Reno’s Vicious Prosecutions

To the Editor,

Those who managed the Elian Gonzalez debacle are not a credit to this country.

There are the media, which have left the public ignorant of the misery in Cuba under Fidel Castro; have smeared the Cuban refugees in the United States; and have written mendaciously of restoring Elian to his father when in fact he is being restored to Castro, who will “possess” him (to quote a Cuban official).

There are Attorney General Reno and her accomplices in the Department of Justice, who have broken our laws and our standards of decency in pursuit of their shabby objective. The shameful storm-trooper assault that seized the child did not surprise anyone who knew General Reno’s record.

Reno made her reputation as a prosecutor in the loony child sex-abuse cases in Dade County, Fla. An article by Rael Jean Isaac, who has written on these cases, gives some of the grim details (Manchester Union Leader, April 27).

One of the worst cases (called “Country Walk”) was marked by the “brutality with which Reno’s office extracted a confession: from a young woman who was kept in an isolation cell for 11 months till, sick and nearly deranged, she confessed to unbelievable nonsense.” “Reno personally came to the prison to put on the screws,” reports Dr Isaac. The confession forced out of the young woman sent her husband to prison, where he remains, 15 years later.

From another source we learn that Reno personally put intense pressure on 14-year-old Bobby Fijnje to confess to preposterous satanic crimes. Deprived of food, Bobby, a diabetic, was subjected to insulin shock (Satan’s Silence by Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker, p. 177).

A jury acquitted Bobby.

A number of the cases were later overturned, but only after the victims of Reno’s vicious prosecutions have spent years in prison.

In charge of the Elian hijacking is the president, whose behavior is inexplicable unless he has made a deal of some sort with Castro.

With such people in control of information, we can understand why a majority of Americans would be saying, send Elian back to Cuba. Ignore the wishes of his mother who gave her life to bring him to freedom.

Gerald Sirkin

44 Big Trail, Sherman                         April 30, 2000