Source: Guardian, The (UK) Contact: http://www.guardian.co.uk/ Copyright: Guardian Media Group 1999 Pubdate: 7 Jan 1999 Author: Jon Henley CASTRO ACCUSED OF ROLE IN DRUG TRAFFICKING Two Cuban exiles and a French photographer have lodged formal complaints with a Paris court against the Cuban president, Fidel Castro, accusing him of international drug trafficking and crimes against humanity, their lawyer said yesterday. Serge Lewisch said he had filed the complaints on behalf of Ileana de la Guardia, the daughter of a former Cuban army colonel executed in 1989 in a drug-smuggling scandal; Pierre Golendorf, a French photographer imprisoned in Cuba for three years; and Lazaro Jordana, a Cuban artist who also spent four years in jail. The suit is the latest high-profile human rights case brought against a foreign leader in France, and follows the detention in London in October of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Judges investigating the disappearance of French nationals in Chile have so far issued two international arrest warrants for Gen Pinochet, and are currently studying complaints of torture and murder against the deposed Haitian ruler Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier. Mr Lewisch said Mr Golendorf, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1971 while working on a book on Cuba, and Mr Jordana, who was given 20 years in 1980 for trying to flee the country, had suffered physical and psychological torture. Mr Jordana was detained in a cell two yards square, with no mattress or running water. Campaigns by Amnesty International eventually secured both men's release. Because of the gravity of the accusations, a judge will be required to open an investigation, but French legal experts say Dr Castro is unlikely to be charged with crimes against humanity because his status as head of state guarantees his immunity. In November a Spanish court declined to hear accusations that he was guilty of genocide, terrorism and torture. But the French allegation of drug trafficking could meet with greater success: under French law foreign leaders normally enjoy immunity only for acts directly related to the sovereignty of their state. 'If it can be proven, there is certainly a case,' one legal expert said. 'Drug smuggling is manifestly not part of the job description of a head of state.' De la Guardia was one of four senior Cuban military officers, including the revolutionary hero General Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez, executed by firing squad on July 13 1989. They were found guilty of embezzlement and helping Colombia's Medellin drug cartel smuggle 6 tons of cocaine into the United States. The scandal, the biggest since Cuba's revolution in 1959, followed years of steadily mounting evidence from the US intelligence services that Cuba had become a major conduit for cocaine and marijuana, and that the Castro regime was using the illegal revenue to break the US trade embargo and fund its military operation in Angola. President Castro has always vehemently denied that his country is engaged in drug trafficking. But Mr Lewisch said his client, Ms de la Guardia, had strong and previously unheard evidence that the Cuban leader was aware of the drug trafficking all along, that the operation had been officially sanctioned, and that her father and his fellow officers had been sacrificed as scapegoats to international opinion. He said she had not spoken out before because of fears for her father's twin brother, Patricio, who is still in jail in Havana. - --- MAP posted-by: Mike Gogulski