Canadian convicted in US for Cuba trade - in Canada

Jim Sabzali was once a stand-up comedian, but even celebrating his son’s 13th birthday at his suburban Wynnewood home last week, he wasn’t laughing. Instead he was staring at prison with an electronic bracelet on his ankle and his passport -- plus those of his wife and children -- in U.S. government hands, along with the deed to his house.

The day before, the 43-year-old Canadian and his wife were clearly shaken by his convictions in a Philadelphia courtroom on 20 counts of violating the 1917 Trading With the Enemy Act and a single count of conspiracy that could cost him life in jail and more than $5 million in fines, though prosecutors were reportedly seeking 41-51 months without parole at his June 28 sentencing.

"I'm shocked," said Sabzali outside the courtroom. "Unbelievable," added Sharon Moss, his wife.

His crimes? He'd sold water-purification supplies to Cuba while living in Canada, a country where it's a crime to specifically not sell to the island. Seems that Canada and other countries, such as the U.K., take a dim view of the U.S. embargo against Cuba applying inside their countries -- a little matter involving national sovereignty.

Then, after a 1996 promotion brought him to the United States, he OK'd another Canadian seller's expense reports that included Cuba-related travel costs -- 13 of his 20 Trading With the Enemy Act convictions.

But it's Sabzali's seven convictions for sales from Canada that's caused what observers are calling a "public outcry" and a "storm of protest" in Canada. "The Canadian response to this guilty verdict needs to be swift and robust," wrote one columnist in the Toronto newspaper The Globe and Mail. "Allowing Canadian citizens to be subject to U.S. laws cannot be permitted to stand uncontested."

Even the famously anti-Castro Miami Herald noted northern protests and the possibility that the case "could lead to an international dispute between the United States and Canada over trade relations."

Which still leaves Sabzali with nothing to laugh about.


Controversy over the verdict wasn’t limited to the north. U.S. anti-embargo activists’ e-mail lists buzzed with reprints on the story with appended comments like “horrifying,” “scary” and “outrageous.”

Nor did the verdict pass without notice in the south, where youthful Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said to a massive Havana anti-embargo rally Saturday, "This morning we declare that the Cuban people and government express their support and solidarity with Mr. Sabzali, his family and friends. We support his right to trade with Cuba without being condemned by another country's laws, even if that country is the most powerful on the planet."


All this clamor is “misplaced,” says Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Poluka. “The bottom line is that this case has nothing to do with Canadian commerce. … All you really have is a sales agent working for a U.S. company.”

And, indeed, the case included two executives of the Bala Cynwyd-based company Bro-Tech and the corporation itself, all found guilty on charges similar to Sabzali's (though one exec faced only the conspiracy charge).

And the Canadian government apparently prefers the prosecution's spin, reacting to the Sabzali verdict merely with the words that it "will continue to monitor developments closely."

In fact, Canada "has had no contact, official or unofficial, with me," Sabzali says.

No surprise that Canada seems to be putting relations with its American mega-trading partner ahead of its trade with Cuba. But to many in Canada, it looks like Canadian sovereignty isn't in first place either.


The Sabzali case is another spark in the increasingly charged atmosphere between the U.S. and Cuba. True, there’s news of celebrities’ and politicians’ visits to the island, not to mention the recent unprecedented U.S. grain sales of more than $30 million.

But behind what cynics might call the "good-news screen," U.S. hostility is ratcheting up, and it has been for a decade.

Smelling blood when the Soviet Union collapsed, Washington unleashed its biggest-ever escalation of hostile policy to Cuba. New laws were passed and aggressive investigations begun -- Sabzali's and the controversial five Cuban "spies" cases among them -- all designed to finish off its small and infuriating island rival.

And now President Bush's administration --with its appointment, over congressional wishes, of lifelong anti-communist Cuban emigre Otto Reich to head up relations with the Americas -- is showing signs of further hardening U.S. policy.

Meanwhile, the notion that Cuba is nothing but a tropical Bulgaria appears to be crumbling before the island's stubborn survival.

"Cuba should erect a monument to the collapse of the Soviet Union," its famous president told the Philadelphia Daily News in December, "because it made us stronger and made us free. The ideas we sustained are much more noble than the ideas developed over there."

Meanwhile, Canadian trade experts advise that the Sabzali verdict "should be a reminder ... that U.S. authorities are inclined to opt for an over-reaching application of their law" regarding Cuba.

"There just is no room for leniency," one professor told the Canadian newspaper National Post.

But with Washington and Havana heading toward confrontation, it seems that something somewhere will have to give. For now, it looks like four years of Jim Sabzali's life.