A rchive Date
[ 18-06-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[Cuban jail for his new wife
By MICHELE MANDEL - Toronto Sun
June 18, 2000
In a prostitute's prison in Cuba, Ian Pickett's child will grow.
On this Father's Day, his first as a father-to-be, the Scarborough beer store clerk is separated from his pregnant new wife by hundreds of miles and endless communist injustice. "Is a prison a good place for a baby to develop?" he asks with the passion that has consumed him since he began this romantic, if risky, chapter in his life.
Pickett, 31, was on vacation in Cienfuegos back in February when he went into a grocery store near his hotel. A diabetic, Pickett was struggling to find foods without sugar but his lack of Spanish was making it difficult.
That's when he met Alicia.
The pretty 25-year-old was in the store and offered to translate. "I asked her out for dinner," he says in that dreamy voice he has when he talks about her, "and we spent the next seven days together. We just sort of clicked."
He knows what you're thinking: Attractive Cuban woman meets Canadian man in hopes of matrimony and a new passport. But Pickett insists that he wasn't taken for a ride. Not then and not now. "People are going to say that but I don't believe it. She didn't want me to spend all kinds of money on her. I've gone out with girls here who want to go out every day and spend money. And there was no talk of her coming to Canada when we met in February. It wasn't until April that I brought it up."
It must be said that he's been burned before. He fell in love with an American woman over the Internet, but that romance fizzled when she ran off with some of his cash. This time is different. This time, he believes, he's found real love.
But a heartless regime is standing in his way.
When his vacation was over, he left Alicia with promises he would be back. A couple of times a week, he would call her on the phone.
In April, he went back for a two-week visit with an engagement ring in his pocket. They spent four days together before this love story took a turn neither was expecting. "We heard the police were looking for her," he recalls, "and the next thing I know, she's in jail."
Her crime? The police officer from her neighbourhood, the one whose advances she'd spurned in the past, accused her of being a prostitute. And it is against Cuban law for prostitutes to fraternize with foreign tourists.
Pickett told them that Alicia was not a prostitute, that she was his girlfriend and now his fiancee. They had friends and relatives attest to their relationship. She had no record. Her only "crime," he says, is that she didn't like dating Cuban men. They were abusive, she told him, and unfaithful.
Pickett hired a lawyer for her and sat through a court proceeding he didn't understand and which would not allow him to give evidence in her defence. Still, they prayed.
They were astounded when Alicia was found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison. She couldn't tell them Pickett's phone number - he always calls her - and that was all the proof they needed to conclude he was just a client.
"It's asinine," he says angrily. "Their whole justice system is a farce. With all the evidence we had, a Canadian court would have freed her and there would have been an investigation into the police.
"She was very upset. She asked me if I was going to wait for her. I told her obviously I'm going to wait. What kind of guy am I if just turn my back on her? We just hoped that she could stay out of jail until at least I could get back down there and get married."
Last month, they managed just that. He bought her the most beautiful white wedding gown he could find and they exchanged vows in a civic ceremony in Havana.
She has lost her court appeal, despite their marriage and the fact that they believe she's pregnant. Canadian embassy officials have told him there's nothing they can do. So he's returned home determined to lobby his MP for help while his wife waits to be told when she must report to the prison for women who fraternize with foreigners.
"We've both talked about it. We're not worried about our marriage. It's the fact that we don't know when we're ever going to see each other again."
Once in jail, Pickett has been told, his wife is not allowed any male visitors. She will be released after seven months to await the baby's birth and then must return to serve the rest of her sentence. It will be years before they're together.
"I thought I'd be starting the immigration paper work that would have had her home by Christmas. Instead, I'm facing my first Father's Day with a baby coming and my pregnant wife going to jail."
And you think of how Cuba demanded, rightly I believe, that Elian Gonzalez be reunited with his father. Yet they turn a deaf ear to a Canadian father-to-be separated from his wife and their growing child by Cuban prison bars.
Michele can be reached by e-mail at michele.mandel@tor.sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA))]
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