Source:
Miami Herald(This story was broken by DU'er Scurrilous, who included it in a thread which had been ongoing about the case. It's so important it needs its own space!)
Cuban father will get custody in settlement
Posted on Wed, Nov. 28, 2007
By CAROL MARBIN MILLER
cmarbin@MiamiHerald.com
A 5-year-old girl at the center of an international custody dispute will remain in the ''sole custody'' of her Cuban father, who would stay in the U.S., under a negotiated settlement that ends a bitter, protracted courtroom drama.
Meanwhile, the girl's Coral Gables foster family will be allowed regular visits with the girl on alternating weekends, sources close to the negotiations told The Miami Herald.
After months of on again-off again settlement talks, lawyers for the Department of Children & Families and foster parents Joe and Maria Cubas on one side and birth father Rafael Izquierdo, on the other, agreed today to settle their conflict outside of court.
(snip)
In May 2010, Izquierdo would be permitted to leave the United States and return to Cuba with his daughter, sources say. If Izquierdo chooses to remain in the U.S. longer, or to seek permanent residency, the Cubases would be allowed to continue their weekend visits until Aug. 31, 2012.
Read more: Posted on Wed, Nov. 28, 2007
The captions:
#1. ROBERTO KOLTUN/EL NUEVO HERALD
Rafael Izquierdo, center, hugs his six-year-old daughter Rachel, left, and his current wife Yanara, right, in Miami.
#2. ROBERTO KOLTUN/EL NUEVO HERALD
Six-year-old Rachel hugs her father Rafael Izquierdo, who spent nearly two years fighting for her five-year-old half-sister.
#3. AL DIAZ/MIAMI HERALD STAFF
Attorney Magda Montiel Davis, right, talks with Rafael Izquierdo in Miami, Aug. 23.
#4. AL DIAZ/MIAMI HERALD STAFF
Attorney Magda Montiel Davis talks to Elena Perez, the mother of the five-year-old girl in the middle of a custody battle, Aug. 23.
(Al Diaz is the photographer who stayed in the house with Elián Gonzalez's drunken granduncle Lázaro and family until the INS came to pick up the kid, once the drunken granduncle announced he was not going to comply with court orders and surrender him to authorities, and Al Diaz snapped the photo they have used all this time, of the agent, his gun, Donaldo Donato or whatever, and the child.)
#5. AL DIAZ/MIAMI HERALD STAFF
Sports agent Joe Cubas, of Coral Gables, is fighting for the custody of a four-year-old Cuban girl steps out of a Miami courtroom, Aug. 23.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Those who've been following this case must be so happy the father who had been subjected to so much abuse on the witness stand has finally been given the right to raise his own little kid. This is good.