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The Cuban Five (Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González) are five Cuban nationals convicted of espionage, conspiracy to commit murder, and other illegal activities in the United States. Although the United Nations Commission on Human Rights declared they did not have a fair trial, all five are currently serving prison terms in the United States.
Arrests, convictions and sentences
The Cuban Five were arrested as part of a group of alleged spies known as the "Wasp Network." One member of the Five, Gerardo Hernández, infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue, which is regarded by Cuba as a terrorist group, and, according to the U.S. government, sent information back to Cuba that led to two civilian planes being shot down. The U.S. also accused the remaining four of lying about their identities, trying to infiltrate the United States Southern Command headquarters in West Miami-Dade using other agents , and sending 2,000 pages of unclassified information obtained from military bases to Cuba. The network received clandestine communications from Cuba via the Atención numbers station.
All five were arrested in Miami, Florida, on September 12, 1998 and were indicted by the U.S. government on 26 different counts, including charges of false identification, espionage and conspiracy to commit murder.
After the arrests, motions by the defense for a change of venue were refused. The jury did not include any Cuban-Americans but 16 of the 160 members of the jury pool "knew the victims of the shootdown or knew trial witnesses who had flown with them."
They spent almost three years in jail between their arrest and the beginning of their trial. The five spent 17 months in solitary confinement. The trial went on for seven months and jury deliberations lasted four days.
In June 2001, the Five were convicted of all 26 counts in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida in Miami. In December 2001, the members of the group was sentenced to varying prison terms: Two life terms for Hernández, to be served consecutively; life for Guerrero and Labañino; 19 years for Fernando Gonzáles; and 15 years for René Gonzáles.
On August 9, 2005, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta unanimously overturned the convictions and sentences of the Cuban Five and ordered a new trial outside of Miami, saying that the Cuban exile community and the trial publicity made the trial unfavorable and prejudicial to the defendants. However, on October 31, 2005 the ruling for a new trial was reversed by a 10-2 vote of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeal sitting for an en banc rehearing. Charles R. Wilson wrote the opinion of the majority.
On June 4, 2008, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the convictions of the Five but vacated and remanded for resentencing in district court the sentences of Guerrero, Labañino, and Fernando González. The court affirmed the sentences of Gerardo Hernandez and Rene Gonzalez.
Exile views on the convictions
Some Cuban exiles, amongst them the family members of the downed Brothers fliers, , and Orlando Bosch, a suspected airline bomber, view the process that led to the convictions as fair and impartial, and thus support the convictions. Still other Cuban exiles believe that it is hypocritical for the Cuban government, a government which has engaged in numerous summary trials and executions, tolerates "actos de repudio" ("acts of repudiation") in which citizens attack other citizens and which many international groups criticize for lack of a fair judicial process, to be criticizing the judicial system of the United States.
Cuban government's criticism of the convictions
The arrest and conviction incited an uproar from the Cuban government and sympathetic groups. The five convicted men claim that they were in Miami to monitor anti-Castro Cuban exile groups operating out of that city, which they claim were engaging in terrorist activities against Cuba, although anti-Castro supporters claim there has been no proof and/or conviction that those under surveillance by the spy network (ie. Brothers to the Rescue pilots; the Elian Gonzalez family, and other civic Cuban exile groups) have committed or have been involved in terrorist plots or acts .
Defenders of the Cuban Five claim that their actions are justified on the grounds that acts of terrorism against Cuba were carried out by exile groups such as CORU, Alpha 66, and Omega 7 during the 1960s and 1970s with impunity.
In a 2001 report by Cuba's Permanent Mission to the United Nations, the Cuban government cataloged 3,478 deaths as a result of "terrorism", "aggression", "acts of piracy and other actions". The events cited span the course of four decades and pertain to attacks such as the bombing of Cubana Flight 455 by men trained by the Central Intelligence Agency, as well as the CIA-supported Bay of Pigs invasion and the War Against the Bandits between the government and anti-communist rebels in the Escambray Mountains (see also Operation Mongoose). The frequency of these attacks has decreased in recent years.
International criticism of the convictions
Since their conviction, there has been an international campaign for the case to be appealed. In the United States, the campaign is most conspicuously represented by the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five , which is represented in fourteen cities. Other US groups, such as the Socialist Workers Party have been known to campaign for the release of the Cuban Five.
On 27 May 2005, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted a report by its Working Group on Arbitrary Detention stating its opinions on the facts and circumstances of the case and calling upon the US government to remedy the situation. Among the report's criticisms of the trial and sentences, section 29 states:
29. The Working Group notes that it arises from the facts and circumstances in which the trial took place and from the nature of the charges and the harsh sentences handed down to the accused that the trial did not take place in the climate of objectivity and impartiality that is required in order to conform to the standards of a fair trial as defined in article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States of America is a party.
Amnesty International criticizes the US treatment of the Cuban Five as human rights violations, as the wives of René Gonzáles and Gerardo Hernández have not been allowed visas to visit their imprisoned husbands. Furthermore, Amnesty International has declared, in a 2006 open letter to the US State Department, that they are following closely the status of the ongoing appeals of the five men of numerous issues challenging the fairness of the trial which have not yet been addressed by the appeal courts.
Eight international Nobel Prize winners have written and sent a document to the US Attorney General calling for freedom for the Cuban Five, signed by Zhores Alferov (Nobel Prize for Physics, 2000), Desmond Tutu (Nobel Peace Prize, 1984), Nadine Gordimer (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1991), Rigoberta Menchú (Nobel Peace Prize, 1992), Adolfo Pérez Esquivel (Nobel Peace Prize, 1980), Wole Soyinka (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1986), José Saramago (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1996), Günter Grass (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1999).
In the United Kingdom, among other actions, 110 MPs wrote an open letter to the US Attorney General in support of the Five. Six other wrote to Tony Blair calling on the British government to apply pressure on the US to act against terrorists in Florida and to release the Five immediately. Blair declined to do so.
References
- http://www.iacenter.org/cuba/cuban5-0206/
- U.S. court reverses Cubans' spying convictions
- Spies will challenge their convictions
- Terroristic Activity, Part 8: Terrorism in the Miami Area
- Cuban spies jailed in U.S. appeal for new trial
- CUBAN JUSTICE?
- United Nations report
- NATIONAL COMMITTEE TO FREE THE CUBAN FIVE
- Opinions adopted by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, OPINION No. 19/2005, pages 60-65
- AI accuses the US of breaking international human rights standards in the case of the Five
- An Open Letter to the State Department The US is Violating the Rights of the Cuban Five
- Russian Nobel laureate for freedom for the Five
- Nobel prize winner and 110 British demand the the Cuban Five' s liberation
External links
Articles on the activities of the Five
- "Couple accused of reporting to two Cuban spies", The Miami Herald, September 2, 2001
- "Lawyer: Accused spy to plead guilty", The Miami Herald, September 14, 2001
In defense of the Five
- antiterroristas.cu — Cuba vs Terrorism
- National Committee to Free the Cuban Five
- Free the Cuban Five Committee — Toronto
- Free the Cuban Five Committee — Vancouver
- Miami 5 — site run by the Cuban newspaper Granma
- Expedient Terror — by Jim Carey
- A Long March Towards Justice — by Ricardo Alarcon
- Justice for the Cuban Five — Council on Hemispheric Affairs
- Why Five Might Have "Conspired" to "Spy" — and why they might have been justified.
In defense of the verdict
Other news
- Cubans Jailed in US as Spies Are Hailed at Home as Heroes — Washington Post, June 2006.
- Cuban Prosecution recommends death penalty in hotel bombing case — Associated Press, February 1999.
- Cuban Spies in Middle of Swap Talk by Wilfredo Cancio Isla, El Nuevo Herald, January 26, 2009
- KTOK Radio Interview on the Cuban Five and the shootdown of Brothers to the Rescue -- aired on February 9 and 10, 2009, conducted by Radio Host, Reid Mullins.
- BETRAYAL: Clinton, Castro & the Cuban Five, a 2009 book that brings together 13 years of intensive research into the events of the shootdown of Brothers to the Rescue and the involvement of the Cuban Five, co-authored by Matt Lawrence and Thomas Van Hare; both authors are seen regularly in media interviews.
