Elian will stay in US until relatives' appeals are over
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Your support makes all the difference.In a victory for the Miami relatives of Elian Gonzalez, a United States court ruled yesterday that the six-year old Cuban boy must remain in the country until legal proceedings there have run their course.
The ruling was a bitter defeat for Elian's father who had come to Washington from Cuba expecting to take home his son within days. But the court in Atlanta left in place an order that went into effect last Thursday, transferring custody from the Miami relatives to the father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. In theory, this allows the US authorities to remove the boy from the care of his family in Miami, although he cannot leave the country. The Attorney General, Janet Reno, must now decide whether to force the transfer.
There was delighted rejoicing in the Little Havana quarter of Miami when the ruling came out; the crowd outside the relatives' house - many with radios pressed to their ears - erupted in cheers. As news had spread that the ruling was imminent, hundreds of Cuban émigres converged on the streets surrounding the house, hooting car horns and waving national flags.
There was no immediate response from the US Justice Department or from Elian's father, who has been staying at the house of the senior Cuban diplomat near Washington for the past two weeks. Earlier in the day, Ms Reno had been forced to defend her handling of the case against accusations that she had been too hesitant in enforcing the law and was buckling under pressure from the Cuban exile community in Miami, her home city. When the ruling came out, she - with other senior members of the Clinton administration - was flying to Oklahoma City for ceremonies marking the fifth anniversary of the bombing of the city's federal building.
Elian has been staying with relatives in Miami since he was rescued from the Atlantic on the Thanksgiving Day holiday. He was found two days after the shipwrecking of a refugee boat in which his mother and most of the other passengers died.
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