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Militants' prison time pared

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 7, 2007

FORT LAUDERDALE - A federal judge reduced the prison sentence Wednesday for a prominent Cuban-American businessman with connections to anti-Fidel Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles after an arsenal of weapons and high explosives was turned over to the U.S. government.

U.S. District Judge James I. Cohn cut 16 months off the sentence of Santiago Alvarez, who pleaded guilty in September to a conspiracy charge after the FBI seized a cache of military arms.

Cohn also reduced by 13 months the sentence of Osvaldo Mitat, an Alvarez employee.

Alvarez, 65, had been sentenced to nearly four years in prison, and Mitat, also 65, to just over three years.

The two men, who have served about 18 months each, smiled broadly and raised their manacled hands in triumph after the judge announced his decision.

Federal prosecutors agreed to recommend reduced prison terms for both men after a large amount of weaponry was surrendered earlier this year, including 200 pounds of dynamite, 14 pounds of C-4 plastic explosives, 30 automatic or semiautomatic guns, a grenade launcher and grenades and 4, 000 feet of detonator cord.

The military hardware was given to the U.S. government by anonymous individuals who had likely been storing it away in homes, garages and elsewhere in the Miami area in hopes of someday launching an armed assault against Castro's Communist Cuban government, defense attorneys said.

"I seriously doubt these were munitions in the hands of terrorists, " said Alvarez lawyer Kendall Coffey, a former U.S. attorney in Miami. "More than likely, they were in the hands of freedom fighters for a beautiful land 90 miles away."

Alvarez has been a longtime supporter and financial benefactor of Posada's, who is blamed by Cuba for the 1976 downing of a Cuban jetliner and for a string of bombings at tourist sites in Havana in 1997.

Posada, a former CIA operative who trained for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, also was convicted in a plot to assassinate Castro in Panama in 2000 but was pardoned by Panama's president.

The reduction approved by Cohn was higher than the 25 percent cut recommended by federal prosecutors.

Coffey described at length the destructive power of the weaponry turned over, noting that it would easily be enough to level the federal courthouse where the hearing was held.

Alvarez and Mitat still face federal contempt-of-court charges for refusing to testify before a grand jury in El Paso, Texas, that was investigating Posada's entry into this country. Trial in that case is set for Aug. 20.

Law enforcement officials and defense lawyers have said a grand jury in Newark, N.J., is investigating whether there was a financial conspiracy among Cuban-Americans there to assist Posada in the 1997 bombings in Havana, one of which killed an Italian tourist.

[Last modified June 7, 2007, 00:31:21]