By IANS
Rio de Janeiro : Cuban musicians Miguel Angel Costafreda, Arodis Verdecia Pompa and Juan Alcides Diaz, who had been missing in Brazil since last Tuesday, have asked the Brazilian government for political asylum, the Spanish news agency EFE said quoting authorities.
The musicians, members of Los Galantes, a Cuban folklore band, were on tour in the northeastern state of Pernambuco and are now in the custody of the police in that state, the justice ministry announced in a press release.
The Cubans were seen for the last time last Tuesday when they got into a taxi with all their instruments and suitcases at a hotel in Olinda, the historic city near Recife, where they had been staying.
They vanished just hours before they were to catch their return flight to Cuba.
A representative of the Cuban government who accompanied the musicians to Brazil and the other three members of the group have been back on the communist-run island since Thursday.
Brazil’s Conare national refugee council still has not issued a statement on the matter.
Last September, Conare granted asylum to Cuban handball player Rafael Costa Capote and to cyclist Michel Fernandez Garcia, who deserted from the Cuban sports delegation during the Pan-American Games held in June in Rio de Janeiro.
Two other Cuban athletes, boxers Guillermo Rigondeaux and Erislandy Lara also left their country’s sports delegation while it was in Brazil, but they were finally deported back to their home country on Aug 4, three days after police located them.
Upon their return to Cuba, Rigondeaux, the 26-year-old two-time world and Olympic champion in his weight class, and Lara, the 24-year-old world welter-weight champ, denied that they had defected and claimed that they had asked to be allowed to return to their country.
The Brazilian justice ministry did not receive any asylum request in the case of the two boxers.