Cuban Five

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The Cuban Five are Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González, five Cuban nationals who were arrested and convicted of espionage, conspiracy to commit murder, and other illegal activities committed in the United States. All five are currently serving prison terms in the United States.

1 Arrests, convictions and sentences
2 Exile views on the convictions
3 Cuban government's criticism of the convictions
4 International criticism of the convictions
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Arrests, convictions and sentences

The U.S. arrested the Cuban Five 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, seen 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 U.S. Southern Command headquarters in West Miami-Dade using other agentsand sending 2,000 pages of unclassified information obtained from U.S. military bases to Cuba. The network received clandestine communications from Cuba via the Atención numbers station.

All five were arrested in Miami, Florida, in September 1998 and were indicted by the U.S. government on 26 different counts. The charges included: the use of false identification, espionage and conspiracy to commit murder.

After the arrests, petitions by the defense to move the trial out of Miami were refused, although the jury consisted of no Cuban-Americans. They spent almost three years in jail between their arrest and the beginning of their trial. They spent 17 months in solitary confinement. The trial went on for seven months and jury deliberations lasted four days.

On June 2001, they were convicted of all 26 counts by a U.S. federal court in Miami and in December sentenced to varying terms in maximum-security prison: two consecutive life terms for Hernández, life for Guerrero and Labañino, 19 years for Fernando Gonzáles, and 15 years for René Gonzáles.

On August 9, 2005, a three-judge appellate panel of the 11th circuit court of appeals in Atlanta overturned the convictions and sentences of the Cuban Five and ordered a new trial saying that the Cuban exile community in Miami and the trial publicity made the trial unfavorable and prejudicial to the defendants.

^[1] In November 2005 this ruling for a new trial was reversed by the full panel of 11th circuit court ^[2] . As of now the original convictions are reinstated. A rehearing is pending in the 11th United States circuit court of appeals.

[edit] Exile views on the convictions

Some Cuban exiles, amongst them the family members of the downed Brothers fliers, ^[3], and Orlando Bosch, convicted of firing a bazooka at a Polish ship from McArthur Causeway ^[4], view the process that led to the convictions as fair and impartial, and thus support the convictions. ^[5] Still other Cuban exiles believe that it is hypocritical for the Cuban government, a government which they claim 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. ^[6]

[edit] Cuban government's criticism of the convictions

Mass-produced sign on a street in Varadero.

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. Althought 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 terrorism against Cuba has been carried out by exile groups such as CORU, Alpha 66, Omega 7, with impunity. Yet it is interesting to note that CORU and Omega 7 were disbanded in the mid-1970s and members of Omega 7 are still in prison in the United States.

In a 2001 report by Cuba's Permanent Mission to the United Nations, the Cuban government catalogued 3,478 deaths as a result of "terrorism", "aggression", "acts of piracy and other actions". ^[7] The events cited span the course of four decades and pertain to attacks such as plane bombings as well as the Bay of Pigs invasion and the War Against the Bandits between the government and anti-communist rebels in the Escambray Mountains. Althought the report was presented in 2001; nearly all of these events listed, occurred in early 1960s, when Cuba was facing a virtual civil war between supporters of the marxism revolutionary regime and members of the democratic opposition, and there only been few isolated cases of political violence in Cuba since the 1980s.

[edit] International criticism of the convictions

Since their conviction, there has been an international campaign for the case to be appealed, with support groups in twenty-seven countries.^{[citation needed]} In the United States, the campaign is most conspicuously represented by the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five ^[8], which is represented in fourteen cities. Other American 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 U.S. Government to remedy the situation.^[9] 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. ^[10] Furthermore, Amnesty International has declared, in a 2006 open letter to the U.S. 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. ^[11]

Eight international Nobel Prize winners have written and sent a document to the U.S. 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). ^[12]

In Britain, among other actions, six MPs wrote a letter to Tony Blair calling on the government to apply pressure on the US to act against terrorists in Florida and to release the Five immediately.^{[citation needed]} Tony Blair declined to do so.