Imminent U.S. Indictment of Castro on Drug Counts Rumored

Three years after Fidel Castro ordered the execution of two top generals for drug-smuggling, rumors are swirling through Miami that the Cuban president himself is soon to be indicted by the U.S. attorney on drug charges.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Dan Gelber on Friday refused to comment “on matters that are not public record.” Officials of the U.S. Justice Dept. and the Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington also declined comment. Unofficial sources, however, said an indictment naming the Cuban leader was “unlikely.”

Talk of an impending indictment of Castro was sparked in Miami chiefly by a letter from a former associate of the Cuban president, which was secreted out of Cuba and published in the French newspaper Le Monde.

The letter was from Gen. Patricio de la Guardia, who was tried and convicted on drug-trafficking charges and is now in a Cuban prison. De la Guardia’s letter asserted that the actions for which he was convicted were directed by the “highest levels of the Cuban government.”

De la Guardia’s twin brother, Col. Antonio de la Guardia, along with Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa, were executed in Cuba by firing squad in 1989. Patricio de la Guardia was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

In Miami, talk of the Castro indictment has dominated the Spanish-language airways for days.

“Nothing happens in Cuba without Castro’s knowledge,” said Tomas Garcia Fuste, program director of Miami’s Spanish-language radio station WQBA. “If there was drug smuggling, Castro was involved.”

On Thursday Miami television station WPLG, the local ABC affiliate, quoted three unnamed sources as saying that “serious consideration is being given to indicting” Castro on drug charges.

The Miami Herald weighed in Friday, with an editorial calling on the Justice Department to indict both the Cuban president and his younger brother, Raul, his second-in-command.

“Any student of contemporary Cuba realizes that the Castro brothers must have known about high-level narcotics trafficking,” the paper said. “The U.S. has enough evidence to indict them both for complicity in the operation that cost Ochoa his life.”

Rumors concerning Castro have also been fueled by reports that prosecutors who recently won a conviction of Manuel A. Noriega had been interviewing witnesses in that case in a search for evidence involving the Cuban leader.

Noriega, the former Panamanian ruler, was convicted in April on eight drug-smuggling charges.

Castro’s name surfaced in the Noriega trial when prosecutors charged that in July, 1984, he mediated a dispute between Noriega and Colombian drug lords. Attorneys for Noriega admitted that the meeting took place--indeed, there are photographs showing the two together--but denied that the topic of conversation was drugs.