Heriberto Mederos: A tale of torture and intrigue

A tale of torture and intrigue

From Castro's Cuba, a baroque account of abuse and, now, finally, retribution

By Chitra Ragavan

Posted 9/2/01

In April 1992, a retired Miami businessman named Eugenio de Sosa Chabau paid his weekly visit to an aged aunt at the Hialeah Convalescent Home. The visits had always been quiet family moments. But on this day, Chabau was horrified when he recognized a nurse named Eriberto Mederos. By Chabau's telling, the man was really Heriberto Mederos, a notorious head nurse at the Havana (formerly Mazorra) Psychiatric Hospital. Chabau says he was tortured by Mederos. His offense? In 1962, Chabau smuggled out a secret message to his Choate classmate President John F. Kennedy--telling him Soviet missiles were on their way to Cuba. That landed him in prison for nearly 21 years, including five months at Mazorra.

Mederos allegedly drugged Chabau and also zapped him with electric shocks. Stunned after seeing Mederos in Florida, Chabau, now 85, says that when he returned home, he told other Cuban-Americans. Some had also been tortured at Mazorra. They alerted the FBI and two Cuban-American members of Congress, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart. The FBI opened an investigation. U.S. News has learned that the inquiry resulted in two findings. The first was that Mederos had tortured people. The second was that there were no laws at the time under which he could be prosecuted.

Instead, the FBI placed its report in Mederos's immigration file. In May 1992, Mederos applied for citizenship. In March 1993, Diaz-Balart placed Chabau's account in the Congressional Record. But despite the publicity, in May 1993, nine years after Mederos had followed his wife to the United States, the Immigration and Naturalization Service granted Mederos citizenship. He has also received two state nursing licenses. This year, he received a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

Now, after prodding by Richard Krieger, a human-rights activist who runs International Education Missions, federal prosecutors in Miami plan to present evidence to a grand jury this week, U.S. News has learned. They will allege that Mederos lied on his citizenship application, a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. If indicted and convicted, Mederos would also have his citizenship revoked, but it's unclear whether he could be deported to Cuba. He would become the first person prosecuted in U.S. courts for a crime relating to human-rights abuses committed outside the United States after World War II.

Mederos declined several requests for an interview. When a reporter knocked on the door of his home in the Allapattah neighborhood of Miami, Mederos said cordially, in Spanish: "I do not speak to the press. The press has used my words in the past wrongfully." When asked about his past, Mederos smiled: "That's a very long story and distant story." In 1992, Mederos told the Miami Herald that he did give electric shocks. "But," he added, "it was never done with the intent to torture. I only did what the doctors ordered."

Belkis Ferro disagrees. When she was 16, she was labeled an anti-Castro rebel, sent for two weeks to Mederos's wards, then sentenced to four years in prison. Now 46, she says Mederos not only gave her electric shocks but also insulin shots--although she was not a diabetic. Ferro is among 18 Cuban-Americans in Florida who recently signed legal depositions identifying Mederos as El Enfermero, or "The Nurse." Mederos, she says, tortured hundreds of Cuban political prisoners.

Great expectations. Despite these allegations, Mederos will not be prosecuted specifically for his alleged atrocities because the statute of limitations has passed. Instead, using a novel legal theory proposed by Krieger, prosecutors could charge Mederos for lying on a citizenship application form, which has a 10-year statute of limitations.

The case would mark the first time an alleged human-rights violator would be prosecuted on charges of lying on a citizenship form. Prosecutors have successfully used a similar strategy over the past two decades to denaturalize Nazi war-crimes suspects. Now they're likely to focus on Mederos's answers to two key questions on his citizenship application: whether he ever ordered or participated in political persecution and whether he had ever supported the Communist Party. Mederos said "No" to both questions.

After so many years, emotions are running higher than ever. For many Cuban-Americans, their old nemesis seems poised, finally, to face justice. For Chabau, the integrity of his adopted country is the issue. If Mederos is not prosecuted now, Chabau says, he is "going to lose a lot of faith in the United States."

With Ricardo Castillo and Mark Madden