2 anti-Castro activists get jail terms

Posted on Wed, Nov. 15, 2006

WEAPONS CONSPIRACY CASE
2 anti-Castro activists get jail terms

Avoiding possible imprisonment for the rest of their lives, two Cuban
exiles were sentenced to between three and four years after pleading
guilty to a weapons conspiracy.
BY JAY WEAVER
jweaver@MiamiHerald.com

Two longtime anti-Castro activists convicted of plotting to possess
illegal weapons were sentenced to between three and four years in prison
Tuesday in Fort Lauderdale federal court.

Santiago Alvarez, a wealthy Miami developer who has supported Cuban
exile causes, must serve about four years in prison and pay a $10,000
fine. His colleague, Osvaldo Mitat, must serve three years, but does not
have to pay any fine.

Both men, who pleaded guilty in September on the eve of their
high-stakes trial, avoided the possibility of spending the rest of their
lives in prison.

Alvarez, 65, and Mitat, 64, had cut plea deals on one count each of
conspiring to possess illegal weapons. The other charges, including
possessing illegal weapons, were dropped. Those offenses, coupled with
the conspiracy count, carried a maximum of 20 years in prison.

U.S. District Judge James Cohn, who imposed the sentences, had rejected
bids by the pair's legal team to move the men's trial to Miami federal
court and also opposed an 11th-hour proposal to include Cuban Americans
from Miami-Dade County in the Broward County jury pool.

Cuban exile leaders, who view the two men as patriots in the long
struggle to topple Cuba leader Fidel Castro, criticized those decisions
and lamented the plea deals.

Both men, who have been in custody for one year, were accused of
conspiring to stash machine guns, firearms, a silencer and a grenade
launcher in a Broward apartment complex that belonged to Alvarez. Both
were ordered to forfeit those weapons as part of their sentencings.

U.S. government agents first learned about Alvarez in May 2005 when he
helped Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles emerge from hiding
before his arrest for entering the country illegally. Posada, who has
been implicated in various alleged terror attacks against Cuba, is still
in federal custody in Texas.

The government's star witness in the Alvarez-Mitat prosecution was going
to be an FBI informant identified as Gilberto Abascal.

He allegedly transported the weapons from the Broward apartment building
to Mitat in Miami -- tipping off agents from the FBI, Immigration and
Customs Enforcement and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives.

The defendants' lawyers claimed Abascal was a spy for the Cuban
government and the FBI.

At trial, they had planned to show that Abascal set up his former
friends, Alvarez and Mitat.

Federal prosecutors Jacqueline Arango and Randy Hummel had planned to
blunt attacks on their witness by proving to jurors that the two
defendants conspired to hide weapons in a storage facility at the
Lauderhill complex.

Although they never accused the men of planning to use those firearms in
an attack against the Cuban government, the prosecutors intended to
introduce evidence that showed Alvarez had financed a failed 2001
incursion against Castro, among other paramilitary activities.

The defendants' high-powered legal team -- Robert Josefsberg, Kendall
Coffey, Ben Kuehne, Arturo Hernandez and Peter Prieto -- was negotiating
the plea deal with prosecutors until just before trial.

That deal, however, had been on the table for months. It took the threat
of trial for both sides to reach an agreement.

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