By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, May 12 2000 (IPS)

The first hearing by the 11th US District Court of Appeals in the case of the shipwrecked Cuban boy, Elián González, came to a close Thursday without a word of commentary from the Cuban government, even though president Fidel Castro has been immersed for more than five months in a campaign for the boy’s repatriation.

Basing its comments on opinions by “US experts,” the midday news show on Cuban state-run television said Thursday that the US federal court in Atlanta, capital of the southern state of Georgia, could take up to three weeks before handing down a ruling. Television commentators stressed that it is difficult to predict the outcome.

In response to a petition presented by the six-year-old’s relatives living in Miami, appellate court judges James Edmonson, Joel Dubina and Charles Wilson are to rule whether the boy, who survived a shipwreck of a boat carrying undocumented Cubans to Florida, has the right to a political asylum hearing.

During the 90-minute appeals hearing, the court heard arguments from Gregory Craig, attorney for Elian’s father Juan Miguel González, from Edwin Kneedler, of the US Justice Department, and from attorney Kendall Coffey, representing the González relatives from Miami.

Cuba’s official press maintained that “anything could be expected from these judges” and that one could only hope that “common sense and truth reign over the case” that has transformed from a family custody dispute into an ideological battle between the Castro government and its adversaries in exile in Miami.

These government sources underscored that Edmonson and Dubina have been characterised in the United States as “individuals with conservative ideas” and that both were named to their posts by president Ronald Reagan (1980-1988), who maintained hard-line policies against Cuba.

Judge Wilson, an African-American, was designated by president Bill Clinton, but he is known for taking “unexpected” positions in the cases on which he rules, said one Cuban commentator.

Based on Thursday’s hearing, which was originally scheduled to last just 40 minutes, the judges are to decide whether or not Elián, six, is too young to request political asylum in the United States.

Lázaro González, the boy’s great-uncle who had custody of the child from November 22 to January 22, presented a asylum request before the Atlanta court that was written in English and signed by Elián, though the boy does not know how to read or write even in Spanish, his native language.

Elián is too young to make his own decision, and this is a family issue, though the family “risks falling apart,” commented attorney Craig at the conclusion of the hearing, which took place under heavy security as anti-Castro Cuban-Americans protested outside the courthouse.

Lázaro González’s attorneys, meanwhile, based their arguments on claims that the boy risks political persecution if he is returned to Cuba, his native country from which he was secretly taken by his mother, Elizabeth Brotons.

According to migration law experts, current legislation does not establish that a person who is offered political asylum must accept it.

In this sense, the legal experts say there is nothing, except perhaps an order by the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS), that could ultimately prevent the father from taking his son back to Cuba.

On the eve of the hearing in Atlanta, Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Cuban National Assembly, stated in Havana that it would be “inconceivable” and unprecedented in US legal history for authorities to “snatch” a son from his father.

“I do not believe that such a thing could happen,” said Alarcón, who, however, admitted he was unsure “about what could be decided at any moment of this long legal battle, including some additional appeal.”

Elián is currently living with his father, stepmother and infant half-brother at a home in the outskirts of Washington DC as he waits for the legal proceedings to unfold.

Last month, federal police agents removed him by force from the home of his great-uncle, Lázaro González, in Miami, and handed him over to the custody of his father.

The boy is barred from leaving the United States until the conclusion of the appeals process, which was initiated by his great-uncle in an attempt to reverse the March 21 ruling by federal judge Michael Moore, who rejected the political asylum petition filed on Elián’s behalf, asserting that only the surviving parent has the right to speak for his child.

Elián was rescued last November 25 from the Florida Straits and turned over to his great-uncle Lázaro after surviving a shipwreck that claimed the lives of his mother and 10 other undocumented Cubans.

Last January 5, the INS also ruled in favour of the boy’s father, who, from his home in Cuba, had claimed custody of the boy. The INS had set January 14 as the deadline for Elián’s repatriation, but the Miami relatives were able to prevent his return through a series of legal manoeuvres.

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