Drama at port unfolds slowly

  BY NANCY SAN MARTIN

  Cuban dissidents across the island, most of them arrested only two weeks ago, went on trial behind closed doors Thursday as the government moved swiftly to punish
  some of its best known and most vocal critics.

  At least a dozen of the 83 defendants face possible life sentences in a series of trials condemned by a number of countries and international organizations. The U.S.
  government called the proceedings a ``kangaroo court.''

  ''The Castro regime's actions are the most despicable act of political repression in the Americas in a decade,'' said Philip Reeker, a State Department spokesman. ``While the rest of the hemisphere has moved toward greater freedom, the anachronistic Cuban government appears to be retreating into Stalinism.''

  50 HELD ON FERRY

  Meanwhile, about 30 miles west of Havana, Fidel Castro took center stage at the Port of Mariel in a marathon negotiation with hijackers of a ferry boat that had been towed back to Cuba and tied to a pier following a failed attempt at reaching the United States.

  By early evening, the ferry incident appeared to be resolved, according to media reports out of Havana, as Castro and his entourage left the scene.

  Minutes later, they were followed by at least seven ambulances and a military convoy that included at least seven jeeps and two buses, one filled with green-uniformed
  soldiers and the other with black-bereted special police officers.

  The site of the unfolding drama evoked reminders of the mass exodus of Cubans across the Florida Straits in 1980 because Mariel was the focal point of the huge wave of migration that began exactly 23 years ago this week with the takeover of the Peruvian Embassy in Havana.

  Aboard the ferry on Thursday, at least eight men armed with guns and knives were holding as many as 50 people hostage in a hijacking that began early Wednesday
  morning. Castro appeared in the morning and remained more than six hours.

  At one point, the government issued a terse and ominous public warning designed to underline its resolve:

  'Force will be used if the hostages' situation becomes critical,'' warned a statement read on a midday broadcast.

  The statement said the hijackers had only agreed to release two women and a man with health problems.

  The boat was hijacked in Havana Bay and forced to sail toward Florida. But it ran out of fuel about 30 miles at sea and the Cuban government eventually persuaded the hijackers to let the boat be towed to Mariel for fuel, according to a government statement.

  The seizure of the vessel was the third hijacking incident in two weeks, raising concern that a crisis of Mariel-like proportions was brewing.

  The concerns were serious enough for the United States to ask Cuba to allow the head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, James Cason, to issue a warning through its state-run media outlets that hijackers would be prosecuted in the United States and would not be eligible for residency.

  Cuba also has blamed the United States -- and Cason, in particular -- of actively supporting the island's opposition.

  Most of the dissidents currently on trial were among as many as 83 taken into custody in arrests that began March 18.

  The government did not provide information on Thursday's trials, which were carried out in at least five provinces across the island.

  Among those facing life sentences are economist Martha Beatriz Roque, a longtime activist, and opposition political leaders Osvaldo Alfonso Valdés and Héctor Palacios. Others, including independent journalist Raúl Rivero, face 20 years in prison.

  ''This is not a trial,'' said María de los Angeles Menéndez, who showed up to support the defendants at Thursday's proceedings. ``They are going to put on a show. The
  sentences are already decided.''

  U.S. SENATORS

  As the trials opened, nine U.S. senators favoring an end to American restrictions on trade with and travel to Cuba released a letter expressing their concerns.

  ''These arrests are deplorable, and we hope that your government will immediately release these dissidents,'' members of the Senate Cuba Working Group wrote to
  Dagoberto Rodríguez, chief of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington. ``Unless corrected, the recent actions of the Cuban government will only undermine efforts to expand contacts between the two countries.''

  This report was supplemented with material from Herald wire services.