Report Slain Smuggler Was a Migrant Too

Report: Slain Smuggler Was a Migrant Too
By ANITA SNOW
Associated Press Writer

7:46 PM PDT, April 7, 2006

HAVANA — The suspected migrant smuggler Cuban authorities fatally shot
this week left the island as a migrant himself three weeks ago but
returned as a crew member on the same boat to repay a debt, state
television said Friday.

Although the two surviving suspected smugglers had not been cooperative
since their arrest Wednesday morning, authorities confirmed the dead man
was named Jeovel Gonzalez Morera, who left the island on March 14, Cuban
television reported.

According to state media, the confrontation occurred before dawn
Wednesday near Cuba's southern coast in the western province of Pinar
del Rio after coast guard officers ordered the three-men crew on a
40-foot speed boat to halt.

The official in charge ordered troops to shoot after the boat ignored
the order and instead launched "violent sudden attacks" on a coast guard
vessel, damaging the craft and almost causing it to overturn, the
Communist Party daily Granma said Thursday.

The other two men, both of them U.S. citizens, were wounded in the
confrontation, participants in the government's "Mesa Redonda"
television program said Friday. Earlier, Granma had said only one of the
two surviving men had been hurt.

Those two were earlier identified by the Cuban government as Rafael Mesa
Farinas and Rosendo Salgado Castro, and their identities were later
confirmed by American officials.

"Mesa Redonda" participants said Mesa Farinas had told Cuban officials
that he could not cooperate with them because he feared for his wife and
child who he helped get out of Cuba in late 2005 and are currently being
held by smugglers in Mexico.

Like Gonzalez, Mesa Farinas had traveled to Cuba on the smuggling trip
this week to pay a debt, and had hoped to get his wife and child
released, Taladrid said.

U.S. officials have requested consular access to the two surviving men,
but by midday Friday access had still not been granted, U.S. State
Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington.

The shooting death of a suspected migrant smuggler by Cuban authorities
was unusual. Most violence during migration attempts has occurred in
confrontations between Cuban authorities and would-be migrants who
hijacked boats or planes.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-cuba-us-smugglers-shot,1,424784.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines&ctrack=1&cset=true