Elian: ‘My mother is not in heaven’; family beats deadline for appeal

Alex Veiga

Monday, March 27, 2000 | 9:16 a.m.

MIAMI - As his relatives met a government deadline today to file an appeal, Elian Gonzalez said in his first TV interview that he remembers how the boat bringing him and his mother from Cuba sank. But he said he doesn't believe his mother is really dead.

About 100 people, meanwhile, gathered today outside the Little Havana home where the 6-year-old boy has been staying. The Democracy Movement, a Cuban exile group, has called for people to form a human chain around the home of Elian's great-uncle in case the government tries to remove him.

Elian was at the house today rather than in school; no explanation was given.

His Miami relatives beat the Justice Department's noon deadline and filed a motion for an expedited appeals process to sort out the international custody dispute over him.

The motion asks the federal appeals court to set a schedule for arguments in the family's appeal of a federal judge's ruling affirming the Immigration and Naturalization Service's decision to return Elian to his father in Cuba.

The federal government had no immediate response to the filing in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

A judge could set a schedule for hearing the appeal as early as this week, court officials said. It could be weeks before the case is resolved.

In the interview broadcast today on ABC's "Good Morning America," Elian said he remembers his mother placing him on an inner tube and that he fell asleep. Fishermen later found him lashed to the inner tube floating off the Florida coast, but his mother and 10 others died when their boat sank.

Elian, speaking through interpreters, didn't agree with all of that account.

"My mother is not in heaven, not lost," he said through his cousin Marisleysis Gonzalez, who is raising him in Miami and is among those fighting to keep him here. "She must have been picked up here in Miami somewhere. She must have lost her memory, and just doesn't know I'm here."

Marisleysis Gonzalez gently reminded him that he knows what really happened to his mother, and he continued gazing downward.

In an apparent bid to increase American support for their battle to keep Elian, the Miami relatives last week allowed ABC's Diane Sawyer to spend two days with the boy. Elian's father, who was divorced from the boy's mother, is fighting for his return.

In the interview, conducted last week at the private school Elian attends, the boy drew crayon pictures of the voyage from Cuba.

He first drew a wavy line representing waves, then a leaping dolphin - he has told people that dolphins kept him safe, keeping away sharks and boosting him up when he slipped down into the water.

Then, he drew himself as a stick figure in an inner tube. Then he drew a boat, with people inside. He told of the boat having engine trouble and slowly sinking, and of attempts to bail it out.

Asked what happened to the boat, he said softly: "Water came in."

He drew the waves higher and higher, covering the boat.

Since his arrival last November, Elian has been under the constant glare of cameras, typically seen playing in the front yard of his great-uncle's home or walking to school. The interview with Sawyer - the first of a three-part segment - was the first time he had directly talked to the media.

Mindful of Elian's age and the ordeal he went through, ABC arranged for a Spanish-speaking child psychiatrist with no prior connection to the case to accompany Sawyer.

In the segment broadcast today, Elian sprayed Sawyer with streams of colorful sticky foam and reminded her repeatedly to clean up the mess. He also gave out an emphatic "No!" when Sawyer tried to clip or touch one of his teacher's flowers.

In a speech Sunday in Havana, Cuban President Fidel Castro said subjecting Elian to the interview was "monstrous and sickening."

"You cannot do this without the authorization of the father," Castro said. "I sincerely think that this boy is at risk in the hands of desperate people and the government of the United States should not be running this risk."

Castro confidently declared that Elian's Miami relatives had run out of legal challenges.

But he warned that, rather than allow the boy's return, Elian's Miami supporters, Cuban-American exiles, might kill the child or take him to a third country.

"They are capable of killing him rather than returning him safe and sound to the country," Castro said as he wrapped up a one-hour speech.

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On the Net:

Judge's decision: http://www.netside.net/usdcfls/publications/elian.pdf

INS home page: http://www.ins.usdoj.gov

Miami relatives: http://libertyforelian.org

Coverage by Cuban newspaper Granma: http://www.granma.cu/sitioelian/indexing.html

ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/elian000327.html