Cuban embargo foes retrieve confiscated medical supplies

PORTLAND – A group opposed to the embargo on Cuba has retrieved medical supplies that were confiscated by the U.S. Customs Service when members tried to bring the items into Canada for shipment to Cuba.

The items that were returned included hospital bedding, an ambulance stretcher, sutures, needles and other supplies.

Let Cuba Live has promised it will not try to run the supplies over the border, said Phil Worden, the group’s lawyer.

On Aug. 18, 2001, an estimated 50 to 70 people carried boxes of supplies into Quebec as U.S. customs officials tried to stop them.

Most of the boxes made it to the Canadian side of the border, where the group planned to mail the medical supplies from Montreal, but about two dozen boxes were confiscated.

It is legal for people to send goods to Cuba if they get a license from the U.S. Commerce Department, but the group refused to get a license.

After more than a year of negotiations between a lawyer for Let Cuba Live and the U.S. Customs Service Office of Foreign Assets Control, four members of the Brunswick-based group went to the customs office last week and picked up the medical supplies. Under the compromise, the group could retrieve the supplies that were seized in August but would forfeit equipment that was seized a month earlier. That equipment has been in storage in a private warehouse in New York.