Bahamas says it will return defecting players to Cuba

In this story:

• Players appeal to Costa Rican president
  
• 'Unjustly detained'
  
• No sponsors so far
  
• U.N. official to visit
  

March 24, 1998
Web posted at: 2:49 a.m. EDT (0249 GMT)

NASSAU, Bahamas (CNN) -- Authorities in the Bahamas said Monday that four baseball players and a coach would be returned soon to their native Cuba despite the players' claims that "grave consequences" would befall them.

The five, meanwhile, appealed to the president of Costa Rica to grant them asylum so they could live "in a country of total freedom where human rights are respected."

Three of the players had been barred from playing baseball in Cuba because it was believed they planned to defect.

Melvin Seymour, director of the Bahamas Department of Immigration, said, "We are hoping that we can return them home soon."

Seymour also said the players would get no special treatment while in detention. Other Cuban detainees, some of whom have spent months in the dilapidated camp where the athletes are being held, have complained that the players have received special treatment.

"They are going to eat the same food everyone is eating," he said. "They are going to sleep in the same quarters that everybody is sleeping in. They are going to use the same facilities. Same breakfast, same lunch, same dinner."

In Washington, the U.S. State Department urged the Bahamas to make sure no genuine refugee was returned to Cuba but stopped short of saying it should not repatriate the players.

'Unjustly detained'

Toca's family is taking care of the 2-year-old son he left behind in Cuba

The five -- three former players and a former coach on the Cuban national baseball team and a 17-year-old from Cuba's junior Olympic team -- left their hometowns in central Cuba on March 10. They hid for 10 days before leaving Cuba in a flimsy boat Friday with four others.

They drifted into a Bahamian fishing boat a few hours later and were turned over to authorities at Ragged Island, a tiny fishing outpost 80 miles north of the Cuban coast.

The players are Jorge Luis Toca, 23; Angel Lopez, 25; Jorge Diaz, 23; and Michael Jova, 17. Enrique Chinea, 41, is a pitching coach.

They are being held with more than 140 other Cubans, Haitians and Chinese in a converted schoolhouse and trailers in a compound ringed by barbed wire.

Toca told The Nassau Tribune that he and the other four spent the night on the floor because there were no beds.

"We beseech your cooperation and help in permitting us the right to live in a country of total freedom where human rights are respected," the players said in a letter to Costa Rican president Jose Maria Figueres.

The letter said they were being "unjustly detained" in the Bahamas, which regularly returns Cuban refugees to Cuba. The letter was given to a reporter by Cuban-American sports agent Joe Cubas, who has promoted an international effort to release the players.

No sponsors so far

"Our fear is that we will be deported back to Cuba, where we know that, simply for being baseball players who have decided to abandon the country, we can expect grave consequences," the letter said.

Meanwhile, assistants to Cubas said he is trying to obtain humanitarian visas for the five from the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Nicaragua or possibly even the United States.

Cubas announced last week that the players were missing when he and another Cuban baseball client, pitcher Orlando Hernandez, met with reporters. Hernandez fled Cuba on a boat last December with several others, and also reached the Bahamas.

Cubas later helped him sign a $6.6 million contract with the New York Yankees.

Before Hernandez left the Bahamas, he was released from the Carmichael Road Detention Center under the sponsorship of a Cuban-American businessman with interests in the Bahamas.

Seymour said he had not yet been contacted by any potential sponsors for the latest group. "If they do, we will examine it based on its merit," he said.

U.N. official to visit

U.S. State Department spokesman James Foley said a representative from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees would travel to Nassau to interview the nine migrants, a routine procedure for Cubans held in the Bahamas.

Said Foley, "We are confident that the Bahamians will carefully consider any claims for protection consistent with international standards and ensure that no bona fide refugee is returned to Cuba."

Reuters contributed to this report.

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