OWN CORRESPONDENT AND REUTERS, Miami | Wednesday
TWO Cuban doctors jailed for more than a month in Zimbabwe after declaring their intention to defect have accused the Zimbabwean government of kidnapping them.
Leonel Cordova Rodriguez and Noris Pena Martinez, who arrived in Miami earlier this week, told a gathering of jubilant Cuban Americans and local politicians that they “were afraid for their lives.”
“The jail was very rough,” Cordova Rodriguez said. “There were 10, 12 people sharing one cell, and they tried to make our lives as miserable as they could.”
Cordova Rodriguez, 31, and Pena Martinez, 25, were in Zimbabwe on a medical mission when they sought refuge at the Canadian and US embassies in Harare, which referred them to the UN High Commission for Refugees. But the Cubans disappeared June 2, the day of their hearing before a Zimbabwean asylum committee.
The doctors accused Zimbabwean security officers of kidnapping them and helping Cuban diplomats try to force them on a flight to Havana. Air France refused to let them board during a stopover in South Africa after the doctors slipped a note to a crew member saying they were kidnap victims.
The doctors were returned to Zimbabwe and jailed, while the UN refugee agency demanded their release under international law.
The pair arrived in Stockholm on July 8 after the UN commission negotiated their release from jail and Swedish immigration authorities issued them two-month visas while they applied for refugee status in the United States.
Their families, however, may be subject to suffering at the hands of the Cuban government for their defection, Pena Martinez said.
Pena Martinez’s father, on another Cuban medical mission, has been sequestered, she said. Cordova Rodriguez said his wife and two children were “taken from their home and told to move.”
“Whatever suffering my parents are going through is nothing new in the regime of Fidel Castro,” Pena Martinez said.
Cuba has has denied any involvement in the alleged kidnapping, saying that the doctors betrayed their medical mission to aid Zimbabwe’s health service.
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