Cuban coast guard officials fatally shot a suspected migrant smuggler who remained unidentified a full day later and arrested two others after confronting them in an apparent operation to ferry 39 migrants out of the country on a US-registered speedboat.
The Communist Party daily Granma on Thursday said the confrontation occurred the previous morning near Cuba's southern coast in the western province of Pinar del Rio.
The coast guard official in charge ordered officers to open fire after the three-man crew aboard the 12-meter boat failed to stop as ordered and launched "violent sudden attacks" on a coast guard vessel, damaging the craft and almost causing it to overturn, the report said.
It said that two men aboard the US-based boat were wounded by gunfire and taken to a local hospital, where one died on Wednesday afternoon. The identity of the dead man was not immediately known because he reportedly carried no documents and the other crew members refused to cooperate.
The two men carried US passports identifying them as Rafael Mesa Farinas and Rosendo Salgado Castro, Granma said.
Drew Blakeney, spokesman for the US Interests Section in Havana, said US authorities had confirmed the names of the two surviving men and that they were US citizens. He said they were seeking consular access to them in custody. But Blakeney said they had not confirmed the identity nor the citizenship of the dead man.
US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that authorities were trying to ascertain what happened, and if the dead man turned out to be an US citizen it would be "deeply disturbing."
Cuban authorities blamed Wednesday's confrontation on US migration policies they say encourage its citizens to undertake risky journeys to get to the US.
Ninoska Perez Castellon, spokeswoman for the Miami-based Cuban Liberty Council, blamed the communist government, accusing it of tolerating illegal migrant smuggling.
"The Cuban government has the authority to let them go in and out," she said. "For anybody to believe that all those people are coming in and out without the government getting a cut is ridiculous."
But she also blamed the smugglers, saying they often bring 30 or 40 people on a boat made for six, charging them around US$10,000 each.
Granma said the passports of the two surviving men showed they recently visited Mexico, where Cuban authorities believe they had planned to take a boatload of migrants.
Cuban authorities later took 39 people they believe had been scheduled to leave the island on the speedboat into custody: 20 men, 12 women and seven children.
Most of the women and children were released, but some men remained in custody pending further questioning, the newspaper said.
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