Baseball agent to seek visas for defectors

4 Cuban players among group in Nassau

The rescued refugees were in good condition, not dehydrated or hungry, a Bahamian security official said.

The defectors, all men, were believed to have fled from the city of Holguin in eastern Cuba.

Joe Cubas, a Cuban-American baseball agent, arrived in the Bahamas with money, clothes and food for the defectors. He said he planned to talk with Costa Rican officials about obtaining visas for them.

The defectors were rescued from Bahamian waters Friday by the crew of a fishing boat. They had been missing since March 10, but Cubas said they told him they hid in Cuba for 10 days, left March 20 and were found after spending less than a day at sea. Cubas said they were all in good condition.

The fishing boat dropped off the defectors Saturday on Ragged Island in the southernmost Bahamas, about 80 miles from Cuba. A plane carrying the defectors landed in Nassau shortly before noon Sunday, and a vehicle immediately took them to the detention center.

A choir at a church across the street could be heard at services singing Are You Free?

Earlier episode

After a similar escape from Cuba three months ago, Cuban pitcher Orlando ``El Duque'' Hernandez was allowed to leave the detention center quickly for Costa Rica and was given a $6 million contract to pitch for the New York Yankees.

``The first thing we're trying to do is make sure that as they did in the past, the Bahamian officials give due process,'' Cubas said. ``They have been very helpful, and if the players so choose to go to a third country, whether it be the United States, Costa Rica or the Dominican or [anywhere], that they be allowed to.''

Protesters, many of them from Florida, gathered outside the detention center to complain that their jailed Cuban relatives have not been given the preferential treatment accorded to baseball players.

Prisoners, most of whom had taken the same risky boat trip that the players did, chanted, ``Freedom! We are all equal'' in Spanish as Cubas arrived at the detention center, which houses more than 100 refugees in a converted schoolhouse and trailers.

The Carmichael Road Detention Center, on the southwestern edge of Nassau, is a complex with double barbed wire and guard outposts at the corners. It houses prisoners in a converted schoolhouse and trailers.

Conditions called bad

One detainee, Lazaro Santana Mejia, said prisoners would start a hunger strike today. He has been at the center for three months and claims the conditions are bad, the food is inadequate, and children don't have enough milk.

``It's misery,'' he said, pointing to standing water in the camp on the chilly, overcast day. ``We are classified as refugees by the United Nations. We want the whole world to know what is going on here.''

Cubas said he planned to ask Bahamian officials not to repatriate the latest defectors. He also planned to talk with Costa Rican officials today to try to secure visas for the defectors.

Cubas said he hadn't tried yet to secure arrangements with a third country. Asked whether he encouraged the players to flee Cuba, he said: ``Absolutely not.''

Francisca Gomez, the mother of player Jorge Luis Toca, said she was glad to hear the men were safe, but she longed to hear from her 23-year-old son.

A mother's lament

``He didn't tell me he was leaving because he knows I couldn't take it,'' she said in a telephone interview from her home in central Cuba. ``Until I hear his voice, I won't believe it. He said he would never leave his beloved Cuba and said he would never leave me.''

Still, Gomez, who is raising her son's 2-year-old son, said she could not be angry at her son.

A family friend who answered the phone Sunday said Toca's family knew of the players' arrival in Nassau and ``everyone around here is very happy with the news.''

Pitching coach Enrique Chinea, 41, spoke with Worldwide Television News on Saturday by telephone: ``Right now, we're very tired. We're worn out physically and mentally.''

In addition to Toca and Chinea, the baseball players rescued are Angel Lopez, 25; Jorge Diaz, 23; and Michael Jova, a 17-year-old player from Cuba's junior Olympic team. All five were banned from baseball in July because Cuban authorities suspected they were planning to defect.

The other defectors were identified as Ernesto Perez Toma, 28; Giovani Pena Gonzalez, 25; Pedro Ferrer Chacon, 30; and Jose Roche, 27.