Bodies Identified as Those of Cubans After Long Inquiry

[Jimmy2]

MIAMI — It took eight months, but with DNA and details unearthed by an independent journalist in Cuba, the authorities have identified all four bodies that appeared off the Florida Keys last summer with their faces gnawed by sharks.

The men were, as some of their Florida relatives feared, Cuban rafters — four of eight independent journalists and librarians who fled Cuba by boat on Aug. 15, only to be tossed overboard when Tropical Storm Fay hit a few days later.

“They felt the Cuban government was harassing them to a point where they thought they would be incarcerated, so they took advantage of the proximity of the storm,” said Ramón Saul Sánchez, founder of Movimiento Democracia, a Cuban-American group that helped with the case. “There is a belief that if you go out near a storm, the government will not look for you, and in this case, it cost them their lives.”

The Monroe County Sheriff’s Department, which covers the Keys, officially released their names this week: Osmani Segura, 35; Jorge Gonzalez, 19; Rolando Alberna, age unknown; and Iván Peláez, age unknown. The four other rafters, including Mr. Alberna’s brother, Raul, have not been found and are presumed dead.

Terry Smith, a detective with the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department, said the identities were difficult to determine because DNA from relatives in Cuba could not be obtained through official channels.

Family members in Cuba tried to help. “They took Q-tips and placed them in jars and Ziploc bags and anything they could find and mailed them up to us,” Detective Smith said.

But because the F.B.I. could not verify the source, the swabs had to be rejected. Instead, he said the case was cracked with information shared across the Straits of Florida and coordinated by Mr. Sanchez of Movimiento Democracia.

Mr. Segura was the first to be named because his mother, Nilda Garcia, lives just outside Miami and provided a DNA sample that came back positive. A sister of the Alberna brothers who lives in Florida provided DNA, and an uncle visited the morgue in recent weeks to determine by body shape which of the brothers had floated close to shore.

Detective Smith said the other two men — Mr. Gonzalez and Mr. Peláez — were identified through forensics and shoe-leather reporting. One of the bodies, for example, had a tattoo on his inner lip that said “Raquel.” With the help of a journalist in Cuba, Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez, Mr. Sanchez discovered that it was the name of Mr. Peláez’s wife.

Relatives of the rafters said they were heartbroken by both the deaths and what had led the men to leave.

“It’s the consequence of craziness,” said Nilda Garcia, the mother of Osmani Segura. “Because he was an independent journalist, he couldn’t get a job.”