By BIRUSK TUGAN ftugan@tampatrib.com.
Tampa Bay Online. Published: Aug 7, 2001
TAMPA - By accepting a deportation order to Cuba, the admitted killer of
former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier and an American in a 1976
car-bomb attack in Washington could be freed from federal custody within a
month.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service is deciding whether to release
Cuban exile Jose Dionisio Suarez Esquive, 62, from its Bradenton detention
center until it's possible to deport him.
He has been detained since November 1997, when he completed an eight-year
prison sentence after pleading guilty to conspiracy to murder foreign officials.
Before his arrest in St. Petersburg in 1990, Suarez had permanent residency
status. Convicted legal aliens are subject to deportation.
An immigration judge in Bradenton Thursday granted Suarez's move to drop his
appeal of a 1997 deportation order.
That allows him to take advantage of a Supreme Court ruling last month that
said detainees can't be held for more than six months if they are not appealing
deportation. That ruling came in the case of Suarez's accomplice, Virgilio Paz
Romero, who has been set free while awaiting deportation.
Suarez and Romero can't be sent to Cuba, said an INS spokesman in Miami,
because the United States has no diplomatic relations with Cuba.
Spokesman Rodney Germain said the INS has 30 days to comply with or appeal
the ruling. But Suarez's attorney Ralph Fernandez said the agency has already
decided not to appeal. | 
