Brazil seeks Cuban musicians thought to want asylum

Brazil seeks Cuban musicians thought to want asylum
Fri Dec 14, 9:26 AM

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazilian police are looking for three Cuban
musicians who disappeared this week and are believed to want asylum, a
police spokesman said on Friday.

The incident follows other cases in which Cubans abandoned their
official delegations in Brazil. In one case, two Cuban boxers were
returned to the communist-run island.

Three members of the group "Los Galanes" (Ladies' Men) failed to join
other members of the band on Wednesday who returned to Cuba after
performances in the northeastern state of Pernambuco. Police do not know
their whereabouts.

"We are working with the possibility that they want political asylum
here in Brazil. They (apparently) said that to several people," a
spokesman for the Federal police in Recife, the capital of Pernambuco,
said by telephone.

"We were told yesterday (Thursday) that they did not return to Cuba," he
said.

Police believe that singer Miguel Angel Costafreda and guitarists Juan
Alcides Diaz and Arodis Verdecia Pompa have valid visas to stay in
Brazil. If they are found with their visas expired, they will be given
eight days to leave the country, the police spokesman said.

"Los Galanes" came to Brazil under the auspices of an official Cuban
institute for cultural exchange.

The government's swift deportation in August of two internationally
known Cuban boxers caused concern among human rights groups and led
Congress to launch an investigation.

However in September, the government granted asylum to two other Cuban
athletes who had also abandoned their team during the Pan American Games
in Rio de Janeiro in July.

(Reporting by Pedro Fonseca, translated by Raymond Colitt; editing by
Andrei Khalip and Eric Beech)

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/071214/world/international_brazil_cuba_musicians_dc_1