While Van der Veer's sentence seemed long for a case involving only plots and no actions, it was less than the death sentence that prosecutors initially said they would seek, and the 20 years they eventually requested.
``We are very grateful that it is only 15 years because when the trial started, they wanted the firing squad,'' said Miami lawyer Ellis Rubin, who was denied permission to attend Van der Veer's trial in Cuba.
Van der Veer, 52, who worked as a handyman for a Coral Gables church, was the first non-Hispanic U.S. citizen jailed in Cuba for security crimes in several decades.
State Department officials attended his four-hour trial Nov. 6 and later raised questions about its fairness, but never directly challenged the allegations against Van der Veer.
Van der Veer was arrested soon after he arrived in Cuba as a tourist in mid-1996 and was charged with soliciting guns and materials for gasoline bombs and planning to attack tourism targets.
Prosecutors admitted that none of the plans had been carried out, but presented 10 witnesses who testified that the American visitor had arrived with camouflage uniforms, a steel helmet and a combat knife.
Comandos L, a group of Miami Cuban exiles who advocate armed struggle against Castro, initially accepted and then disavowed reports that he belonged to the group.
Van der Veer's friends described him as a quixotic man obsessed with Cuba's freedom, and Rubin at one point said he would have argued at the Cuban trial that the defendant was not competent to stand trial.
Cuba allowed another Miami lawyer, Dominick Salfi, to attend the trial, but only as an observer. He could not speak with Van der Veer or his Cuban lawyer, and had no translator for most of the trial.
Neither prosecutors nor the defense lawyer made any oral objections during the trial, Salfi said, and Van der Veer made no comment to the court or to his attorney.
Copyright © 1997 The Miami Herald