Thaw in relations with U.S. could open doors for return

---

By Ray Sanchez

Havana – Times could be uncertain for the more than 70 American fugitives hiding out in Cuba.

Some have enjoyed lives as celebrity revolutionaries in the tropics. Many paraded around town, telling war stories and being hailed as heroes who stood up to “the Empire.” But their fate is unclear after a change in administrations on both sides of the Florida Straits.

“Who knows how untouchable anybody is,” said Vicki Huddleston, head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana from 1999 to 2002. ” Raul Castro’s government is extremely pragmatic.”

At least one fugitive is actually hoping that a thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations would open the door for him to return to the United States.

In 1984, William Potts smuggled a pistol onto a Miami-bound flight from Newark, diverted the plane to Havana, and spent 13½ years in a Cuban prison for air piracy. Now he has written President Barack Obama to request a pardon on the grounds that he paid his debt.

Potts arrived on the island after the United States and Cuba agreed to prosecute hijackers or return them home. He thinks the prison time he served here should allow him to return to America, where he still faces an indictment for air piracy in Florida district court.

“I’m not a terrorist,” he wrote in his pardon request to the White House. “Not even at the height of my sophomoric idealism could I ever condone terrorism of any kind.”

Potts said he hopes to spend time with his ailing parents in Atlanta. He is divorced and lives a spartan life with his two young daughters.

“I want to take care of my parents,” he said. “That’s all. There is not this great love for McDonald’s although I wouldn’t mind a Whopper right now. Ah right, the Whopper is Burger King. It’s been a long time.”

Other fugitives, though, are banking on relations between the United States and Cuba remaining chilly.

Charlie Hill, who was accused in the slaying of a New Mexico state trooper and hijacked a plane to Cuba in 1971, said the prospect of improved U.S.-Cuba relations didn’t worry him.

“I’m not really concerned,” he said. “I think improved relations will come down to a lifting of the travel ban. I don’t expect big changes.”

The United States also shelters fugitives wanted abroad – most notably Luis Posada Carriles, labeled a terrorist by Cuba – but the American government has used the dozens of wanted Americans here as a reason for designating Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism.

American fugitives in Cuba include black separatists, Black Panthers and Puerto Rican independence militants. To U.S. law enforcement, they are cop killers, bank robbers and common criminals.

In communist Cuba, the government welcomed them as political activists who faced persecution in the United States. The state has refused almost all requests for their return.

One of the more notorious is the former Joanne Chesimard, a leader of the Black Liberation Army and aunt of slain rapper Tupac Shakur. Now known as Assata Shakur, she has a $1 million bounty on her head in the killing of a New Jersey state trooper in 1973. But even with the Cuban government’s offer of safe haven, she remains in hiding somewhere on the island.

This story is filed under: Politics