[Peace-discuss] Our shameful treatment of the Cuban Five

[C. G. Estabrook]

	A decade of infamy
	International solidarity committees are speaking out in 109
	countries against the continued detention of the Cuban Five,
	writes Faiza Rady

Friday, 12 September, marks the tenth year of imprisonment in United States high 
security jails of the "Cuban Five": Gerardo Hernandez, Gerardo Labanino, 
Fernando Gonzalez, Rene Gonzales and Antonio Guerrero.

The five went to the US in the early 1990s with the mission to gather 
information about Cuban-American terrorist attacks against Cuba. The Cuban 
government passed on their documentation to the FBI, assuming that the agency 
was in the business of combating terrorism. It was a mistake. Rather than arrest 
their own home grown Miami-based terrorists, the FBI arrested the five visiting 
Cubans in Miami on charges of "intent to commit espionage" and "threatening US 
national security".

"This is utterly shocking," says renowned writer and political activist Noam 
Chomsky. "Cuba approached the United States with an offer to cooperate in 
combating terrorism, and in fact the FBI sent people to Cuba to get information 
from the Cubans about it. The next thing was that Cubans who had infiltrated the 
terrorist groups in the US were arrested."

It was a bizarre instance of clamping down on those combating terrorism while 
letting real terrorists go free.

This Friday, 346 committees of solidarity with the Cuban Five in 109 countries 
plan to demonstrate in front of US embassies, hold vigils and organise 
speak-outs about the Cuban political prisoners. On Saturday, a concert entitled 
"Five Stars and a Song" will take place in New York, with the special 
participation of actor Danny Glover. The New York-based Committee to Free the 
Cuban Five and other progressive US solidarity committees are organising a march 
on Washington as well as actions in other cities, including Miami. Protests are 
also planned to take place in Montreal and Beirut.

Besides the solidarity of progressive groups and NGOs, international expression 
of support has been forthcoming from foreign governments and parliaments. In 
July, on the 29th anniversary of the Sandanista Revolution, Nicaraguan President 
Daniel Ortega awarded the Cuban anti-terrorist fighters with membership of the 
Augusto Sandino Order, saying that they had set an example of courage and merit.

In February 2006, 10,000 British citizens, including Nobel Prize laureate Harold 
Pinter, London's former Mayor Ken Livingstone, and 15 union officials signed an 
open letter to US Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales, demanding freedom for the Five.

In June 2006, a plenary session of the National Assembly of Mali passed a motion 
to condemn their incarceration. In July 2006, the Venezuelan parliamentary 
group, at a plenary session of the Latin American Parliament, approved a 
resolution urging the US to release the Five. Similar expressions of support 
were extended by members of the left faction of the German parliament, the 
Bundestag, Irish MPs, Russian Duma deputies, Mexican MPs, and the Commission of 
Human Rights of the Brazilian House of Representatives, among others.

Last week, the Atlanta Court of Appeals of the 11th Circuit rejected the Five's 
defence request for a retrial on the grounds that Miami's charged politics, 
backed by the city's Cuban-American right wing, had precluded any possibility of 
a fair trial. It is ironic that the court's decision to reject the retrial 
request reverses a 2005 ruling by the same court that revoked the conviction of 
the Cuban Five and ordered a retrial because they considered the city riddled by 
a "perfect storm of prejudice". Prior to this ruling, the Cubans' sentences had 
been declared illegal by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention who said 
that Miami's biased political climate precluded any chance of a fair trial.

"What you're dealing with in Miami is not simply prejudice against Cuba," 
explains Leonard Weinglass, attorney for the Cuban Five. "A Cuban-American is 
the mayor of Miami, a Cuban-American owns the major newspaper, a Cuban-American 
is the chief of police, a Cuban-American is the head of the FBI, and there is 
nothing wrong with any of this except that none of them could have achieved 
political office without having a very hostile attitude towards Cuba."

Jurors had solid reasons to expect a backlash should they vote to acquit the 
Cuban Five.

In 2005, the Bush administration refused to accept a retrial. In a highly 
irregular move, the Department of Justice told the Atlanta Court of Appeals to 
cancel its decision and asked a new 12-panel judge to re-examine the case. 
Ultimately bowing to political pressure, the court then denied the Five's appeal 
for a retrial prior to its second rejection of the same request last week.

The Five's charge of "conspiracy to commit espionage" is in itself highly 
contentious as it isn't contingent on evidence of actual spying having occurred. 
"It's the type of charge that the government makes when it cannot prove the 
actual crime itself," explains Weinglass. Not one of the thousands of pages 
seized by the FBI from the Cubans' dossier on Cuban-American terrorism contains 
classified government information. The Five were found guilty not of spying, but 
of the tenuous charge of "intent" to spy. In other words, all the prosecution 
had to do during the trial was to convince the jury that there was an agreement 
among the Five that they would engage in spying at some unspecified time in the 
future.

"This case is one of those situations where I believe that the US government is 
using the justice system to achieve a foreign policy objective," says Weinglass. 
"The Five succeeded in their mission. They interrupted planned attacks. They 
saved lives in Cuba. They prevented the destruction of property."

Cuban government sources estimate that since the Cuban revolution, 3,478 people 
were killed and 2,099 injured in attacks against the island. In 1997 alone, 
Cuban-American terrorists placed bombs in no less than 10 Havana hotels and 
restaurants, in addition to bombing one of Havana's airports.

Feted by their people, the Five are honoured in Cuba as national heroes. During 
their mission, the Five tracked down 64 terrorists scattered in the Miami area 
and recorded four hours of film, documenting illegal military training in 
various combat camps. Among other groups, the Five investigated Brothers to the 
Rescue, an organisation that has a history of plotting to attack Cuban 
facilities. Since 1992, the group has used planes to violate Cuban airspace on 
numerous occasions, flying at least twice over the capital Havana. They also 
attempted to fly through the Giron air corridor to take pictures of sensitive 
areas. One of their principal aims was to test the response capabilities of the 
Cuban air force.

A similar group, Alpha-66, is an outfit that the Miami Police Department lists 
as one of the most virulent and dangerous of Cuban American organisations. Since 
its inception in 1966, Alpha-66 has been part of the autonomous operations of 
the CIA, used in illegal operations to protect their CIA agents from potential 
prosecution. Alpha-66's recent record includes assassination attempts against 
former Cuban president Fidel Castro, bomb threats on Cuban offices in Mexico, 
the US, Ecuador, Brazil, Canada and Puerto Rico, and six armed raids on Cuba 
between 1992 and 1993. Besides dabbling in criminal acts, Alpha-66 engaged in 
prohibited attacks against a foreign country. "In accordance with US law, under 
the Neutrality Acts, no US citizen is permitted to attack a foreign country, and 
yet this has been done with impunity for the past 40 years," says Weinglass.

For the Cubans the struggle goes on. Upon hearing the Atlanta Court's verdict, 
Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcón told the press: "We are going 
to appeal to the US Supreme Court, the World Court, and wherever else we have to 
go with the legal material to fight this infamy."

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/914/in3.htm