed -- for the 1976 bombing that destroyed the legs of Miami newsman
Emilio Milián. Miami Police sources say Jiménez worked as a driver
and security guard for Cuban American National Foundation board member, Alberto
Hernandez.
Jiménez's identity could not be independently confirmed, but
Panamanian sources said fingerprints from all four of the arrested men were
taken Monday and sent to Interpol, the international law-enforcement
organization.
Panamanian officials would not disclose what evidence they possess that the
man identified by a U.S. passport as "Manuel Díaz'' is actually Jiménez.
A woman who answered the phone at Jiménez's home on Monday said, "I
don't have anything to say to you people,'' and hung up.
The identification of Jiménez was just one of several developments
Monday as the case began to move for the first time since the men were arrested
Friday after Castro publicly accused them of plotting to murder him during the
weekend's Ibero-American Summit here:
Attorneys who were permitted to visit them in jail Monday were told by
police that the four will be charged today with illegal possession of
explosives. Police said the suspects are linked to 18 pounds of plastic
explosives found Sunday during a search of a cow pasture near a shanty town in
Tocumen, a blighted neighborhood near Panama City's international airport.
Several Panamanian officials dropped broad hints that Havana's attempts to
have one of the men -- veteran anti-Castro warrior Luis Posada Carriles --
extradited to Cuba, where he faces a death sentence, will be rejected.
"I'd just like to remind you that we've asked for people to be
extradited from Cuba, and nothing has ever happened,'' said Pablo Quintero, head
of Panamanian intelligence, during a brief encounter with reporters.
Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative who has tried to kill Castro on
several previous occasions, was sentenced to death in absentia more than two
decades ago on charges of the 1976 midair bombing of a Cubana airliner that
killed 73 people.
He was twice tried and acquitted of the same charges in Venezuela.
The other two men who were arrested, Miami residents Pedro Remón and
Guillermo Novo, share Posada Carriles' long history of anti-Castro violence.
They were both members of the defunct anti-Castro terrorist group Omega 7,
which broke up after a federal strike force managed to put most of its leaders
in prison in the mid-1980s.
Jiménez, too, has a track record of violent attacks on targets he
considered linked to Cuba. During the 1970s and 1980s, he was a member of a
group called Acción Cuba that a Justice Department report labeled part of
the "powerful core'' of Miami-based anti-Castro activism.
He was first catapulted into the spotlight in 1976, when he was arrested in
Mexico for the attempted kidnapping of Daniel Ferrer, the Cuban consul in Mérida,
Mexico. The consul's bodyguard was killed in the attempt. He served six years
and was released in 1983.
The most sensational accusation against Jiménez, however, was never
proven. In 1981, while still imprisoned in Mexico, Jiménez was secretly
indicted along with another anti-Castro exile for wiring dynamite to the
ignition of radio broadcaster Emilio Milián's automobile. Milián
-- who had continued broadcasting editorials condemning exile terrorism even
after receiving death threats -- lost both legs in the 1976 explosion.
But when prosecutors learned of credibility problems with their key
informant in the case -- who was never publicly identified -- they dropped the
indictment, and Jiménez never went to trial.
Milián was unavailable for comment Monday. His son Alberto, a former
Broward prosecutor who recently lost a bid to unseat Miami-Dade State Attorney
Katherine Fernández Rundle, said Jiménez's role in a Castro
assassination plot should be considered suspect, particularly if the source was
Castro.
"Fidel Castro is devoid of any credibility,'' Milián said. "He
has no moral authority to denounce the U.S. or anybody. It's absurd. If anyone
should be charged with terrorism, it's him.''
Miami Police sources say in recent years Jiménez was a sometime
driver and security guard at a medical clinic owned by Cuban American National
Foundation board member and former chairman Dr. Alberto Hernández.
Hernández, however, said he has never had a driver. Jiménez,
he said, worked for him years ago doing clerical work at a management company
Hernández once owned.
"This is something invented by Castro,'' Hernández said. "As
far as I'm concerned, he's a nice person, good family man with grandchildren.''
Florida farmers fear agricultural competition from Cuba
Posted at 6:44 p.m. EST Monday, November 20, 2000
TAMPA, Fla. -- (AP) -- Florida's farmers and agriculture experts are torn on
whether an end to the economic embargo of Cuba would harm or help the state's
agribusinesses.
Some, like Tony DiMare, one of the state's largest tomato growers, fear that
if Cuba is allowed to trade freely with the United States, competition from the
island nation would take too big a bite out of Florida's share of the market.
"Trading with Cuba would be the stake in the heart of winter vegetable
production in Florida,'' DiMare said.
But Bill Messina, an agriculture economist with the University of Florida,
sees Cuba as a place desperate for improvements in farming and where American
businesses can profit by helping.
"I would expect multinational companies to move in quickly when they
are allowed to,'' Messina said. "Of course, the question is when.''
DiMare forecasts a scenario similar to when the North American Free Trade
Agreement allowed cheap Mexican vegetables to harm Florida farmers.
After NAFTA, tomato revenues dropped 43 percent, according to the Florida
Tomato Committee. Tomato acreage in Florida decreased 20 percent.
Because of the increased competition, DiMare cut more than 25 percent of his
tomato acreage in Miami-Dade and Hillsborough counties. He expects that
competition from Cuba will result in similar cuts.
"The same problems will happen that happened with Mexico,'' DiMare
said.
However, some agriculturists say large U.S. businesses can invest in Cuba
and help upgrade the country's antiquated farming system.
The country hasn't kept up with improved technology in irrigation,
fertilizers or pest control during Fidel Castro's reign. As a result, Cuban
yields are often one-fifth of those in the United States.
The country can't even feed itself adequately, much less the eastern half of
the United States. Often, the shelves in Cuba's "ration stores'' are empty,
said Messina, who has traveled to Cuba several times to study agriculture.
To counter the farming inefficiency, Messina said, a handful of
multinational agribusinesses, such as Cargill and Monsanto, will eventually
provide Cuba with the technology and capital it lacks.
Already, an Israeli firm, Grupo BM, is helping the Cubans grow grapefruit
that they ship fresh to the European market, Messina said.
He said companies from Great Britain, Chile, Italy and Spain are also
wedging themselves into Cuban agriculture.
Cuba observers agree that many questions remain.
"It is extremely difficult to come to a bottom line on this,'' said
Doug Newman, an analyst with the International Trade Commission. "Is it a
threat or is it an opportunity? That's what needs to be figured out. And then on
top of that, when is it going to happen?''
Nobody knows when relations with the country will soften to a point where
open trade with the United States can take place. Presumably, it will be when
Castro dies, Newman said.
Bomb victim's father pleads for justice as Cuba seeks exile
Posted at 11:30 p.m. EST Monday, November 20, 2000
HAVANA -- (AP) -- The father of an Italian killed in a hotel bombing here on
Monday begged Panama's president not to free a Cuban exile who admitted he was
involved in that blast three years ago.
"I ask for justice,'' Justino di Celmo said live on state television,
asking President Mireya Moscoso to turn Luis Posada Carriles over to Cuban
authorities for adjudication.
Di Celmo, whose son Fabio was killed in the September 1997 bombing at the
Copacabana Hotel in Havana, called Posada Carriles "a man without a soul,
without love for anyone.''
Posada Cariles is the same man whom Fidel Castro last week accused of
plotting to assassinate him over the weekend.
Pressing its case against Posada Carriles, Cuba's communist government
declared that Panamanian security sources on Sunday afternoon seized 20
kilograms of plastic explosives from the home of a man it identified as Posada
Carriles' driver.
There was no independent confirmation from Panamanian authorities, however.
Also seized from the driver's home was a map of the University of Panama,
where Castro addressed hundreds of students over the weekend, according to a
government statement read on Cuban state television.
"That explosive was sufficient to kill hundreds of students,'' the
communique read in part.
Panamanian authorities, who earlier said that they had seized no weapons in
connection with the case, would neither confirm, nor deny Cuba's claim about the
explosives seizure.
"I don't know why they are saying that,'' Chief Carlos Bares of
Panama's National Police said. "When it is time, they will have all the
information.''
Posada Carriles has been held in Panama since his arrest Friday at a hotel
along with three other men. He reportedly was most recently living in El
Salvador and carried a Salvadoran passport under a false name.
A longtime opponent of Castro who left Cuba shortly after the 1959
revolution, Posada Carriles, 72, has long been accused by authorities here of
terrorist attacks against the communist government.
Posada Carriles and his companions were arrested after Castro declared
earlier in the day that they were plotting to assassinate him during Ibero
American Summit held over the weekend in Panama City.
Cuban authorities have long accused Posada Carriles of the Oct. 6, 1976
bombing of a Cubana jetliner off the coast of Barbados, which killed 73 people.
The New York Times reported in July 1998 that Posada Carriles had admitted
backing the attempts to bomb Cuban tourist facilities that resulted in the death
of the younger Di Celmo. Posada Carriles told the paper that the Cuban American
National Foundation helped finance those attacks. The foundation immediately
denied any involvement in the explosions.
Posada Carriles later said he had lied about the involvement of the
foundation but did not deny his own alleged role.
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