The so-called “Cuban Five” (front left to right) Fernando Gonzalez, Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero, Rene Gonzalez and Gerardo Hernandez, sing during Cuban musician Silvio Rodriguez’s concert in Havana. The so-called Cuban Five were convicted for spying on anti-Castro exile groups in Florida and monitoring US military installations. They are hailed as anti-terrorist heroes in Cuba for defending the country by infiltrating exile groups in Florida at a time when anti-Castro extremists were bombing Cuban hotels.

Tribune News Service

Cuba’s Coast Guard sank a boat carrying 32 Cubans who were trying to reach the Florida coast, according to a woman who survived and whose husband is missing.

Masiel Gonzalez Castellano told reporters in a telephone conversation from Matanzas, Cuba, that her husband, Leosbel Diaz Beoto, is missing after falling from the boat that was repeatedly charged and hit by a boat manned by the Cuban Coast Guard.

“We were screaming and crying for help as the boat was sinking. But they ignored us. Instead, they continued charging against our boat. Some people dove in the water and others stayed aboard as the boat sank,” said Gonzalez, who was contacted during a news conference hosted in Miami by the Democracy Movement. “They knew there were children aboard, but continued to charge against us. They didn’t care.”

The boat, said Gonzalez, was carrying 32 people, including seven women and two children. One of the two children was her eight-year-old son. She added that the boat pilot “was from Miami.”

The group, Gonzalez said, boarded the boat at around 4am on Monday. After being hit on Tuesday morning, the Cuban Coast Guard rescued most of the survivors, who were then locked up by the State Security in Versailles, Matanzas.

Gonzalez said she was released on Thursday night with the rest of the women and children. The men remain under custody, she added.

According to Ramon Saul Sanchez, president of Democracy Movement, the people on the boat said the incident occurred in international waters at about 22 miles from Cuban territory. “This is not the way to deal with people who are just trying to flee a brutal tyranny,” he said.

Sanchez and Sergio Diaz Alfonso, an uncle of the missing man, appealed to the community to help find Diaz Beoto, 33.

Diaz Alfonso, of Homestead, learned of the incident and of his nephew’s disappearance in a phone call from the missing man’s sister, Taily Diaz Beoto, who lives in Italy and is visiting Cuba with her Italian husband.

“My niece told me that Leosbelito (Diaz Beoto) was missing and to call 911,” said Diaz Alfonso. “I called and was told that the incident had happened in Cuba.”

Sanchez said he contacted the US Coast Guard spokesperson in Miami who confirmed that they had received a call about a sunken boat and that they reported the incident to the Cuban Coast Guard.

El Nuevo Herald could not reach the US Coast Guard spokesperson.

 

 

 

 

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