3 tied to anti-Castro militant sentenced

Three associates of anti-Castro Cuban militant Luis Posada Carriles were each sentenced to less than a year in prison Friday for refusing to testify against him.

Santiago Alvarez, Osvaldo Mitat, and Ernesto Abreu pleaded guilty in December to obstruction of justice for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating allegations that Posada lied to investigators in a bid to become a U.S. citizen.

Posada's case was thrown out last year by a U.S. district judge, but the government is appealing.

Alvarez, a wealthy Cuban national from Miami who has been Posada's benefactor, was given the longest term at 10 months. Mitat was ordered to serve eight months, and Abreu was given two months in prison and five months of house arrest.

All three were ordered to serve two years' probation. But Alvarez, a legal permanent resident in the United States, is likely to remain jailed because he now faces deportation proceedings in immigration court.

Miguel del Aguila, Abreu's lawyer, said the sentence was fair.

Gary Weiser, who represented Mitat and Alvarez, declined to comment.

Federal prosecutors charged that Alvarez, Mitat, and Abreu refused to tell a grand jury that they were aboard a boat that ferried Posada from Mexico to Miami in 2005 in hopes of derailing the criminal perjury case against Posada.

All three men had previously said they wouldn't testify because they feared being caught in a "perjury trap," foreign prosecution, and other reprisals. U.S. District Judge David Briones has repeatedly rejected those claims.

Posada, 79, was accused of lying to investigators in a bid to become a naturalized U.S. citizen. Prosecutors argued about how he sneaked into the United States from Mexico and other facts.

Posada, a former CIA operative and U.S. Army officer, has claimed that he was brought across the border in South Texas by a smuggler. But prosecutors argued that he really arrived in Florida on a boat from Mexico.

Posada remains free, living in Florida, but faces a deportation order. An immigration judge has ruled that he should be deported, but that he cannot be sent to Cuba, where he was born, or Venezuela, where he is a naturalized citizen.

The governments of both countries want him handed over to face charges that he plotted the deadly 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner while in Caracas. Posada has denied wrongdoing.