Greger
Elian, Father Reunited After Predawn Raid
April 22, 2000 11:36 PM EDT
By Sue Pleming
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cuban castaway Elian Gonzalez was reunited with his father on Saturday after automatic weapons-toting U.S. agents snatched the 6-year-old in a predawn raid on the home of his Miami relatives.
The raid, which took less than three minutes, enraged Cuban exiles, who took to the streets of Miami's Little Havana neighborhood, blocking intersections and setting fire to trash and tires.
A total of 249 people had been arrested as of 9:45 p.m., Detective Delrish Moss, a City of Miami spokesman, said. In one incident, a man attacked three police with a baseball bat as they were making an arrest. All three officers were hospitalized, one in serious condition, Moss said.
Hours after the seizure of Elian, who was at the center of a dramatic international custody battle, U.S. authorities released pictures of the boy, smiling broadly with his father and stepmother and playing with his half-brother, Hianny.
``He (Elian) looked very happy and Juan Miguel was crying,'' a Justice Department official said when asked to describe the reunion at Andrews Air Force base in suburban Maryland outside Washington.
The official family portrait was in sharp contrast to images of the raid in which helmeted federal agents battered down the front door, weapons at the ready. The Miami relatives had defied government orders to give up custody of the boy.
Cuban Americans likened it to a ``Gestapo'' raid and Republican lawmakers said the strong-arm tactics were more akin to those of Cuban President Fidel Castro.
House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, accused the Clinton administration of acting with ''reckless disregard for our values'' and called on the House Judiciary Committee to hold hearings into the Justice Department's tactics.
A helmeted agent pointing a rifle grabbed the boy from the arms of Donato Dalrymple, one of the fishermen who rescued him from the Atlantic Ocean last November, as the two huddled in a closet. The relatives were kept at bay in another room while a female agent wrapped Elian in a blanket and rushed him into a waiting van, assuring him in Spanish he was on his way to his father. The entire operation took less than three minutes.
ELIAN SHOWS NO SIGN OF STRESS
Elian was then flown to Andrews Air Force Base and handed over to his father, a Cuban tourism worker, nearly five months after the boy survived a migrant smuggling boat disaster in which his mother and 10 others died.
Gregory Craig, the attorney for the father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, said there was ``huge relief'' on his client's face when he finally saw his son.
Elian was "totally at ease. He was laughing with his little brother Hianny. He was hugging his father. I saw no evidence that he had gone through this traumatic experience," Craig said.
Soon after the reunion, the Miami relatives flew to Washington and told reporters they wanted to see the boy, now staying with his immediate family at a house on the base.
The fisherman who rescued the child from the Florida Straits complained the boy had been taken like a hostage in the dead of night. "He (Elian) was shouting, 'Que pasa, Que pasa?' (What's happening?), 'Help me, Help me.' They ripped him from my arms. They held the family with guns in the living room,'' Dalrymple said.
"They're animals," a weeping Marisleysis Gonzalez, the boy's cousin, shouted to protesters after the raid.
RENO SAYS SHE TRIED TO NEGOTIATE
Attorney General Janet Reno told a news conference soon after the raid that she had tried until the last moment to find a peaceful way to reunite Elian and his father but the Miami relatives thwarted her at every turn.
"At every step of the way, the Miami relatives kept moving the goal posts and raising hurdles," Reno said. She defended the force used to seize the boy and said the agents involved "did an excellent job.
"When law enforcement goes into a situation like that, it must be prepared for the unexpected," she said.
Reno, who is from Miami and had shown a deep personal interest in the case, said Elian was a child who needed to be cherished and should have some private time with his father.
"And that is what this case is still all about -- the bond between a father and a son. Juan Miguel Gonzalez wants to be with his son, and that will happen now," Reno said.
President Clinton was briefed through the night on the Justice Department's plans and gave the green light for federal agents to return him to his father once it was apparent efforts to negotiate a voluntary return had failed.
"I supported the decisions that were made ... and I believe that it was the right thing to do," Clinton told reporters at the White House. "The law has been upheld.''
Leading Republicans condemned the raid, comparing it to Castro's own tactics. The party's presidential candidate George W. Bush said he was "profoundly saddened and troubled" by it.
White House spokesman Joe Lockhart accused Republican lawmakers of playing politics with the Elian custody battle and of trying to exploit the situation.
U.S. authorities spent weeks trying to arrange a peaceful transfer of Elian from his great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez to his father but were stopped at every turn.
This week, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled that Elian would have to stay in the United States pending the outcome of an appeal filed by the Miami relatives against a Miami federal court decision backing a U.S. government decision to return the boy to his father.
Late on Thursday, Clinton said the ruling removed the last remaining objection to the reunion of father and son. But the Miami relatives still insisted the boy would not be handed over without conditions.
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