HAVANA, April 18 (UPI) -- Elian Gonzalez is living a normal life in Cuba five years after he was taken from his Miami relatives.
The boy was 5 years old when he arrived in south Florida on an inner tube after his mother drowned on a trip from Cuba. He now is living with his father, Juan Gonzalez, in Cardenas, Cuba.
"I want him to be a good man, do good deeds, not do anything he will regret. Everything else is all right," Elian's grandfather, Juan Gonzalez Sr., told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Elian lives in a tidy blue home and has several pets.
"Sometimes it seems like a dream, something that should not have happened," Gonzalez Sr. said of the events five years ago.
U.S. agents raided the home of Elian's Miami relatives and took quick custody of him April 22, 2005.
The relatives and Miami's Cuban-Americans had hoped to keep him in the United States, but the federal government wanted him returned to his father and then to Cuba.
The Supreme Court ruled in the government's favor and two months later Elian and his father returned to Cuba and the life they now lead.
Elian's father declined interviews.
