PR Independence Fighter's Asylum in Cuba Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit PR Independence Fighter's Asylum in Cuba [Vanessa Bauza is a nasty piece of work, never failing to cover Cuba in terms of consumer goods shortages, the underground economy, people who whine and complain to any foreign journalist, anything negative she find to say about the island. Here she's taken up the theme of "Cuba as a refuge for terrorists [sic]" line of the NJ Cops and the Gusano Mafia. In Bausa's world, independentistas are "militant Puerto Rican separatists." She puts "liberation" for Puerto Rico in quotation marks. Apparently she tried to secure an interview with Assata, too, (see paragraph 11) who had the good taste to completely ignore this obliging, sleazy propagandist. Perhaps her worst sin is that she seems to be completely humorless.--NYTransfer] Orlando Sentinel - May 27, 2002 Fugitive from U.S. prison ward finds shelter in Cuba By Vanessa Bauza HAVANA -- Guillermo Morales is a shy, soft-spoken man with streaks of gunpowder embedded in his nose, chin and cheeks and nubs where his hands should be. In 1978, as a member of a militant Puerto Rican separatist group, Morales blew off his hands when a pipe bomb he was assembling in a New York safe house accidentally exploded. Sentenced to 89 years in prison for firearms possession, Morales escaped from a Bellevue Hospital prison ward in 1979 and went underground for several years before slipping across the border into Mexico. The Mexican government refused to extradite him, and in 1988 Morales fled to Havana, where he has found a haven outside the grasp of U.S. authorities. To the FBI, Morales, 52, is a fugitive from justice [sic!]. To the Cuban government, he's a political refugee, one of about 20 Americans with outstanding arrest warrants who have remade their lives here, according to State Department sources. Last week, the State Department once again listed Cuba as a terrorism sponsor, along with North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Sudan. The annual global-terrorism review made no mention of Cuba's alleged sharing of biological-warfare research with "rogue states," an accusation made by the Bush administration earlier this month. Instead, the report focused on international and U.S. fugitives who it says live here as Fidel Castro's "privileged guests." As political refugees, Morales, his Cuban wife and their son, Rodrigo, 5, live off a stipend from the Cuban government, but he says it's a modest sum, which they stretch with occasional remittances from friends abroad. He admits he is sometimes homesick for New York, but he also still believes in movements such as the one he joined as a college student in the 1970s and hopes to one day see Puerto Rico "liberated." "There's nothing like your home, but I have no regrets," Morales said. "I'ma revolutionary who supports a revolutionary movement. This is a revolutionary government that's perfecting itself every day." The oldest son of Puerto Rican immigrants, Morales was raised in East Harlem tenements and had never set foot on Puerto Rico when friends asked him to join the FALN, the Spanish acronym for the Armed Forces of National Liberation. From the mid-1970s to the late '80s, the group targeted buildings in New York and Chicago and eventually was linked to more than 125 bombings, the deadliest of which killed four people on Christmas Eve 1975 at Fraunces Tavern near Wall Street. Morales won't say how many bombings he took part in, but says no one was killed in the bombings in which he participated. Morales spends much of his time writing for Claridad, a pro-independence weekly published in Puerto Rico. He said he doesn't have time for other radicals who've sought refuge here, though he said he sometimes runs into Assata Shakur, the former Joanne Chesimard, the most wanted of the American fugitives. A former Black Panther, Shakur escaped from a women's prison in 1979 after being convicted for the murder of a New Jersey state trooper. Shakur is listed in the Havana phonebook but calls went unanswered. As far as the State Department's terrorist list, Morales dismisses it much the same way the Cuban government does, pointing to a history of terrorism here at the hands of extremist anti-Castro groups in Miami. Morales is not worried about being extradited and will live here until he is cleared of his charges or given a full presidential pardon, something his lawyer briefly looked into before President Clinton left office. Eleven former FALN members, including Dylcia Pagan, Morales' ex-wife, received pardons from Clinton during his last days in office. But once Morales knew he would have to return to the United States and prison, he dropped his inquiry. "Things change so much in the world," he said. "I live day by day." [Vanessa Bauza is a correspondent in Cuba for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.] Copyright (c) 2002, Orlando Sentinel. source - JosePertierra@aol.com ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytmed-05.27.02-17:25:16-16042