Castro Foe Bosch to End Fight Against Deportation, Wife Says

MIAMI —  Anti-Castro extremist Orlando Bosch is tired of jail and will give up his fight against government efforts to deport him, his wife said.

“He doesn’t want to prolong the anguish, after two years of this,” said Bosch’s wife, Adriana.

Bosch has 50 days to appeal a judge’s Wednesday ruling that upheld the government decision to deport him. But if he notifies the government in writing that he will not appeal, he could be deported as soon as the State Department can find a country to accept him.

“He feels that to appeal would be giving his approval to the judicial limbo in which he has been kept,” Adriana Bosch said Thursday.

Bosch’s attorneys say they will give him some time to reconsider before notifying the government that he will not appeal.

And on Friday, Bosch’s son, William, began a hunger strike in Miami, vowing to fast until death if he is not given a chance to discuss his father’s fate with President Bush.

“We are here until death,” said William Bosch as he stood on the stoop of a store in Miami, having been driven from his cot in Jose Marti Park by afternoon showers. “We are not going to leave the hunger strike until we have an answer by the President or he comes to see us.”

Bosch said he wants Bush to allow his father to remain in the United States.

The elder Bosch, 63, has been at the Metropolitan Correctional Center since Feb. 16, 1988, when he flew to Miami from Venezuela. He spent 11 years in Venezuelan prisons on charges that he masterminded the bombing of a Cuban jetliner in 1976 that killed 73 people.

Bosch never was convicted of those charges, but the U.S. attorney general’s office maintained that his anti-Castro activities make him a threat to national security.

Immigration experts say it will be difficult for the government to find a country that will accept Bosch, who would likely be accompanied by his wife. A Justice Department spokesman refused to comment, other than to restate the government’s promise not to send Bosch to Cuba, where a death sentence awaits him.

The pending deportation provoked anger among Miami’s exile community, many of whom regard Bosch as a tireless campaigner against Cuban leader Fidel Castro.