Prison Impasse Blamed on Minority : Officials Say Radical Band Rules More Moderate Inmates

Federal authorities said Monday that a “small but aggressive minority” of the Cuban inmates holding 90 hostages in the Atlanta penitentiary appeared to be obstructing a settlement of the week-long prison takeover.

Officials said there were no face-to-face negotiations on Monday with the inmates who hold portions of the 85-year-old federal prison, and there were only sporadic contacts on a telephone line leading into buildings occupied by the prisoners. They said one additional Cuban detainee surrendered overnight, leaving 1,118 Cuban and 20 American prisoners still inside.

More than 24 hours after settlement of the prison takeover by Cuban detainees in Oakdale, La., Cuban prisoners in Atlanta have given no indication that resolution of that uprising would affect the Atlanta mutiny, federal officials said.

Although it appeared that a majority of the Atlanta prisoners favored an agreement that would release the hostages, the Justice Department said in a statement, a “small but aggressive minority appears to be able to intimidate this majority into dragging out the incident and avoiding a settlement.”

‘Patient as Necessary’

The statement added that federal authorities were “prepared to be as patient as necessary” while the prisoners sought to resolve differences among themselves .

Justice Department spokesman Patrick Korten, in an open-air briefing for reporters across the street from the prison, repeated earlier government assurances that no force would be used to put down the mutiny “as long as the hostages are safe and unharmed.”

“Had it been up to those who have been negotiating on behalf of the apparent majority, they (the hostages) would probably be out,” Korten said.

Overnight, at the request of federal officials, prisoners made videotapes of the hostages to support their claim that all were being treated well. Korten said about 70 hostages appeared in the tapes, seemingly in good condition. He added that “we have verified the safety of all the rest by other means,” but refused to elaborate on how this was done.

Monday evening, one of three Cuban-Americans who have been acting as negotiators at the government’s request confirmed that a relatively small group of radicals among the Cuban prisoners was intimidating a more moderate majority and obstructing a settlement.

Jorge Mas Canosa, the head of the Cuban American National Foundation in Miami, told reporters that he had come away from hours of talks on Thanksgiving day and again on Sunday with the impression that, while the hostages were in the control of the moderate majority, a “handful of radicals” held veto power over the terms of settlement.

“There is only a handful of radicals, but they have control of the situation,” Mas said. “They have knives, machetes and the killing instinct. They don’t understand democracy as you and I do.”

But he added that the “good news is that they are willing to meet with the very moderate leadership” of the Cuban majority, and he said he felt encouraged by the rapport he believed he had established with two of the radicals.

“I think this will take some persuading, that it will be a long haul,” Mas said.

Late Monday, it was reported that the Atlanta inmates handed over American prisoner Thomas Silverstein to authorities. Silverstein, who has been convicted of three murders, including those of a guard and a fellow inmate in an Illinois prison, was turned over in shackles and handcuffs.

“Silverstein was, and is, a threat to any individual, whether prison staff or fellow inmate, in a federal prison setting,” Korten said.

Korten said the action was “obviously involuntary” on Silverstein’s part and showed that the safety of the hostages is of concern to the inmates. Silverstein was not part of the negotiations.

Earlier, after the prisoners issued a lengthy set of demands late Saturday night and released four hostages hours later in an apparent gesture of good will, federal authorities had voiced guarded optimism that a unified leadership was coalescing among the Atlanta prisoners. By Monday, however, with no substantive talks in the wake of the Oakdale agreement, officials struck a more pessimistic note about the immediate chances of progress.

Minority of 100

Korten said the radical minority of perhaps 100 prisoners had been responsible for blocking a tentative agreement last week to release 50 hostages, and he suggested that intimidation by the same group may explain why the number of detainees surrendering to authorities inside the prison had slowed to a trickle of one or two a day.

Officials have consistently pointed out that the Cuban detainees in Atlanta are different from those in Oakdale, a minimum security facility, and include a number who have been convicted of major crimes, among them at least one murder.

“This is a different group of detainees, and in a very real sense this remains a separate and distinct incident,” Korten said of the Atlanta uprising.

Officials have refused to discuss details of the negotiations, including terms of the Oakdale agreement, although these have been explained to the Atlanta inmates, Korten said. He also refused to discuss what he said was sensitive information officials had gathered on the mood and the physical disposition of the inmates in the buildings they occupy.

A dozen or so inmates continued to wave and cheer from the rooftop of an occupied building behind the prison wall, but sunny weather and a carnival atmosphere on Sunday subsided on Monday as temperatures dropped into the 30s and a raw wind drove away many of the spectators and family members who shouted encouragement from outside the walls.

There is no heat in the buildings the inmates occupy, and officials said they had no way of supplying it as the steam-heating system had been too badly damaged in the first days of the uprising.

In Oakdale, the surrender of the inmates came after the intervention of Agustin A. Roman, the Cuban-born auxiliary Roman Catholic bishop of the Archdiocese of Miami. The detainees had been demanding his presence as a third party in the negotiations since last Friday. But it was only after his arrival Sunday that the Cubans laid down their weapons after the bishop implored them to do so.

The government refused to release details of the agreement, but Roman’s entourage produced a seven-point plan, including one that would free them from any liability for any damage to the charred $17 million facility, along with the promise of individual reviews of their cases.

On Monday, hundreds of Cuban detainees who had laid siege to their rural prison for eight days before releasing their 26 remaining hostages were transferred from their burned-out compound to new prisons around the country.

As they left, law enforcement officials who had ringed the compound since the uprising began Nov. 21 entered the detention center, searching for bodies, booby traps and Cubans hiding amid the debris of the 48-acre facility.

The dispersal of the detainees came as their 26 former hostages were being released from the local Humana Hospital, all with clean bills of health.

The estimated 1,000 detainees were either being bused or flown from nearby England Air Force Base after they were processed at the back gate of the compound. There, 14 buses awaited to transport them to their new prisons.

Luenette Johnson, a spokeswoman for the detention center, said they will be dispersed among other federal facilities on a space available basis. As many as 300 of the detainees may be housed at the Ft. Polk, La., Army base, about 45 miles west of Oakdale. The 49 American prisoners at Oakdale, including 38 who came out Sunday, were sent to a federal detention facility in Fort Worth, Tex.

In Washington, the federal prison director warned Monday that if any hostages are harmed at the Atlanta penitentiary law enforcement agents would storm the prison.

Prepared for Force

“If any hostages are harmed, they (FBI and other agents) are preparing to retake the prison by force,” said J. Michael Quinlan, director of the federal Bureau of Prisons. “But we will not do that so long as the hostages are not harmed,” he said in response to a question on why an FBI SWAT team was seen conducting an exercise outside the Atlanta prison.

“Suffice it to say that the United States government has a number of law enforcement agents at the Atlanta facility,” Quinlan said. “What exercises, what tactical maneuvers they are practicing, I am not personally aware of.”

Although Cuban inmates will not be prosecuted for physical damage they did to the facilities, Quinlan said, they could be prosecuted “if there is any harm they committed in terms of violence toward another person, a hostage or another prisoner, and they understand that they can be prosecuted for those crimes.”

“The mere holding (of hostages) is not (subject to prosecution), unless it was done with the threat of physical violence,” which he said would be “more than just saying to the person: ‘If you move, I’m going to have to take some steps against you.’ ”

However, Quinlan said, “if he held a machete to his throat for 12 hours, that kind of a threat of physical violence is the kind of a threat” that may be subject to prosecution, though it would be up to the attorney general to decide whether to take such action.

“According to all the hostages released from Oakdale, there were no such threats,” he added.

In Oakdale, an advocacy group representing the interests of the Cubans expressed fear that the agreement reached Sunday might be too vague.

Steven Donziger, a spokesman for the Coalition to Support Cuban Detainees, said success of the agreement would depend on its “generous implementation” by the federal government.

“Our main concern with the agreement is its ambiguity,” he said. “A lot depends on the good faith of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. It’s possible that under this agreement the vast majority of the detainees at Oakdale could be deported.”

Donziger stopped short of calling the agreement a bad one. According to Rafael Penalver, the bishop’s lawyer, the agreement, signed after the hostages were freed, included stipulations that Cubans scheduled for release would not be penalized by their participation in the riots. It also included another stipulation that each of the detainees would be given an individual hearing.

Donziger also expressed fear that the lead negotiators for the Cubans would be singled out for expulsion from the country, when, in fact, he believed them to be moderates who took over the negotiations because of their command of English.

One of them, Manuel Monzon, had already been slated for release from the facility when the rioting began. On Monday afternoon, Monzon’s wife, Maria, said she did not yet know where her husband was being taken.

“I have always followed him from New Jersey to Atlanta to Oakdale,” she said. “No one has helped me. I don’t know how I will be able to afford to follow him. I hope some organization will come forward and help me.”

Gillette reported from Atlanta and Kennedy reported from Oakdale. Also contributing to this story was staff writer Ronald J. Ostrow in Washington.