MIAMI — Elian Gonzalez says he remembers how the boat bringing him and his mother from Cuba sank but suggests he doesn't believe his mother is really dead.
An ABC News interview with the 6-year-old was televised Monday, the same day that the boy's Miami relatives met a Justice Department deadline and filed a motion for an expedited appeals process to sort out the international custody dispute over him.
"We just received motion to set the briefing schedule and to set to oral arguments," said Robert Phelps, chief deputy clerk of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. "They want this to be set as quickly as possible, and there are to be no undue delays."
Attorneys representing the boy's Miami relatives filed the motion first thing in the morning, and a ruling could come as early as this week, Phelps said.
In the interview Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America," Elian said he remembers his mother placing him on an inner tube and that he fell asleep. Fishermen later found him lashed to the inner tube floating off the Florida coast, but his mother and 10 others died when their boat sank.
Elian, speaking through interpreters, didn't agree with all of that account.
"My mother is not in heaven, not lost," he said through his cousin Marisleysis Gonzalez, who is raising him in Miami and is among those fighting to keep him here. "She must have been picked up here in Miami somewhere. She must have lost her memory and just doesn't know I'm here."
She gently reminded him that he knows what really happened to his mother, and he continued gazing downward.
In an apparent bid to increase American support for their battle to keep Elian, the Miami relatives last week allowed ABC's Diane Sawyer to spend two days with the boy. Elian's father, in Cuba, is fighting for the boy's return.
In the interview, conducted last week at the private school Elian attends, the boy drew crayon pictures of the voyage from Cuba.
He first drew a wavy line representing waves, then a leaping dolphin — he has told people that dolphins kept him safe, keeping away sharks and boosting him up when he slipped down into the water — then himself as a stick figure in an inner tube.
Then he drew a boat, with people inside. He told of the boat having engine trouble and slowly sinking, and of attempts to bail it out.
Asked what happened to the boat, he said softly: "Water came in."
He drew the waves higher and higher, covering the boat.
The U.S. Justice Department late Friday told Elian's Miami relatives that they had until noon today to agree to an expedited appeal or the boy would be returned rapidly to his father in Cuba, according to family spokesman Armando Gutierrez.
In Washington, a federal official close to the case confirmed that the Justice Department plans to give the family's lawyers until April 3 to prepare and file their appeal.
In a speech Sunday in Havana, Cuban President Fidel Castro said subjecting Elian to the interview was "monstrous and sickening."
"You cannot do this without the authorization of the father," said Castro. "I sincerely think that this boy is at risk in the hands of desperate people, and the government of the United States should not be running this risk."
Castro confidently declared that Elian's Miami relatives had run out of legal challenges.
But he warned that, rather than allow the boy's return, Elian's Miami supporters, Cuban-American exiles, might kill the child or take him to a third country.
"They are capable of killing him rather than returning him safe and sound to the country," Castro said as he wrapped up a one-hour speech.
He spoke before more than 700 university students, saying "the Cuban mafia" could expose the boy to a serious illness in an act of vengeance against Elian's father or the Cuban government, both of which have battled for Elian's repatriation. He also said that according to "reliable sources in Miami," the child's "kidnappers" had discussed moving him to another location or even a third country to prevent his return to Cuba.
On the Net:
Judge's decision: www.netside.net/usdcfls/publications/elian.pdf
INS home page: www.ins.usdoj.gov
Miami relatives: libertyforelian.org
Coverage by Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma: www.granma.cu/sitioelian/indexing.html
ABC News: abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/elian000327.html