U.S. returns hijackers, guards to Cuba after promise of no executions

GeorgieBoy's gusano friends in Miami are not happy :evilgrin:

<clips>

...Havana hailed Monday's action. "I think it's something positive," said Miguel Alvarez, adviser to Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban National Assembly. "It puts out a message which varies from everything that had been done before."

But the decision was not well-received in South Florida, where Cuban-Americans frown upon negotiations with Castro's Cuba and typically support granting Cuban immigrants asylum in the United States. Many say Cuban government officials cannot be trusted to honor their promises, noting three Cuban hijackers were quickly tried and executed last April.

"This action makes the U.S. complicit in the fate of the returned refugees," Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, said in a statement. "This act of infamy in coordination with the Cuban tyranny is a condemnable monstrosity." Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart, the other two Cuban-American Republicans from Miami, also condemned the return.

Six-day odyssey

Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, blamed the return on the Bush administration and on Ros-Lehtinen and the Diaz-Balarts, whom he faulted for not having more influence with the White House.

<http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sfl-acuba22jul22,0,4527845.story?coll=sfla-news-cuba>