THURSDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1998

MANATEE Herald-Tribune
905 Sixth Avenue West
Bradenton, Florida 34205

Release Cubans, say 2 in Congress

The 3 men have been in the, INS Detention Center in Bradenton since August 1997.

By Karen L. Shaw
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MIAMI - Three Cuban refugees acquitted of hijacking a plane to the United States are being held illegally in Bradenton by the U S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and should be released immediately, two members of Congress said Wednesday.

An immigration judge ruled last week that the Cubans should be granted political asylum, but federal officials said they can detain the men while they decide whether to appeal the order.

"The continued detention of Adel Regalado Ulloa, Jose Roberto Bello-Puente and Leonardo Reyes Ramirez is totally unjustifiable. And it violates the rule of law itself," Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., said Wednesday.

Diaz-Balart, who along with Rep. Deana Ros-Lehtinen has written U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno about the men without response, said he would call for congressional hearings if they were not freed.

No one at the Justice Department was available for comment.

"I can guarantee you that they do not have to detain (them)," Diaz-Balart said. "It's totally unjustifiable, inexcusable''

The three men have been held at the INS Detention Center in Bradenton since August 1997.

It is not illegal to continue to detain them, according to AMY Otten, a spokeswoman for INS' eastern region.

The statement that it's illegal to hold people after asylum is granted may be true, but "the immigration judge's decision is not final until the appeals process is over,'' she said. "They technically haven't been granted asylum."

Judge Kevin McHugh ruled last Tuesday that the trio should not be deported because they have reason to fear retribution from the Cuban government.

The men distributed anti-Castro pamphlets as they fled the island in 1996 in a single-engine plane. Regalado also has told U.S. prosecutors that he can prove that the 1996 shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue planes by a Cuban military jet was premeditated murder. Four people, including three Americans, were killed.

The INS had 30 days from Tuesday to decide whether to appeal, and the agency likely will make a decision, Thursday morning, said spokeswoman, Kelly Spellman.

"The fact that they're entitled to appeal in no way supports their legal contention'' said Ralph Fernandez, a Tampa defense attorney and former prosecutor representing the men. "The law is written to protect the appellate rights of the (refugee)."

The case is mired in political intrigue, according to Fernandez, who believes there's an effort to stop the prosecution of Cuban President Fidel Castro and others who my have been behind the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown.

"A very powerful human being with a lot to lose ... either knew about it ahead of time or they're trying to cover up their mistake," Fernandez said.

Otten declined to say whether the decision to keep the men in jail was connected to the Brothers to the Rescue case.

Regalado, Bello-Puente and Reyes faced charges of air piracy after the plane they used to get to the United States ran out of fuel and crashed in the Gulf of Mexico, 30 miles west of Naples.

The pilot claimed he was forced at gunpoint to fly the men to the United States. A Tampa federal jury acquitted the men of hijacking last year, but the men remain in the INS facility in Bradenton.