Cuba Envoy Forcibly Expelled by U.S. Agents

Capping a day of high diplomatic drama, federal agents Saturday night detained a Cuban diplomat accused of spying and forcibly expelled him from the country after he refused to leave voluntarily.

U.S. officials said Jose Imperatori, vice consul at the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, was put on a government airplane at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in suburban Virginia and was flown to Montreal. From there, he will be returned to Cuba today, officials said.

“He has been expelled from the United States for not voluntarily departing by the appointed time,” State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said in a prepared statement. “We do not have any further comment on this case.”

Rubin’s statement was issued shortly after FBI agents arrived at Imperatori’s sparsely furnished apartment just outside of Washington and escorted the Cuban diplomat into a waiting car that took him to the airport.

The incident seemed certain to further strain already tense relations between Washington and Havana. Indeed, the case has become entwined in the emotional international custody case involving 6-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez.

The forced departure of Imperatori came after he had resigned his diplomatic post earlier in the day, vowed to stay to fight the charges against him and said he had begun a hunger strike to protest the accusations.

“I have become the victim of a major slander,” he told reporters hastily called to his apartment in Bethesda, Md. “I have been wrongly accused of doing intelligence work in the United States.”

At a second news conference two hours later, Fernando Remirez de Estenos, head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, said Imperatori had Havana’s full backing for his actions. “He wants to clarify the situation, he wants to tell the truth, that’s all he wants to do,” said Remirez, who also holds the title of Cuba’s first deputy foreign minister.

(Because Cuba has no diplomatic relations with the United States, bilateral matters between the two countries are handled by an “interests section,” technically part of the Swiss Embassy.)

Remirez also charged that the accusations against the diplomat and a senior Immigration and Naturalization Service official in Miami were simply an effort to discredit both Cuba and the U.S. government agency at the center of the furor over Elian.

The INS ruled that the boy, rescued off the coast of Florida last Thanksgiving, should be returned to his father in Cuba. But relatives in Miami have challenged that decision in federal court, and the dispute has sparked demonstrations both by the Cuban emigre community in Miami and Cuban citizens in Havana.

Elian and his mother were among 14 Cubans attempting to flee the island late last year. The mother and 10 others drowned when their boat capsized. Two adults survived.

U.S. officials have denied any link between the Gonzalez case and the espionage charges.

State department officials said Imperatori had engaged in illegal contacts with the INS employee because he had failed to report them, as required by law. Remirez hotly denied that charge Saturday, stating that “normal procedures for those contacts were used.” U.S. officials so far have released few details of the accusations against him.

On Saturday, just about everyone involved with the Imperatori case agreed his efforts to remain in this country to fight the charges against him were unprecedented.

Diplomats accused of espionage and ordered to leave their host country invariably agree to go regardless of the validity of the charges against them. Indeed, the Vienna Convention governing the status of diplomats requires them to leave if so ordered. While governments frequently protest an expulsion, no experts could recall a time when a diplomat has simply refused to go.

“There have been quarrels about whether someone really should have to go or not, but I can’t think of an instance where a diplomat and the country he represents have just said no,” said Michael Pistor, who served 40 years in the U.S. diplomatic service, including three years as ambassador to Malawi in the early 1990s. “This is unique.”

Saturday’s twists and turns reflect the level of emotion and the political volatility that have come to surround Elian’s fate. Havana has worked hard to whip public emotions in Cuba, staging several large demonstrations, with Cubans marching to songs and slogans demanding the boy’s return.

Behind the reception desk at the entrance to the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, a poster now hangs of Elian behind fake prison bars. The poster’s caption reads: “Freedom for Elian.”

Federal hearings on the boy’s fate, initially scheduled to begin last week, were rescheduled to start March 6 after the judge initially assigned to the case was hospitalized with a suspected stroke.

At his morning news conference, Imperatori said that, along with his resignation, he was giving up the diplomatic immunity that protects foreign envoys from criminal prosecution by the countries in which they serve. He said he was prepared to fight to clear his name, along with the name of a predecessor and that of Mariano Faget, the INS official named in the spy case.

“The accusation brought against me is absolutely false, therefore I feel it is my duty to state that the INS official is innocent of the accusation of espionage made against him, and I can help prove it,” Imperatori said.

Former Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, now a lawyer who has been retained by the Cubans, stood by Imperatori’s side.

Imperatori said his wife and 3-year-old son left Friday night for Cuba.

Imperatori, together with his predecessor as vice consul, Luis Molina, were accused of receiving sensitive intelligence material that Faget allegedly passed to them. Faget was arrested earlier this month after allegedly passing a bogus tip deliberately planted by federal agents to a New York businessman.