Miami’s Cubans Leery of U.S. Ties to Homeland : Exiles: Many applaud decision not to prosecute defector, but wonder if move was designed to lessen fallout from pact to deport jailed Mariel refugees.

For the members of Miami’s Cuban exile community, ever sensitive to U.S. political developments affecting their homeland, the news this week has been both good and bad.

For many the bad news came first, when the Justice Department announced that about 1,500 jailed Mariel refugees would be deported to Cuba. Although most of those imprisoned have been convicted of violent felonies in the United States, many Cubans here have voiced outrage that anyone would be returned to Cuba for incarceration in the island’s notoriously harsh prisons.

But beyond that concern, said Oscar Haza, news director of radio station WQBA, “The main worry of many callers is that this is just part of larger negotiations between Washington and Havana. There are other subjects: communications, immigration, drug smuggling. People are suspicious.”

For much of Miami’s exile community, any dealings with the government of Fidel Castro smack of betrayal--especially at a time when Cuba is undergoing unprecedented economic hardship and dissidence on the island is growing.

But even as Miami’s lively Spanish-language airwaves crackled with protest over the U.S.-Cuba accord, which will speed the deportation of criminals who arrived in the 1980 Mariel boat lift, the Justice Department made another announcement that drew cheers on the streets of Little Havana.

Defecting pilot Carlos Cancio Porcel, a cause celebre here since December when he arrived in Miami at the controls of a Cuban airliner with 52 people aboard, will not be prosecuted on air piracy or any other charges because of what U.S. Atty. Roberto Martinez called the “unique facts” of the case.

Were the Mariel and Cancio decisions linked, the later designed to mollify those Cuban-Americans outraged by the former?

“Absolutely not,” said Dan Gelber, a spokesman for Martinez.

“Very calculated,” said Miami attorney Magda Montiel Davis, a board member of the Cuban Committee for Democracy. “What was important here were the emotions of the right-wing sector of the Cuban community.”

In a city where politics and Cuba have been emotional issues for more than three decades, there is never a shortage of material for heated debate. But the possibility that criminal charges could be lodged against Cancio, who is viewed as a hero by many Cubans here, stirred particular anger.

After taking off from Havana on what was to be a routine flight to the resort town of Varadero, Cancio and several co-conspirators overpowered the co-pilot, knocked out an armed security guard and veered north to Miami. Cancio and 47 others asked for political asylum, while five people, including the co-pilot and security guard, went home.

Last month, after the U.S. attorney began looking into the Cancio case as a possible hijacking, the co-pilot and three others who had been aboard the flight and had gone back to Cuba were allowed by the Castro government to return to Miami and testify before a grand jury. That drew sharp criticism from the powerful Cuban American National Foundation, and some 300 people took to the streets in protest.

Cancio’s lawyer argued that federal law does not make clear whether or not a pilot can hijack his own plane. Justice Department officials, and Martinez, apparently agreed.

Martinez warned Wednesday that the decision not to seek a criminal indictment of Cancio “should not be viewed as condoning the forceful or violent seizure of aircraft,” and added that the federal government would “aggressively and thoroughly investigate and . . . prosecute violations of federal law” governing hijacking.

Martinez--a Republican appointee whose last day in office was Friday--did not detail the “unique facts” of what he called the “AeroCaribe flight 360 incident,” and some observers were suspicious of both the government’s timing and logic.

“On one hand, we’re saying we can send the Mariels back, yet conditions are so terrible that we can’t send this pilot back,” Davis said.

In several federal prisons around the country Friday, the lock down of Mariel Cubans continued for a fourth day in what officials said was a move to prevent a repeat of the 1987 rioting that occurred after an accord between the United States and the Castro government on repatriation.

Another uprising took place in August, 1991, when Cuban inmates in Talladega, Ala., took 10 hostages in an effort to avoid deportation.

The latest accord with Cuba means that 1,567 Cubans who have served sentences for murder, rape, assault and drug trafficking can be sent back to Cuba at the rate of 50 a month, beginning this month. There are more than 2,800 Mariel refugees still serving sentences. More than 1,100 have been deported since 1984.