' Cuba Returning U.S. Children in Reverse Elian Saga
Wed Jun 25,11:30 PM ET
By Marc Frank
HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba Wednesday took custody of two U.S. children allegedly kidnapped by their father, and promised to reunite them with their distraught mother, contrasting the incident with the headline-grabbing Elian Gonzalez saga.
Henry and Victoria Wissa, aged 10 and 8 respectively, were being cared for at an undisclosed location until their mother, Cornelia Streeter, could arrive to pick them up, according to a government communique.
The father, Anwar Wissa, was under arrest.
Streeter reportedly sent a letter to President Fidel Castro (news - web sites) through a friend, informing the Cuban leader Tuesday that her former husband had the children on a yacht docked at Havana's Hemingway Marina.
"At 9:30 a.m. today Wissa was arrested in a careful manner to avoid traumatizing the children," the government said. "Cuban territory will never be used as a refuge to kidnap children, even if the perpetrator, as in this case, is the father."
The couple were divorced in 2001 and a Massachusetts court granted custody of the children to the mother, according to the version provided in the communique.
Wissa then kidnapped the children and flew to Egypt, where he demanded $1 million for their return. He failed to win custody of the children in Egypt and is wanted by U.S. federal authorities for extortion and international kidnapping.
Streeter went to Egypt to claim the children earlier this year, but Wissa fled to Spain and then Cuba.
The Cuban government compared its quick action with that of the United States during the Elian Gonzalez saga -- a bitter seven-month custody dispute between the United States and Cuba. Elian, a shipwreck survivor whose mother had died at sea, was finally returned to his father in Cuba in June 2000.
"Cuba will never forget that when 5-year-old Elian Gonzalez was kidnapped by relatives who had no custody rights, more than 80 percent of the North Americans supported his return to Cuba, where his father and family resided," the government said. '
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