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Fugitive
picked up in deaths of immigrants
in truck
By RACHEL GRAVES
April 29, 2004
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle
The last fugitive accused of participating
in an immigrant smuggling operation
that led to the deaths of 19 people
near Victoria last year was arrested
Monday in Harlingen.
Fredy Giovanni Garcia-Tobar, 24,
was the last of 14 suspects to
be arrested in a smuggling operation
broken up after after 19 illegal
immigrants died of dehydration,
hyperthermia and suffocation after
being crammed into a sealed truck
trailer for a trip from Harlingen
to Houston last May.
The immigrants -- from Mexico,
El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua
and Guatemala -- paid about $1,800
each for the trip, an immigration
agent testified in the case.
The trailer and its passengers
were abandoned at a truck stop
near Victoria, leaving the immigrants
to claw at the insulation and
punch holes in the trailer in
a frantic attempt to get air.
Seventeen victims were dead when
police arrived. Two others died
later at a hospital.
Garcia-Tobar, who also goes by
Alfredo Garcia, is a Guatemalan
national and an alleged member
of the smuggling group accused
of hiring driver Tyrone Williams
to transport at least 74 immigrants
from Harlingen to Houston.
Prosecutors are seeking the death
penalty for Williams, 32, a Jamaican
immigrant from Schenectady, N.Y.,
and the truck's driver. His trial
is scheduled for June 7.
Prosecutors have not said whether
they will seek the death penalty
against Garcia-Tobar, who is charged
with conspiracy and death resulting
from the smuggling of undocumented
immigrants for financial gain.
The maximum penalty for the charges
against him is death or life imprisonment.
He remains in federal custody
in Houston without bond.
Nine other suspects, three of
whom have pleaded guilty, are
in custody in the United States.
Four others are to be prosecuted
in Mexico, but U.S. officials
are considering seeking their
extradition for trial here.
Erica Cardenas, 23, of Brownsville,
is scheduled to be the first tried,
on May 24. She is accused of assisting
in a plot to hold a 3-year-old
boy for $1,500 ransom from his
mother, a Honduran woman who survived
the trailer ride.
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news
spotlight: Guatemala
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Envoys
to quit Havana in protest
BBC News, Monday, 3 May,
2004
Castro said Mexico's reputation
had 'turned to ashes'.
Mexico and Peru have both
said they will withdraw their
ambassadors from Cuba following
scathing remarks by the communist
state's leader, Fidel Castro.
Mexico, once Cuba's strongest
ally in Latin America, accused
Havana of interfering in its
affairs and said it was expelling
the Cuban ambassador.
Peru cited "offensive"
remarks made by the Cuban
leader in a May Day speech.
President Castro had condemned
states which backed a recent
United Nations censure of
Cuba's human rights record.
"The Peruvian government
energetically rejects offensive
remarks made by the Cuban
head of state with regard
to Peru," the foreign
ministry in Lima said on Sunday,
and warned of "consequences
for bilateral relations".
'Meddling'
In Mexico City, Foreign Secretary
Luis Ernesto Derbez told reporters
that diplomatic ties with
Havana were being reduced
to the level of charges d'affaires
following the May Day speech.
Interior Secretary Santiago
Creel, who appeared with him
at a news conference, said
it had also been discovered
that Cuban Communist Party
members had entered Mexico
on diplomatic passports in
April and held an unspecified
"political reunion"
without going through diplomatic
channels.
Mr Derbez added that President
Vicente Fox's decision to
downgrade relations had also
been taken after Cuban officials
made allegations aimed at
discrediting the Mayor of
Mexico City, Andres Manuel
Lopez Obrador.
He said Mexico had to "conclude
that the attitude of the Cuban
government has been to meddle
directly in internal affairs
that are the exclusive domain"
of the Mexican government.
Crackdown on dissidents
In his speech to a million-strong
rally in Havana, President
Castro lashed out at states
which had voted against Cuba's
human rights record at the
UN Human Rights Commission
in Geneva in April.
He dismissed all the relevant
Latin American governments
as weaklings, unable to make
their own decisions on foreign
policy. He accused them of
taking direct instructions
from the US.
Mexico's international reputation
in particular, he said, had
"turned to ashes".
The UN resolution, backed
by the US, called on Cuba
to "refrain from adopting
measures which could jeopardise
the fundamental rights, the
freedom of expression and
the right to due process of
its citizens".
New concern over Cuba's treatment
of political dissidents surfaced
last week when it jailed Juan
Carlos Gonzalez Leiva, a blind
lawyer, for four years for
contempt, public disorder
and resisting arrest.
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