Customs Seizes Computer Parts From Cuban Aid Group

Customs agents have seized a load of computer components from Pastors for Peace, an activist group that is holding a hunger strike at the U.S.-Mexico border to protest the confiscation of computers bound for Cuba, the U.S. Customs Service announced Friday.

Agents raided a small warehouse in San Diego and seized 390 computer components after determining that the group was preparing a third attempt to take computer supplies across the border into Tijuana in order to ship them to Cuba, authorities said.

Pastors for Peace, a coalition of church organizations, argues that the computers are humanitarian aid for the Cuban medical system. The group opposes the U.S. blockade of Cuba, which the Clinton administration has toughened after Cuban warplanes recently shot down two unarmed civilian planes flown by a Cuban exile group based in Miami.

To dramatize their cause, Pastors for Peace has used a time-honored stage for political theater: the U.S.-Mexico border.

The group has clashed twice with U.S. border guards who blocked the entry of their caravan into Mexico, resulting in arrests and counterdemonstrations by anti-Castro groups. Five members of Pastors for Peace are holding a hunger strike in a makeshift chapel near the pedestrian entry to Tijuana. They have pledged to fast until the computers are returned.

As the hunger strike entered its 17th day, the Rev. Lucius Walker, a protest leader, said the computer parts seized this week were spare equipment that was being sent to San Francisco, not Cuba. The Customs Service “made no effort to determine the accuracy of their claims,” he said. “They refused to talk with us about what they have seized so far.”

Walker and the other hunger strikers feel “a little weak physically, but very strong spiritually,” he said.

The Customs raid Thursday brings the total of computer components seized during the last five weeks to 1,219, authorities said.

The Customs Service said Friday that the ministers have failed to submit petitions provided by authorities to request the release of the equipment or apply for an export license. “Pastors for Peace have consistently refused to apply for [a license] to export computers to Cuba,” Edward Logan, special agent in charge of Customs investigations here, said in a statement.

Moreover, agents believe many of the computers were not destined for the Cuban medical system, Logan said. Several boxes were addressed to an “Institute of Geophysics and Astronomy” in Havana, Logan said.