Dozens released since Louisiana standoff erupted

 BY CAROL ROSENBERG

 ST. MARTINVILLE, La. -- In a new complication to a sticky standoff with Cuban
 prisoners holding their jailers hostage here, law enforcement officials indicated
 Wednesday that 90 other inmates who did not join the jailhouse uprising were
 also captives of the Cubans.

 Only one prisoner was released overnight, for medical reasons. And as a sign of
 perhaps simmering frustration in the parish prison, someone stuck a white flag
 made from a torn bedsheet outside the cafeteria window Wednesday -- and
 dropped a note.

 In response Wednesday afternoon, after intense negotiations between the FBI
 and the hostage-takers, an additional 29 inmates were released.

 ``It does appear that these detainees are not allowing the other inmates to leave
 on their free will,'' FBI spokeswoman Kriss Fortunato said.

 Federal, state and local SWAT teams have surrounded the squat two-story
 jailhouse in the center of this south-central Louisiana town since Monday, soon
 after five Cuban detainees wielding homemade knives took the warden and two
 deputies hostage.

 Law enforcement officials refused to give details of the note, but said the
 hostage-takers were not located in that portion of the prison. Joined by up to four
 other Cubans, the five inmates who began the uprising held warden Todd Louvierre
 and two deputies in the jail's command center and adjacent warden's office --
 which controlled the second-story doors.

 The members of the original group of five were identified as Jonne Ponte Landrian,
 28; Gerardo Santana Morales, 26; Lazaro Orta Elisalte, 48; Roberto Villar Grana,
 36, and Juan Gualberto Miranda Salo, 45.

 Bulletproof-vested federal and state tactical teams appeared to occupy part of the
 first floor of the building, coming and going with supplies. Pizza was delivered
 Tuesday night and Fortunato said food went in Wednesday too. Parish Sheriff
 Capt. Audrey Thibodeaux said that ``approximately 100 inmates'' were inside the
 prison Wednesday, after the detainees permitted the evacuation of 49 inmates
 late Monday. FBI and Immigration and Naturalization Service negotiators found
 the hostage-takers ``very cooperative and sympathetic'' to the plight of the 100,
 FBI spokesman Fortunato said, and were willing to release inmates if other health
 conditions arose.

 In all, five inmates were released Tuesday and Wednesday to local health
 facilities, two lightly wounded in ``an altercation'' that broke out beyond the control
 of the hostage-takers and three with preexisting health conditions, such as
 hypertension.

 QUIET TOWN

 Before this week's standoff the only big excitement in this lazy little parish town of
 9,000 residents comes during Mardi Gras, in February, when neighbors from St.
 Martin Parish, or county, crowd the streets.

 Industrial employment is provided primarily by a sugar mill, a Fruit-of-the-Loom
 factory and the barbed-wire-topped, 160-prisoner jail, which charges the U.S.
 government $45 per day for each federal prisoner, compared to the state rate of
 about $23-$24 a day.

 By Wednesday, huge television satellite trucks were parked amid the strings of
 Christmas lights and Santa Claus displays that festooned the downtown area
 around the jail. Yellow police tape cordoned off the block around the jail. Nearby,
 FBI and sheriff spokeswomen stood amid elf and gift displays on the adjacent
 courthouse front steps to brief reporters.

 The town itself was transformed into an alphabet soup of federal and state law
 enforcement agents, who appeared to number well over 200.

 IN CHARGE

 FBI, INS and Border Police officers were in charge, backed by local sheriffs and
 Louisiana State Police who patrolled the jail's perimeter, some toting 12-gauge
 shotguns loaded with anti-riot buckshot.

 Some agents wore black body armor, masks and helmet while local law enforcers
 were clad in everything from beige uniforms to military fatigues.

 Still unclear is what triggered the uprising other than ``opportunity,'' said Acting
 District Attorney J. Phil Haney, who was monitoring the standoff for possible
 future prosecution. The Cubans took the hostages at 4:15 p.m. Monday, while
 being moved from a routine exercise period on the prison's roof back to their cells,
 Thibodeaux said.

 The 100-plus prisoners inside included 68 foreign nationals placed there by the
 immigration service, 60 of them Cubans, INS spokeswoman Amy Otten said.
 When the uprising erupted, 72 of the 160 inmates were Cubans held for
 deportation by the INS, she added; some were evacuated Monday.

 An unspecified number of other Cubans were in the jail as well, serving Louisiana
 jail sentences.

 LEGAL LIMBO

 The Cuban INS detainees are caught up in a legal limbo of sorts because, under
 the 1996 Immigration Reform Act, foreign nationals who have been convicted of
 felonies and certain misdemeanors are to be deported back to their home
 countries -- even if they had green cards, the symbol of legal permanent
 residence.

 But the Cuban government has so far refused to accept repatriation of the
 prisoners, so as many as 2,000 Cubans are being warehoused in federal, state
 and local facilities across the country while U.S. and Cuban diplomats engage in
 on-again, off-again negotiations on improving their 1994 migration accords. Some
 talks were held in Havana this week.

 Before federal agents cut most communications to the jail Tuesday, one of the
 hostage-takers outlined his demand to a Baton Rouge radio station, WCAC,
 where he spoke with talk-show host Wakeman Linscomb, who uses the on-air
 name ``Gator.''

 ``All we want to do is leave the United States [for] any part of the world, we don't
 care where they take us . . . how they drop us, whether it's an island or a desert,''
 said the man, who was not named.