``When Dante described hell, he hadn't gone through Villa Marista,'' Iraeta said Wednesday in Miami, referring to the Cuban State Security headquarters in Havana. She was released from there at noon Tuesday.
``What they did to me was a terrible injustice,'' she said. ``Nobody can compensate me for the suffering I felt, the tears I wept. The harm they did will stay with me for the rest of my life.''
Alleged residues of plastic explosives, reportedly found in her handbag, turned a visit to relatives in Cuba into a nightmare that Iraeta, a 33-year-old resident of Hialeah, will never forget.
Her body shows the ravages of confinement. She lost 33 pounds. Her face is pale, with dark rings under her eyes. Her hair is dropping in clumps.
From the moment she was arrested, on May 5, Iraeta maintained her innocence. Over and over, she told interrogators that her handbag never held explosives, that it contained only letters for relatives and friends, as well as medicines for her two brothers, in addition to personal effects.
She says she never accepted money from strangers to carry goods to Cuba.
Although Cuban authorities repeatedly asserted they could prove Iraeta had carried C-4, a potent plastic explosive, they never put her on trial. The initial charges of terrorism, which carried a sentence of 20 years imprisonment or execution by firing squad, were reduced to possession of explosives, punishable by three to five years' imprisonment.
The worst part
And they showed her photographs of what they said were victims of terrorist bombs.
``I saw dead people with their faces blown away, pictures of mutilated bodies. They asked me if my conscience didn't bother me. I told them: `I'm not a murderer, I don't set off bombs. I couldn't even kill a chicken,' '' Iraeta said.
In a windowless cell whose door had only a slit for ventilation, Prisoner 997 -- as Iraeta was known -- survived her imprisonment reading the Bible and chatting with a cellmate, dissident Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello. Roque has been charged with spreading enemy propaganda and faces 20 years in prison.
Days in prison appeared never to end. She had no watch, sunlight was barely visible, the light bulbs in her cell were on 24 hours a day.
Living conditions were awful, Iraeta said. Prisoners drank water just twice a day, with lunch and dinner. The food, usually soup or rice and beans, was foul-tasting. Soap and toilet paper had to be provided by her relatives. Visitors were allowed once a week, Mondays, for one hour.
Nightmare begins
Two days later, at 5 a.m., 16 police agents and a police dog burst into her brother's house, seized all of Iraeta's possessions and took her to Villa Marista.
The nightmare ended as suddenly as it began. Shortly after lunch Tuesday, a guard told her to gather her belongings and report to the warden's office. There, a prosecutor asked her to sign a release document.
``I signed it like a shot,'' Iraeta said. ``I couldn't believe the day had come.''
A State Security agent escorted her to the airport and handed her her passport and ticket just before she boarded the plane. To the last moment, they treated her like a terrorist, she said, asking her why she had carried bombs to Cuba.
Hours later, Iraeta was back in Miami, in the arms of her relatives.
Now she says she will never go back to Cuba, even though she has several relatives there.
``Anybody wishing to go can go, but I don't want to go through that tragic experience again,'' Iraeta said. ``I won't forget my siblings, but from now on I will help them from here.''
Copyright © 1997 The
Miami Herald