``Absolutely not!'' replied Janice Jacobs, deputy director of the State Department's Office of Cuban Affairs.
U.S. government policy encourages a ``safe, legal and orderly'' immigration agreement between the United States and Cuba, she testified. The State and Justice departments oppose giving Fernandez Pupo asylum because he used two guns to hijack a small Cuban commuter aircraft to the Guantanamo Naval Base on July 7, 1996.
A federal jury in Washington acquitted Fernandez Pupo of a hijacking charge in May, apparently agreeing that he fled for his life.
But Miami lawyer Luis Fernandez proposed to Jacobs that Washington is afraid to grant asylum to Fernandez Pupo, 53, because Cuban President Fidel Castro would retaliate by unleashing a wave of immigrants on the Florida coast.
A decision in the case is at least a month away. Immigration Judge John Bryant set an Oct. 14 deadline for lawyers to file briefs summing up their cases.
Immigration service attorney Bruce Dizengoff argued throughout the on-again, off-again hearing since early August that Fernandez Pupo is a criminal undeserving of asylum. The government also asserts that, were he returned, he would not face persecution in Havana but would be subjected to a new hijacking trial.
Fernandez Pupo argued that he was a part of a secret underground anti-Castro military movement in Cuba -- called Aug. 5, 2000 -- and fled imminent arrest by Cuban secret police. Were he arrested, he testified, he might spill the names of other members of his group, because Cuban interrogators use torture and mind-altering drugs.
Apparently troubled by the claim, Bryant instructed lawyers to write their briefs about how international conventions against torture come into play in the proceedings against Fernandez Pupo. A key dispute between immigration authorities and Miami attorneys Fernandez and Wilfredo Allen is whether the man who had served 36 years in the Cuban military could have freely immigrated to the United States under existing diplomatic protocols between the United States and Cuba.
Jacobs testified for the government that, despite a Cuban law banning contacts between foreigners and the military, the lieutenant colonel could have with impunity applied at the U.S. Interest Section for a visa to immigrate to the United States.
She offered a list of eight separate cases of Cuban military men who have applied to immigrate to the United States. No names were released; several have since received permission to come to the United States.
Several applied after being jailed for more than two years in Cuba. One man who has an application pending filed it at the U.S. Interests Section during a furlough day from jail. Under questioning, however, Jacobs conceded that all eight men were of lesser rank than Fernandez Pupo, and had served in less sensitive posts.
The highest-ranking officer to receive permission to immigrate, according to Fernandez, was a captain in the army motor pool. In contrast, he said of his client: ``This guy was a high-ranking officer, and to say that he should go back and apply in Cuba is absurd.''