Pablo Ibarra/Newsmakers
CUBANS DEMONSTRATE in front of the U.S. Interests Section building in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday to demand the return of 6-year-old Elian 6onzalez from
Miami tjo Cuba.
Cuban boy’s return sparks protests
Decision pending on INS verification of father's relationship to child
HAVANA (AP) - Tens of thou
sands of Cubans marched along
Havana’s main coastal highway
Thursday, thrusting their fists in the air
and demanding the return of a 6-year
oid boy who was rescued off the
, FJorida'coast two weeks ago.^
-- Calling the government-organized
demonstration the “March of the
Combatant Nation,” the communist
daily Granma promised a turnout of at
least 300,000.
The chief of the U.S. mission in
Cuba, meanwhile, said she was await
ing a response from Cuban officials to
a request by U.S. immigration officials
for an interview with Elian Gonzalez’s
father, \yho wants the child returned to
the communist island.
“They said they would not have an
answer for us until this evening,” said
Vicki Huddleston, head of the U.S.
Interests Section, the American diplo
matic mission, in Havana.
“The ball is in their court,” she said.
“We are on standby.”
U.S. officials say the letter from
American immigration authorities was
delivered to the Cuban Foreign
Ministry on Wednesday night follow
ing a mass demonstration outside the
American mission.
The one-page letter indicated the
Immigration and Naturalization
Service wanted to interview Juan
Miguel Gonzalez, the boy’s father, at
the U.S. mission in Havana to deter
mine “whether he has an ability to
“prove that in fact he is the father of the
child” and other basic facts, Deputy
Attorney General Eric Holder told a
news conference in Washington.
Holder said INS officials would
make the final decision on whether to
return the child to Cuba.
A U.S. consular officer in Cuba
would deliver the letter by hand to
Gonzalez on Thursday, Justice
Department spokeswoman Carol
Florman said.
Telephone calls placed Thursday to
the Gonzalez home in the city of
Cardenas, about a two-hour drive east
of Havana, rang busy.
The letter asked the father to bring
along any birth, baptismal, medical or
school records, family photographs or
testimony of neighbors to establish his
parenthood and any divorce or other
records to establish his claim to exer
cise parental rights, Florman said.
During Wednesday night’s demon
«
It will not stop until the boy, Elian, is
returned to Cuba.”
Fidel Castro '•
Cuban president
stration outside the U.S. mission,
President Fidel Castro told a crowd of
tens of thousands that the boy’s father,
Juan Miguel Gonzalez, had said he
would not talk to American officials
unless they can tell him when the child
will be brought home.
The Cuban government is calling
for nationwide protests demanding the
boy’s return.
“It will not stop until the boy, Elian,
is returned to Cuba,” Castro promised
in a statement read at the demonstra
tion.
The boy was rescued off the Florida
coast Nov. 25 and turned over to rela
tives in Miami. Elian’s mother and
stepfather died in the illegal attempt to
flee to the United States.
Elian’s father has insisted on the
boy’s return to Cuba, but the child’s
great-aunt and great-uncle say they can
provide him with a better life in
Florida.
On Wednesday, American officials
recognized that Elian’s father can assert
his claim to take his son back to Cuba.
In another partial victory for
Cuba’s communist government, U.S.
officials on Thursday returned a group
of suspected boat hijackers to the
island.
The six suspected hijackers - five
men and a woman who appeared to be
in their teens and early 20s - were
turned over to Cuban authorities.
The hijacking and the custody dis
pute have cast a shadow over U.S.
Cuban migration talks scheduled
Monday in Havana, but American and
Cuban officials said the meeting
should go ahead as planned.
Criminal charges not expected in King case
■ Despite this tact, the
King family still satisfied
with jury’s verdict that the
murder was a conspiracy.
WASHINGTON (AP) - A 16
month federal investigation is not
likely to produce criminal charges in
the assassination of the Rev. Martin
Luther King Jr., even though a civil
jury concluded his 1968 murder was
the work of a conspiracy, a top Justice
Department official said Thursday.
Word of the Justice Department’s
conclusion did not dim die King fam
ily’s satisfaction with verdict. They
have doubted for years that the civil
rights leader was killed by a lone gun
man. James Earl Ray4 who pleaded
guilty and later tried to recant, is the
only person ever punished for the
grime. — " -— —. -
“We don’t care what the Justice
Department does/’ King’s son Dexter
told reporters in Adanta on Thursday.
Because of information that came out
in the civil trial in Memphis, “we
believe that this case is over. ... We
know what happened. This is the peri
od at the end of the sentence.”
Earlier in the day, Deputy
Attorney General Eric Holder had
told reporters at the Justice
Department: “I would not expect that
there would be any criminal prosecu
tion out of our report.”
The field investigation by the
department’s civil rights division is
almost complete, and its report could
be released within weeks, Holder
said.
Although the Justice Department
conducted a criminal investigation,
statutes of limitation would bar prose
cution of nearly all 30-year-old
crimes, with die possible exception of
an ongoing conspiracy. Holder did not
say whether Justice Department
investigators found no conspiracy, no
crimes previously unknown or only
crimes that could no longer be prose
cuted. • 1
Attorney General Janet Reno,
who ordered the investigation in
August 1998, told reporters in
Detroit, “we will pursue any lead that
came out” in the civil trial, but any
such pursuit is likely near completion.
Holder said the department moni
tored the civil trial as it went on
because both the department and the
trial focused on allegations of retired
Memphis businessman Loyd Jowers.
A good deal of testimony in the
state civil trial could not be used in a
federal criminal case because it was
hearsay, according to a Justice
Department official who requested
anonymity.
Because the Justice Department
inquiry was limited to examining
Jowers’ charges and another conspira
cy allegation that emerged in recent
years, Holder doubted the report
would end speculation about the
assassination.
“The verdict yesterday ... will
renew interest in the Ring assassina
tion, and I suspect plant in the minds
of many people doubts about some of
those conclusions that were reached
earlier,” Holder said.
But the King family indicated the
civil verdict would end their pursuit of
further investigations.
“We are prepared now to move on
with our lives and hope that other peo
ple will join us in this process so that
the nation can move on with the heal
ing that is so necessary,” King’s
widow, Coretta Scott King, told CNN
on Thursday.
The Kings had Sued Jowers, who
claimed six years ago that he paid
someone other than confessed killer,
James Earl Ray to kill King.
The trial was the first time a jury
heard conspiracy theories of the
assassination at a Memphis motel.
Ray pleaded guilty to the murder in
1969, so he did not go to trial.
Ray tried unsuccessfully for 30
years to take back the guilty plea, but
it was upheld eight times by state and
federal courts. He died in prison of
liver disease last year.
Catalogue
estimates
10,000
Serbs died
WASHINGTON (AP) - The
State Department released a cata
logue of killing, looting and rape
in the agency’s effort to document
Serb human rights abuses in
Kosovo.
The full extent of atrocities
may never be known, the report
said.
“As important as what we have
learned is what we still do not
know,” said Assistant Secretary of
State Harold Koh.
“Five months after the U.N.
and NATO arrived in Kosovo,
we’re still piecing together what is
undeniably a widespread and sys
tematic attempt to cleanse Kosovo
of much of its Kosovar-Albanian
population.”
From March through June, an
estimated 10,000 Albanians were
killed, 1.5 million expelled from
their homes, tens of thousands of
homes in 1,200 cities damaged or
destroyed and summary execu
tions held at 500 sites across
Kosovo, according to the report
condemning Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic.
“This report is only a snapshot
of the Milosevic regime’s brutal,
premeditated and systematic cam
paign,” said the report, called
“Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo: An
Accounting.”
In a May report, the depart
ment had said at least 6,000
Kosovar Albanians were victims
of mass murder.
An unknown number died in
individual killings and an
unknown number of bodies were
burned or destroyed by Serbian
forces throughout the conflict.
Thursday’s follow-up report
said it drew new information from
accounts by refugees, the press
and relief and other agencies
working in Kosovo at the time, as
well as declassified information
from government and internation
al organizations!
“The evidence is also now
clear that Serbian forces conduct
ed a systematic campaign to bum
or destroy bodies, or to bury the
bodies, then rebury them to con
ceal evidence of Serbian crimes,”
the report said.
“The number of victims
whose bodies have been burned or
destroyed may never be known,”
the report said.
“But enough evidence has
emerged to conclude that proba
bly around 10,000 Kosovar
Albanians were killed by Serbian
forces.”
Others internationally have
offered the same estimate, but the
new 100-page report provides in
catalogue-style the locations and
details <ff500 towns where atroci
ties occurred.
The bulk of the report dealt
with killings, but it also included
information on 10 other human
rights abuses - forced expulsion,
burning, looting, detentions, use
of people as human shields, sum
mary executions, the digging up
of mass graves, systematic rape,
attacks on medical patients and
clinics and what officials called
the new category of identity
cleansing.
Many Kosovar Albanians were
stripped of their passports, car
license plates, land titles and other
documents.
Officials said the report is part
of an international effort to pro
vide a comprehensive look at
atrocities in Kosovo before NATO
troops arrived, provide some
answers for families ofpeople still
missing and lay groundwork for .
trials of the perpetrators.
