The vessel seized by the refugees, a 30-foot wooden boat with no visible identification markings, sat in mute testament to a horrible beating at sea. Its cabin had collapsed and its portside was heavily damaged in the rear, as if nearly ripped from the hull.

Six Cuban refugees, plucked at night from a smashed fishing boat off the Florida Keys, headed Friday toward the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where U.S. officials hope to clarify rumors of a dramatic and violent escape.

The refugees, who were rescued late Thursday night just 17 miles southeast of Islamorada, apparently took over a boat in the beach resort city of Varadero in the predawn hours, and fled after a harrowing altercation with Cuban patrols.

Miami radio stations and Little Havana cafeterias buzzed with various accounts of a clash with Cuban authorities that alternately ranged from a dockside gunfight that left two people dead, to a cat-and-mouse chase with Cuban gunboats, to a Cuban ramming of the commandeered vessel.

Details were sketchy throughout the day as the refugees -- five men and a woman -- remained cloistered aboard a U.S. Coast Guard cutter. U.S. officials will decide at Guantanamo whether the refugees should be returned to Cuba or be resettled in a third country out of concern for their safety.

But the vessel seized by the refugees, a 30-foot wooden boat with no visible identification markings, sat in mute testament to a horrible beating at sea. Its cabin had collapsed and its portside was heavily damaged in the rear, as if nearly ripped from the hull.

``The superstructure was pretty much gone,'' said Petty Officer Jeff Hall of the Coast Guard, which towed it into port at Islamorada.

By ferrying the refugees to Guantanamo, U.S. officials tacitly acknowledged that they appeared to be involved in a high-stakes flight from Cuba. Under a bilateral immigration accord, the United States typically repatriates Cuban rafters intercepted at sea unless they are deemed to have a ``credible fear'' of persecution.

``Until we have all the facts, we won't be able to judge whether this is a straight immigration issue or if there are other angles to this,'' said Lula Rodriguez, deputy assistant secretary of state for public affairs.

Cuba claims hijacking

Cuba also confirmed Friday that something had gone awry at Varadero. In Washington, Gustavo Machin, a spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section, would say only that a group of Cubans had tried to hijack a boat.

``The only thing I know is that there was an attempt by armed persons to steal a Cuban boat,'' Machin said. ``An investigation is under way.''

Machin denied that anyone had died in the clash. ``If there had been dead, they would have told us,'' he said.

The identities of the refugees were not made public Friday, although Coast Guard spokesmen said all appeared to be in good shape. A Miami resident said two of the men were his relatives and identified them as Rafael Jorrin and Ridel Ruiz Cabre.

Administration officials were keen to learn Friday whether the Cuban refugees used force to steal the boat. Such a distinction would likely have a bearing on whether the refugees face U.S. indictments, they said.

One State Department official, who asked not to be named, said two of the refugees struggled briefly with U.S. patrolmen who hurried to their rescue. He did not elaborate.

Boat spotted late Thursday

The damaged refugee boat was first spotted at 9 p.m. Thursday by a 600-foot freighter, which notified the Coast Guard that it had seen five emergency flares off Islamorada.

A Coast Guard patrol boat, a helicopter, a Customs boat and a Navy minesweeper rushed to the scene. At 10:13 p.m. they located the boat and transferred the refugees to the Coast Guard cutter Nantucket. Just before noon Friday, they were transferred to another cutter, the Chandeleur, which headed to the Bahamas. From there, they were scheduled to be flown to Guantanamo late Friday or early today.

Cubans near the Varadero beach resort provided a rough outline of events to relatives in Miami:

Six people determined to leave Cuba stole a boat, possibly an auxiliary vessel of the Cuban border patrol, at the Varadero Marina, now called Marina Acua. As they fled, a Cuban patrol boat attempted to intercept them.

Ramon Gonzalez, a Miami resident whose niece is married to Jorrin, said that at that point ``there was an exchange of gunfire. Then the [patrol boat] rammed them and tried to sink them''.

Emergency call from Cuba

Gonzalez said he received an emergency call from relatives near Varadero early Thursday. They told him that Jorrin had left for Miami by boat. Hours later, they called him again to say they had heard rumors that there had been trouble.

Gonzalez and his wife Celina called friends in Varadero, closer to the marina, for details. In a conversation taped by Gonzalez, one of those friends said that she knew nothing of any incident.

``We know nothing here. I haven't heard anything,'' said the woman. ``We always find out immediately if any abnormality occurs''.

After a brief pause and unintelligible background conversation, the woman said she had just learned otherwise: ``A relative who just arrived here says it's true. The border guards here encountered another border boat that was trying to leave and there was a shootout. They say there are some injured and dead''.

The Gonzalezes were relieved to learn Friday that their relatives are safe and out of Cuba, although they face an uncertain future. They still wonder about the rumors of two dead who were left at the marina.

``I ask God and all the saints that something happens to Fidel Castro,'' said Gonzalez. ``He is destroying my country and its people.''

One foreigner living in Havana said the rumors there are wild: ``We have machine gun rumors, sinking and ramming rumors, dead people rumors. But in terms of hard facts we have only six Cubans picked up off Key West.''

Competing agendas

If the broad outlines of the incident are confirmed -- a refugee hijacking followed by a Cuban assault -- it would highlight fault lines where the interests of three groups frequently diverge: Cuban exiles, U.S. officials and the Cuban government.

Many exiles justify flight from Cuba under any means possible. Their emotional touchstone is the 1994 ramming of a tugboat commandeered by would-be refugees in Havana harbor. Forty-one Cubans, many of them children, died in that incident, which Cuba called an accident.

U.S. and Cuban officials, in turn, are determined to discourage hijackers and to quell the smuggling of people by upholding the 1994 immigration agreement. But despite unprecedented cooperation in prosecuting cases in U.S. courts, Cuban officials are increasingly exasperated because U.S. prosecutors fail to win convictions and the accused go free.

Herald staff writers Susana Bellido and Juan O. Tamayo contributed to this report.

Copyright © 1997 The Miami Herald