Roy Sanford, Staff ReporterWESTERN BUREAU:
EIGHT CUBANS who were washed ashore in Montego Bay some two months ago, were deported yesterday, one day after they were denied asylum by the Ministry of National Security.
Attorney-at-law, Ronald Paris, who represented the Cubans in court, said he was shocked that that they were deported so soon after the decision was made to send them home.
He said the decision came to him as 'a thief in the night' since he had filed a habeas corpus application in the Montego Bay Resident Magistrate's Court on behalf of his clients. "The application was to be heard next Friday," he noted.
Mr. Paris said he heard that the Cubans were being deported only yesterday morning and he could not understand why they were not given a chance to appeal the decision.
"I got a call at 9:00 this morning that immigration was going to take them to Cuba," he told The Sunday Gleaner yesterday. "The decision (to deport the men) was made on Friday and today is Saturday. These people have rights under international conventions and the immigration department made this decision without going through the legal process, depriving them of a chance to appeal."
Mr. Paris said there is little he could have done legally to prevent the deportations. "It is Saturday," he pointed out. "I don't know where to find the Resident Magistrate. I cannot go to the Supreme Court and the attorneys for the Independent Jamaica Council for Human Rights (IJCHR), who has been assisting the Cubans, is off island."
The Cubans - Pedro Barrgo Acost, Ruben Luis Castro, Jose Edwardo Alvarez, Neltredo Martinez Garcia, Aris Rene Vidal, Armando Cruz Almunza, Enrique Vasquez-Diaz - washed ashore in Whitehouse, St. James on July 5 after being at sea for two days.
On Friday, June 27, 10 Cubans who had landed in March on a beach at the Wyndham Rose Hall Hotel, Montego Bay, were sent home. The 10, who never sought political asylum in Jamaica, returned to Cuba after they told immigration officials that they wanted to go back.
