Cuban coast guard kills migrant smuggler suspect

Report: Cuban coast guard kills migrant smuggler suspect

HAVANA, Cuba (AP) -- The Cuban coast guard shot two suspected migrant
smugglers from the United States, killing one, when they and a third man
refused orders to halt their speed boat as it neared the island,
official media said Thursday.

The Communist Party daily Granma said the confrontation occurred
Wednesday morning near Cuba's southern coast in the western province of
Pinar del Rio.

The ranking Coast Guard officer ordered officers to open fire after the
three-man crew aboard the 40-foot (12-meter) boat failed to stop as
ordered and launched "violent sudden attacks" on a coast guard vessel,
damaging the craft and almost causing it to overturn, the newspaper said.

It said that two men aboard the U.S.-based boat were wounded by gunfire
and taken to a local hospital, where one died Wednesday afternoon, the
report said.

Cuban authorities said the identity of the dead man was not immediately
known because he did not have any documents and the other two men were
not cooperating.

The other two men carried U.S. passports identifying them as Rafael Mesa
Farinas and Rosendo Salgado Castro. It was unclear which of those two
was wounded, or how seriously.

The passports showed the men recently had visited the Mexican
southeastern state of Quintana Roo, where Cuban authorities believe they
had planned to take a boatload of illegal migrants.

Cuban authorities later temporarily took into custody 39 people they
believe had been scheduled to leave the island on the speedboat: 20 men,
12 women and seven children.

After giving statements to authorities, most were later sent home.
Several, however, remained in custody pending further questioning.

The speed boat, named the "Tiburon Azul," is registered to an American
man of Cuban origin named John Roberto and has traveled to Cuba numerous
times on migrant smuggling trips in the past, many of them through
Mexico, the report said.

"The events in the pre-dawn hours of yesterday in the waters south of
Pinar del Rio confirm the irresponsible, criminal and aggressive
character of United States policy toward Cuba, especially the deliberate
use of the issue of migration against the Revolution," Granma said in
the front-page report.

It went on to criticize as "cynical" the Cuban Adjustment Act, a 1966
law that grants U.S. residency to most Cubans one year after reaching
American soil. That privilege does not apply to apply to immigrants from
most other nations.

Under American policy, most would-be Cuban migrants the U.S. Coast Guard
picks up at sea are returned to the island, but most who reach American
soil are allowed to stay.

Mexico is among several routes migrant smugglers use to get Cuban
migrants into the United States, and Quintana Roo, home to the Caribbean
resorts of Cancun, Cozumel and Isla Mujeres, has become an increasingly
popular transshipment point.

From there, the migrants travel to the U.S. border with Mexico, where
they identify themselves as Cubans to American officials and are often
allowed to stay.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press.

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/04/06/cuba.smuggling.ap/