Cubans Take 25 New Hostages at Atlanta Prison

ATLANTA — Cuban inmates in control of two federal prisons released seven hostages Tuesday but seized 25 more hostages early today at a prison hospital, despite a promise by Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III to delay deportations.

The hospital at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary apparently had been isolated since the takeover began Monday. One of the 25 seized there was quickly released because of a medical problem, said Sylvia Simons, a federal Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman in Washington. No other details of the seizure of the 25 were available.

Inmates in the Atlanta prison now hold at least 93 hostages, Simons said.

At the Atlanta prison, two of the seven hostages freed earlier by prisoners were released for medical reasons, and the other five were initially reported to have escaped. But the five were released with the aid of some of the Cuban inmates, Simons said.

One prisoner was shot to death when the takeover began Monday but officials earlier denied reports that others were killed. Twelve other people were injured here.

Earlier in the day, 315 inmates--including some Americans--who asked not to participate in the uprising turned themselves in and were escorted out of the prison by troops armed with automatic weapons.

At the Oakdale, La., federal detention center, where the first rioting erupted Saturday, prisoners brandished weapons, including knives, machetes and spears, displaying two of their hostages to show they were unharmed.

One reporter who was briefly allowed to observe the perimeter of the Oakdale facility late Tuesday afternoon said inmates had salvaged bricks, wood and even bedsprings to build a barrier about 80 feet long and up to three feet high between the administration build ing and burned barracks. But authorities confirmed later that they had used a water cannon to destroy the makeshift blockade.

The Oakdale Cubans rioted the day after the State Department announced an agreement with Cuba, calling for the return of about 2,500 of the 125,000 refugees who came to this country from Mariel in a 1980 boatlift. About 1,400 Cubans are in the Atlanta prison, and another 1,000 are detained in Oakdale.

The Oakdale prisoners are holding 28 hostages.

At both facilities, sharpshooters kept uneasy watch as negotiators sought a breakthrough. Twenty-eight SWAT team members from the Los Angeles FBI had been dispatched to Oakdale, while a SWAT team of 33 border patrol officers was brought in from Miami.

“We have been working diligently” to negotiate an end to the crisis, said Warden Joseph Petrovsky at the Atlanta prison, “but, quite frankly, we are at a standstill.”

Petrovsky, holding the first news conference in Atlanta since Monday afternoon, blamed lack of leadership among the inmates for the stalemate. “As soon as we agree to a set of demands,” he said, “new leadership takes over, and you get a whole new set of demands.”

The warden asserted that negotiators appeared to have an agreement at 7:30 Monday night but that it fell through 15 minutes later.

Petrovsky described the Atlanta prisoners’ demands as “everything from total amnesty . . . to a promise that we will not retaliate against them when they give themselves up.” He said he would guarantee that there would be no retaliation, but he could not guarantee amnesty.

The Cuban government, reacting to the uprising, issued a statement in Washington saying: “The government of Cuba wishes to declare and assure that it will take no reprisal whatsoever against the persons who return to Cuba.”

That pledge brought no response from the rioting convicts either at Atlanta or Oakdale.

Monday, Meese said in Washington that before a renewed U.S.-Cuba agreement went into effect, all detainees would be given “a full, fair and equitable review” of their cases.

But, asked if the inmates were convinced of this, Petrovsky said: “Obviously, they’re not.”

Meese canceled a six-day European tour which was to have begun Tuesday, to remain in closer touch with the prison situation, the Justice Department said.

The first guard released in Atlanta was identified as Willie A. Davis, who was treated for dizziness and chest pains at Grady Memorial Hospital. Another guard, Cleveland Thomas, was taken from the prison by ambulance and was admitted to Grady, said hospital spokesman Jim Driscoll.

For the second day in a row, helicopters carrying 250-gallon canisters flew over the prison dumping water from a nearby lake onto what remained of the prison fires.

The warden said the hostages inside the sprawling facility were being treated well. “As long as the hostages are not being injured,” he said, “and as long as we’re making headway, we’re going to negotiate this thing out.”

Many of the relatives of the inmates were not so patient.

Spurn Offers of Counseling

Gathered across the street from the prison, as they had been on Monday, many chanted, “Libertad!” and spurned offers of food and counseling from local officials.

Jeffrey Gardere, a Bureau of Prisons psychologist from New York, approached a group of women whose relatives were among the inmates and offered to “calm down anyone who is upset.”

He seemed taken aback when one woman shouted: “We don’t want no counseling. We just want to know what is going on in there.”

When several Atlanta officials offered to distribute food, another woman said sarcastically: “Yes, we Cubans love to eat, but the main thing we want is some information.”

Gladys Miranda, whose husband, Eladio, is a prisoner, has emerged as a leader of the wives who gather on McDonough Boulevard, across the street from the Atlanta prison. In an interview, she said the families “want information that is true. We want it in writing.”

Lost Radio Contact

Contributing to the family members’ frustration was the loss of radio contact that they had established Monday by using police scanners to monitor frequencies inside the prison. Officials apparently jammed the frequency.

Reports about the SWAT team buildup made many of the wives even more fearful than they had been before and more anxious to bring the standoff to an end.

In Oakdale, Cecelia Soda said: “We want to solve this problem. We want to help them (the officials).”

At the Louisiana facility, authorities cut off food, water and power to the prisoners, who by evening had not requested any supplies. The inmates reportedly were seen eating bowls of rice and are said to have about 1,000 pounds of rice from the ransacked commissary.

There were sketchy reports Tuesday afternoon of a few apparently minor confrontations between prisoners and authorities.

Media Access Restricted

Prison officials and the Immigration and Naturalization Service severely limited news media access and information, ordering the single designated pool reporter to leave when signs of trouble brewed.

Rep. Clyde C. Holloway, a Republican whose district includes Oakdale, said after touring the prison Tuesday afternoon that negotiators appeared to be making no headway.

Appearing almost to repeat the complaint of authorities in Atlanta, he said: “Our basic problem is there’s no real leadership there to deal with. We have a thousand people with almost a thousand different minds of what should happen.”

Holloway said authorities controlled only the main administration building at the front of the sprawling compound.

Holloway said 25 to 30 inmates staged “a little uprising” while he was at the prison.

He said the inmates rushed toward the administration building, “hollering in Spanish, which I unfortunately don’t understand.”

The group, vastly outnumbered by sharpshooters and SWAT teams, voluntarily dispersed within minutes, Holloway said.

“The Cubans have nothing to do and I think they kind of enjoy doing a little antagonizing,” Holloway said. “Our biggest hope is to wear them down.”

Asked if there was any communication with the hostages, Holloway said only that “we’re fairly sure that everyone is in good, good shape.”

He said three dormitories and a mental health office were still standing but that the rest of the complex was in charred ruins.

Also in Oakdale, Teresa Cordero, wife of inmate Jose Luis Cordero, asserted that the uprisings were “provoked by immigration officials. They made the prisoners fearful. They felt trapped. The news of the deportation was sudden and cruel.”

Such bitterness has stung federal officials and put local authorities on the defensive.

In Washington, representatives of about 80 families of Cuban inmates met with Associate Atty. Gen. Stephen S. Trott, who assured them that each inmate’s case will be reviewed individually before a decision is made on whether the inmate should be deported to Cuba under the agreement--the same assurance that Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III made in his moratorium offer Monday.

“We’ll take into consideration the crimes that were committed by the people involved, their family situation, any changes of circumstances, any things that we might have missed, any mistakes that might have been made,” Trott said after his 80-minute meeting with five representatives of the families.

Justice Department officials acknowledged Tuesday that hours after the U.S.-Cuban agreement was announced Friday, Bureau of Prisons officials had considered “locking down” the Atlanta penitentiary--restricting the Cuban inmates to their cells to prevent any violent protest.

Congressional Reaction

A counsel for one Senate committee said he got a call from a Justice Department official Friday to sound out likely congressional reaction to a lock-down, particularly whether it would draw protests on civil rights grounds.

Later, the counsel, who declined to be identified, said he was told that it was decided not to lock down the facility because a similar move in 1984 prompted the Cubans to burn mattresses and damage their cells.

At the 450-inmate INS detention facility in El Centro, Calif., officials said they tripled the number of guards in case of trouble by 55 Cuban prisoners who had committed crimes in this country, served their time in jails and prisons and been turned over to the INS. But there was no trouble. “Things are continuing as normal,” said INS San Diego District Director James Turnage.

At the maximum-security federal penitentiary in Lompoc, Calif., 17 Cuban inmates were placed into special “investigative custody,” and were not being allowed to mingle with other inmates. Warden Richard Rison said: “We have received information that trouble could spread throughout the (federal prison) system, and we’re not taking any chances.”

Throughout the day in Atlanta, prisoners were threatening to start more fires at the aging prison. The fires set Monday had burned themselves out, and only an occasional plume of smoke could be seen rising above the gray stone building.

At his Atlanta news conference, Petrovsky said that, when news of the Oakdale uprising reached his prison Saturday, he had to decide whether to lock down all areas or try to carry on as usual--a position Petrovsky described as “between a rock and a hard place.” He said he chose not to lock down the prison because that “would have resulted in an immediate riot.”

Asked if the prisoners were armed, he said: “They do not have firearms.”

However, an Atlanta SWAT team member, dressed in black, said he and others “always assumed” in such situations that inmates were armed. At the least, he said, the prisoners have clubs and knives.

Constance Tolliver, the wife of prison guard Danny Tolliver, gave a graphic description of the chaos inside the Atlanta prison during the first hours of the riot that began just before 11 a.m. Monday.

She said her husband was slashed with a knife as inmates trying to escape ran helter-skelter, shouting and lighting fires. “He said so many Cubans were chasing him and other guards,” she said, adding that her husband returned to the prison after medical treatment “because he has a lot of friends in there.”

At the Oakdale detention center, the reporter who was chosen to observe the perimeter of the prison at 3 p.m. Tuesday said an ambulance driver told him prisoners had tried to escape Monday afternoon by using a forklift to lift a back gate. The bid failed when the inmates ruptured a hydraulic line and were sprayed with oil from the forklift, he said.

The reporter also said that he saw inmates huddling in groups and loading rubble in laundry carts, apparently to build bonfires to ward off the night chill.

In a church auditorium about a mile from the Oakdale detention center, about 150 relatives and friends of the 28 hostages waited anxiously.

“We’ve been having prayer groups, and the mood is pretty up right now,” said Hardy Estes, who knows four hostage security guards.

“You see all emotions. People are angry, distressed, worn out,” he said. “It’s a very scary situation.”

Tony Sibley, whose cousin Charlie Sibley is among the hostages, said his family was optimistic.

“We’re a strong, praying family,” he said. “We’re hoping he’ll be home for a big Thanksgiving dinner.”

Lee May reported from Atlanta and Tamara Jones from Oakdale, La. Staff writers Ronald J. Ostrow and Ted Rohrlich contributed to this story, with Ostrow reporting from Washington and Rohrlich from El Centro.