Posted on 04/09/2004 3:59:49 PM PDT by MegaSilver
HAVANA - One year after a firing squad executed her son and two other ferryboat hijackers, Ramona Copello says there is nothing left for her in Cuba.
Her 31-year-old son, Lorenzo Enrique Copello, was among a group of armed men who seized a ferry full of passengers on April 2, 2003, and tried to force it to sail to the United States.
"I keep asking myself why they executed him," Copello told The Associated Press Thursday night. "I want to leave this country."
But she wants to exit legally, as a political refugee to the United States. Her paperwork was submitted months ago and now she awaits final word from American officials.
Her sone seized the ferry during a series of attempted and successful hijackings of planes and boats that raised fears on both sides of the Florida straits of a brewing migration crisis.
Coming just as Fidel Castro's government was handing down prison sentences to 75 activists on charges of being U.S. mercenaries, the April 11, 2003, firing squad executions were roundly condemned around the world.
Although the hijackers were armed, and some had threatened to harm passengers, none of the estimated 50 people aboard the ferry was hurt.
The executions were the first on the island in several years.
Although there have been several isolated hijacking attempts since then, the executions that shocked the world stopped a frenzied string of hijackings that alarmed communist officials.
Cuban authorities justified the executions as a painful measure necessary to prevent a mass exodus and possible retaliation by the United States.
"The government panicked," dissident Manuel Cuesta Morua said recently of the decision to send the men to the firing squad.
The head of Cuba's Moderate Opposition Reflection Group, Cuesta Morua is now overseeing a signature gathering effort to eliminate capital punishment on the island.
Two weeks after the executions, Castro said U.S. officials and exile leaders were hoping for a mass exodus "that could serve as a pretext for military aggression against Cuba."
The last such exodus was in 1994, when Castro told Cubans they were free to go and more than 30,000 took to the sea in rickety boats and rafts.
"The sentences imposed by the tribunals and upheld by the Council of State had to be applied without wavering to the hijackers of the ferry," Castro said in April 2003 speech.
All other would-be hijackers "should know that they will undergo extremely quick trials in the appropriate courts," Castro said then.
Yep, they were 'condemned', all right, for a couple minutes. Then leftists around the world went back to praising Castro's enlightened rule... oh, of course, while condemning the US for being so barbaric as to allow capital punishment.
Castro needs to talk with Vicente Fox to learn how a mass exodus of a country's citizens is somehow great for that country.
The greatest debtor nation in the world is going deeper in the hole everyday thanks to an oligarchical Congress pandering to criminal trespassers. who can't get their hand out of our pockets - thanks to collusion between the three branches of government to eliminate our American heritage.
It's really unfortunate, especially since she's clearly one of those WANTS to leave her country behind and is pursuing legal entry into the United States.
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