Forced Residence

Fidel Castro has long complained that the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay is being used as a hideout by guerrillas and underground fighters against his Communist police state. New York's Republican Senator Kenneth Keating has a complaint of his own: that Cuban refugees are being held in Guantanamo against their will. The Navy last week answered both accusations.

All told, 358 Cubans have hopped the fence into Guantanamo. A few of them have since slipped away by one means or another. The rest are still on the base, because of a legal quirk. The base commander, Rear Admiral Edward J. O'Donnell, has no authority to grant visas to the U.S., and even if he did have authority, the U.S. Cuban lease agreement of 1903 does not establish Guantanamo as a port of exit for Cuban citizens. Eager to give Castro no legal grounds for demanding annulment of the lease, which runs in perpetuity and can only be terminated by mutual consent, Guantanamo officers carefully explain to Cubans who slip past Castro's guards that they cannot be authorized to travel to the U.S. Result: the Cuban refugees are put to work on the base.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.