Published Thursday, October 5, 2000, in the Miami Herald

Cuban agent eyeing asylum is sent home

Seized in Mexico, he is expelled, put on airplane to his homeland

BY ANDRES OPPENHEIMER
aoppenheimer@herald.com

A longtime Cuban intelligence agent who was seeking political asylum in Mexico was put on a plane back to Cuba on Wednesday, hours after being seized on the street as he was coming out of a meeting with a Mexican official, human rights groups and government sources said.

Pedro Riera Escalante, a former Cuban consul in Mexico who according to Mexican officials was a senior officer in Cuba's intelligence service, had been discussing his asylum with senior Mexican foreign affairs and Interior Ministry officials over the past four weeks, officials said.

``This was most likely a trap by the Mexican government,'' said Rafael Alvarez of the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center, who had been contacted by the Cuban asylum-seeker in early September. ``His life is now endangered by this totally illegal extradition procedure.''

Mexico's Interior Ministry issued a communique late Wednesday, saying that Riera Escalante was ``a Cuban who could not prove the legality of his stay in Mexico'' and was ``forced to abandon the national territory.'' It added that migration agents seized him at 6:15 p.m. Tuesday in Mexico City.

MEXICANS `SUSPICIOUS'

A senior Mexican official told The Herald late Wednesday that ``we were very suspicious about his behavior. As an intelligence officer, he knew perfectly well that he had to formally ask for asylum at the migration office, and he never did it.''

``We suspect he may have been sent by Castro to create a political scandal if we granted him asylum,'' the senior official said, adding that Riera Escalante was planning to hold a press conference with human rights groups today.

SUDDEN ENCOUNTER

According to Edelmiro Castellanos, a Mexico-based Cuban exile journalist with Radio Martí, the two were coming out of a Sanborn's restaurant in downtown Mexico City, where they had just met with José Luis Valles, an official of the Interior Ministry's CISEN intelligence service.

At the meeting, Riera Escalante was told that his petition was going well, Castellanos said. When they left, six armed men in civilian clothes seized them on the street, shouting that they were immigration police, and pushed Riera Escalante into a white van, Castellanos said.

``It was a matter of seconds,'' Castellanos said. ``They didn't wear uniforms and didn't present any IDs. They just knocked us down all of a sudden.''

HELP FOR ASYLUM

Castellanos said he had introduced Riera Escalante to several Mexican officials to help him get political asylum. In early September, the two went to the Foreign Ministry, where they met with Undersecretary Carlos de Icaza and another official, Daniel Tamayo.

They were told to go to the Interior Ministry, since Riera Escalante could not request asylum at the Foreign Ministry if he was already in Mexico, Castellanos said. But the Foreign Ministry officials said the matter would be resolved favorably, he said.

Days later, Riera Escalante and Castellanos went to the Interior Ministry and met with several officials, including Valles.

`PERSONAL CONTACTS'

``Riera was fully confident that he would be safe if he put himself in the hands of the Mexican government,'' Castellanos said. ``I told him to file an official petition, but he said it would be best to first try the `diplomatic' way, through personal contacts.''

Riera Escalante was Cuba's consul in Mexico between 1988 and 1994, and had been an officer in Cuba's intelligence services for several decades, according to Castellanos and Mexican officials. He is listed in the CIA's 1989 ``Directory of Officials of the Republic of Cuba'' as a second secretary at the Cuban Embassy that year.

RANK OF MAJOR

On Sept. 5, he told officials of the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez human rights group that he had been an intelligence major with Cuba's Directorate of Intelligence, specializing in ``CIA activities against Mexico,'' said Alvarez, an officer with the Catholic Church-related Mexican human rights group.

``He told me he knew of many Mexican government officials who had worked for the CIA, and that he feared reprisals from the Mexican and Cuban governments,'' Alvarez said.

``Still, he decided to try to do things quietly, through personal contacts.''

Copyright 2000 the Miami Herald.
Republished here with the permission of the Miami Herald. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the written approval of The Miami Herald.