US Conspiracy Delayed Return of Child to Cuba

The conspiracy between Florida’s authorities and this US state’s Department of Children and Families (DCF) to prevent the return to the island of a minor child demanded by her Cuban father was denounced by the defense lawyer when interviewed by Escambray digital.

In this sense, Cuban-American lawyer Magda Montiel Davis highlighted the unusual provision of financial resources this case was allocated by the US government.

According to the father (Rafael Izquierdo Portal)’s defense lawyer, when the litigation was only half way, the US state of Florida has already allocated over 300 000 USD, a considerable amount taking into consideration that normally these judicial proceedings require only some 17 000 USD.

After a survey carried out by The Miami Herald, the defense team confirmed that Florida State’s governor Charlie Crist was monitoring the case in accordance with the intentions to politicize the process due to the US-Cuba disagreements.

Both Magda Montiel and her husband Ira Kurzban represented Izquierdo Portal’s rights to get custody of his daughter Elizabeth Izquierdo Pérez whom Florida’s DCF had placed with Miami residents Maria and Joe Cubas.

According to the Miami press, the DCF made use of around twenty lawyers and eight psychologists to grant the child’s exclusive custody to Joe Cubas, owner of a huge fortune accumulated at the expense of his sport headhunting activities in the island.

Montiel Davis said that since she first went to court last March 2006 to defend the father’s rights she was presented with clear proposals by the Miami’s Guardian-ad-Litem Program to give up her duties in favor of the father, who lives in Cabaiguán, Sancti Spiritus.

She also critized the partiality of this institution which was supposed to look after the minor’s best interests.

During the over-three-year process to get the girl back to Cuba, the defense lawyers Magda Montiel and her husband did not ask for any fees at all. For that reason they were both regarded as agents of the Cuban government.

The antecedents of this litigation date back to February 2006, when a Miami Court decided to remove Elizabeth Izquierdo Pérez and Dayán Sánchez Peréz from their mother’s custody due to her mental incapacity. They were then cared by the DCF for a while after which they were placed at the Cubas’ home, in Coral Gables in Miami-Dade County.