Cuba Arrests 4 in Slaying of 3 Policemen

The Cuban government said Friday it had arrested four would-be defectors who shot three policemen to death during a failed attempt to commandeer a boat to Florida.

The escape attempt early Thursday, the first since 1980 known to have ended in bloodshed, reflected the growing desperation of Cubans to flee the economic collapse in their Communist-ruled country.

President Fidel Castro’s government reacted by mobilizing thousands of Cubans to march past the slain policemen’s flag-draped coffins and saturating the airwaves with appeals for public cooperation in hunting the killers.

The Interior Ministry later announced that four men were captured Friday “thanks to the collaboration of the people,” and that another suspect was still being sought. It said a police sergeant wounded in the shooting and left for dead identified one suspect, Luis Miguel Almeida Perez, 24, as an employee at the civilian boatyard east of Havana where the shooting took place.

Radio Havana quoted the sergeant as saying that five men overpowered him and three other officers guarding the marina, handcuffed them, took their guns and boarded a boat. The police were shot after the boat’s motor failed to start, foiling the escape.

A record 2,203 Cubans crossed the Florida Straits to American asylum last year aboard rafts, inner tubes and small boats, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. Hundreds of others are believed to have drowned, died of exposure or were eaten by sharks.

Thursday’s escape attempt came six days after a successful one by 34 Cubans led by a pilot who commandeered a Soviet-made government helicopter in Havana and landed it safely in Miami.

Cubans fleeing the island say they are driven by the worst economic crisis since Castro seized power 33 years ago. The demise of communism in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s longtime benefactor and chief trade partner, has sunk the Cuban economy to near subsistence levels. New restrictions on electricity and gasoline consumption, including the elimination of many bus lines, took effect Jan. 1.

Along with economic hardship has come a growing crackdown in recent months on political dissent and black-marketing. In reporting Thursday’s slayings, the government sounded a warning to all its critics.

“The combative action of the people in response to this terrorist and counter-revolutionary crime . . . shows there will be neither quarter nor refuge for those who attack the sacred interests of the homeland and the revolution,” said an official message broadcast throughout the day.