Posted on 02/08/2003 12:37:02 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
KEY WEST - Four armed defectors from Cuba's border guard, clad in green camouflage and black boots, walked onto Key West's main drag after arriving undetected early Friday -- the same day that the U.S. attorney general put the nation on a heightened state of terrorist alert.
The men tied their 30-foot go-fast boat behind the Hyatt Key West Resort and Marina, stashing it within a short distance of the Coast Guard station, which failed to spot their 4 a.m. arrival.
Police found two AK-47s and eight magazines of ammunition inside the Cigarette speedboat.
The incident occurred six days after five Cuban fishermen in a large rickety boat landed on U.S. Naval property close to a cruise ship.
The controls of the boat that arrived Friday were in English. Federal authorities suspect Cuban authorities confiscated the craft from a botched smuggling mission and turned it into a state-operated patrol boat. A big metal canopy and blue police lights had been added to the vessel, which still flew a Cuban flag when authorities found it.
Friday's defectors, who are believed to have worked from a station in Bahia Honda on the island's northwest coast, told authorities the Cuban government obtained the boat in 1996.
Federal investigators lined up Friday to interview the men and to confirm their identities.
Four Cuban men claiming to be members of the Cuban Coast Guard bolted from Havana in their patrol boat and landed at the Hyatt Hotel boat dock in Key West about 4:30 a.m Friday. Key West Police Officer Matt Dorgan found the men walking up Simonton Street and discovered one of the men had a Chinese-made handgun strapped to his hip. Dorgan said the men were courteous and cooperative.
''We do believe they are military people. We think they are Cuban border guards, and we think that they did plan this outing,'' said Keith A. Roberts, a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman. ``This is something I haven't seen in my 11 years being here. It truly is an anamoly.''
Roberts said border officials were keeping the imported weapons ``locked away very safely in our inventory.''
The arrivals, who wore Cuban Ministry of the Interior patches on their shirts, made it about two blocks from where they landed -- down a wooden dock, past the hotel pool, past an outdoor Jacuzzi -- before flagging down a Key West police officer.
Soon after, one turned over a Chinese-made handgun.
'FRUSTRATED' MEN
The men told a Spanish-speaking officer that they were frustrated with life on the island and decided to embark on the trip, which, with the boat's twin 200-horsepower engines, took three hours.
''They stated that they were basically tired of the impoverished conditions and frustrated with not being able to own their own homes and their own cars and that type of thing and that's why they left,'' said Tara Koenig, a Key West police officer.
Then the men asked if they could call relatives in Miami.
The men, who said they were with Cuba's Tropas Guardafronteras -- Border Guard Troops, identified themselves as Yoadris Rodríguez Camajo, Egar Raúl Batista Gamboa, Ofil Lara Corria and Rodisan Sugura López.
By 10 a.m., they had been interviewed by the FBI, had glimpsed the interior of the Monroe County Detention Center, and were on their way to the U.S. Border Patrol's Pembroke Pines station for initial processing.
The Coast Guard, meanwhile, took control of the defectors' escape vessel.
''I really don't have any authority to say anything on [the landing] right now,'' said Tony Russell, the Coast Guard's Miami-based spokesman. ``This case is an ongoing law enforcement investigation.''
A U.S. State Department spokesman also declined to comment.
Juan Hernández-Acén, a spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C., said the landing again shows a need to revamp the U.S. law that allows Cubans who reach U.S. shores to stay.
''Let's see what happens with those Cuban citizens,'' Hernández-Acén said. ``Let's see what happens with that boat.''
The Cuban government considers the use of official property to flee the island as acts of piracy.
UNCERTAIN OUTCOME
In the past, it has demanded that both be returned. By late Friday, however, that was looking less likely, after a lawyer for Ana Margarita Martinez, the betrayed wife of a Cuban spy, said next week he may ask a judge to order that the boat be seized and sold to pay a $27 million judgment Martinez won against Havana.
Friday's landing was the second security breach in six days that the Coast Guard appears to have missed in the Keys.
On Feb. 1, five Cuban fishermen in a large government-owned boat motored right off a piece of U.S. Naval property in Key West in broad daylight.
The fishermen brought the stolen 40-foot boat between 150 and 200 yards of a cruiseship, jumped into a dinghy and rowed 20 feet to shore, according to a Key West police officer.
Not far from where the group reached shore is the Joint Interagency Task Force East -- a key nerve center for the drug war that houses more than 200 U.S. military officials, federal agents, and liaison officers from Latin America.
In another incident in November, five Cubans hiding aboard a disabled motorboat towed into the agency's Key West station, jumped out and touched land after officials failed to check a cabin inside before docking.
That dock was not far from a Naval building that is used to house visiting U.S. fighter pilots who train at a nearby Naval air station.
The incidents, said U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, reiterate what many already know.
''The net that we have around the country -- in this case Coast Guard patrolling -- is not 100 percent foolproof,'' he said. ``That's the lesson.''
Herald staff writers Phil Long, Nancy San Martin and Tim Johnson contributed to this report.
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