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 For Immediate Release
Jun 26, 2000 Contact: Press Office
202-646-5172


JUDICIAL WATCH JOINS ELIAN CASE

Dual-track Effort To Stop Repatriation


(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch has been enlisted by the Lazaro Gonzalez family to help pursue a "dual track" legal effort to prevent six-year-old Elian from being returned to Cuba without a proper INS asylum hearing.

The 11th-hour move, taken over the weekend, teams Judicial Watch as co-counsel with Kendall Coffey and Manny Diaz, the family's Miami attorneys, who had previously filed appeals concerning a federal court decision that the boy was not entitled to a hearing, despite his previously stated wishes to remain in the United States and his signature on an asylum petition filed after he was rescued at sea when the boat carrying his mother sank, killing most of the others on board.

"We plan to go into the lower court and seek to set aside the lower court's judgment on the basis of fraud," said Larry Klayman, Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel. Coffey, Diaz and their team will also pursue the case in the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Smoking gun" Immigration and Naturalization Service documents obtained by Judicial Watch were not considered by the lower court. They show collusion between the Clinton-Gore Administration and the Fidel Castro regime in the Elian affair, so "therefore the judgment against Elian's petition for asylum was procured by fraud and should be set aside," stated Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel Larry Klayman.

Judicial Watch is a public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes government corruption.

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