Hostages Georgia

Federal authorities said Monday that a "small but aggressive minority" of the Cuban inmates holding 90 hostages in the Atlanta penitentiary appeared to be obstructing a settlement of the week-long prison takeover. Officials said there were no face-to-face negotiations on Monday with the inmates who hold portions of the 85-year-old federal prison, and there were only sporadic contacts on a telephone line leading into buildings occupied by the prisoners.

Cuban detainees who had controlled the Federal Detention Center here for eight days surrendered Sunday and released their 26 hostages, all in good health. The surrender came after intervention by Agustin Roman, the Cuban-born auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Miami. The detainees had demanded his presence since Friday, when an earlier agreement to release the hostages had broken down. Federal officials refused to release details of the terms of their agreement with the detainees.

Two dozen prison inmates worked in the dimness of a drizzly Saturday afternoon, fetching the stuff of survival from the rubble at the rear of the partially burned-out Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Observed through a 1,200-millimeter lens from atop the silo of a winery a half-mile away, the detainees hauled mattresses and buckets of water, sometimes shuttling the cargo on a wood-frame dolly. The water is critical to their uprising. Federal officials on Friday turned off the supply.

Cuban inmates in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary released four of their 94 hostages early today, shortly after the inmates had set two fires and broadcast a list of demands. The hostages were released as a gesture of good will, and no concessions were made by the government, a Justice Department official said. He said the hostages appeared to be in good health.

A secret deal to free 26 hostages held by rebellious Cuban inmates collapsed at the last minute Friday, and officials held out little hope of a swift end to the stalemate. Negotiators for the government and inmates at the Federal Detention Center here shook hands on a deal Thanksgiving night. But when they met to sign the agreement Friday, the roughly 1,000 Cubans apparently balked.

The Cuban inmates who rioted at prisons in Atlanta and Oakdale, La., are, for the most part, criminals who already have served their time. But instead of being released, they have become trapped in a legal limbo, detained indefinitely, men literally without a country. "This ought to be unheard of in America," John Lewis, a congressman from Atlanta, said Thursday. "This is a basic human rights violation."

Cuban inmates at the burned-out federal prison here freed one hostage unharmed Thursday night and tentatively agreed to release their remaining 27 hostages today. At Atlanta's riot-torn federal prison, meanwhile, Cuban inmates there rejected a proposal Thursday to release more than half of their 94 hostages.

Despite years of planning and millions of dollars spent developing special hostage rescue teams, federal officials responsible for dealing with the potentially disastrous riots by Cuban inmates have been forced to scramble and improvise responses because the crisis has presented challenges they did not foresee and are ill-equipped to handle.

Army commandos have been sent to the besieged federal penitentiary here, but a U.S. official said Wednesday that no effort will be made to storm the prison unless rioting Cuban inmates harm any of their 94 hostages. That kind of tense standoff also continued at the federal detention center in Oakdale, La., where another 28 hostages are being held by prisoners who have mutinied rather than face return to Cuba. The 100 Army specialists were flown to Atlanta from Ft. Bragg, N.C.

Cuban inmates in control of two federal prisons released seven hostages Tuesday but seized 25 more hostages early today at a prison hospital, despite a promise by Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III to delay deportations. The hospital at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary apparently had been isolated since the takeover began Monday. One of the 25 seized there was quickly released because of a medical problem, said Sylvia Simons, a federal Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman in Washington.