POLITICS-CUBA: Final Card Played in Elian Case

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Mar 3 2000 (IPS) - The Cuban government played what may be its definitive card in the case of the shipwrecked boy, Elián González, as Cuban diplomat José Imperatori returned to the island, accused by the US government of espionage.

The hand was dealt by Imperatori, who served as vice-consul at the Cuban Interests Section in Washington before US authorities sent him to Canada last Saturday after he renounced his diplomatic immunity.

In a message to the Canadian people, the diplomat charged that Lázaro González, Elián’s great-grandfather, is a pedophile. US authorities granted González temporary custody of the six-year-old boy who was rescued as he clung to an inner-tube off the US coast last November 25.

According to Imperatori, US journalists have uncovered and proven events that were not yet published about González’s conduct “when he was a physical education instructor at a school for boys” in Cuba.

González “sexually abused” his students, which makes him unqualified – “absolutely and totally – for custody of a boy in any civilised country on the planet,” affirmed the Cuban diplomat, but he did not say whether the boy’s great-uncle had ever been charged for the crime.

Representatives in Havana for a Canadian television station told IPS “they were on the trail” of information on the great-uncle, but had run up against disagreements within the González family in Cuba that prevented the story from being released.

Cuba’s president Fidel Castro told the press Thursday that with these new revelations, any procedure that attempts to keep the boy in the United States “will collapse,” because it is “indefensible for (the family in Miami) to maintain custody.”

In the United States, Imperatori had been caught up in a case against Mariano Faget, a former officer with the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) accused of spying for Cuba.

After being declared “persona non grata,” Imperatori gave up his diplomatic immunity and began a hunger strike to defend his word. He did not resume eating until shortly before his return to Cuba Thursday afternoon.

Havana insists that behind the charges of espionage against Faget that led to Imperatori’s expulsion lies an attempt to discredit the INS and “prevent, at all costs, the boy’s return” to his father, Juan Miguel González.

In early January, the INS recognised Elián’s father’s parental rights, and as such, his right to have the boy returned to live with him in Cuba.

But the boy’s great-uncle, with the backing of the powerful National Cuban American Foundation – an organisation of exiles – and national legislators of Cuban origin, was able to win postponement of Elián’s return.

With these new charges, however, Cuba is appealing to US public opinion, which the latest surveys by the Gallup polling firm show to run 67 percent in favour of giving the boy back to his father.

The US press had earlier revealed that Elian’s great-uncle had been arrested and tried in the United States for causing traffic accidents as a result of driving while intoxicated.

The New Herald newspaper in Miami did not include any mention of these new accusations against Lázaro González in its Friday edition, and limited itself to denying that Imperatori’s return to Cuba was the result of an agreement with the United States, as the Cuban government had asserted Thursday.

Imperatori’s return satisfies his “dignity and honour” and, at the same time, preserves “the greatest possibility” for a return to the United States in order to take part in the trial for espionage.

To this end, US State Department spokesman James Rubin said this week that if legal officials subpoena Imperatori “for a trial or other legal proceeding, and he decides to come, he can do so.”

Imperatori’s message in Canada about Lázaro González’s alleged past crimes occurred one week before the US federal court is set to rule on whether it has jurisdiction in the case filed by the great-uncle’s lawyers against the INS.

The hearing, originally scheduled to begin March 6 but postponed until the ninth, marks the current phase of the shipwrecked boy’s case.

The charges against the INS state that the US government did not respect Elián’s constitutional rights when it rejected two requests for political asylum filed on his behalf.