Cuban Five

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The Cuban Five (Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González) are five Cuban intelligence officers convicted of espionage, conspiracy to commit murder, and other illegal activities in the United States. They had sought to infiltrate US-based Cuban exile groups dedicated to overthrowing the Cuban government, whose presence and - the Cuban government maintains - allegedly illegal and sometimes violent activities against Cuba the US had tolerated for decades. They are currently serving prison terms in the United States. They have appealed their convictions and the fairness of their trial has received international criticism. ^[1] However, the US Supreme Court declined to review the case. ^[2] In Cuba, the Five are portrayed as heroes for having sacrificed their liberty in the defense of their country. To Cuban exiles in the United States, they are villains.^[3]

Contents 1 Background 2 Activities 3 Arrests, convictions and sentences 4 International criticism of the convictions 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Background

The Cuban government, whose agents the Five were, argues that since the 1959 Cuban Revolution there is a long history of acts of terrorism being committed against Cuba by those opposed to the Revolution. It claims that US-based exile groups such as Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU), Alpha 66, and Omega 7 committed such acts 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".^[4] 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, and 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 and United States and state terrorism#Cuba (1956-present)). As a result, the Cuban government had long sought to undermine the counter-revolutionary activities of anti-government exile Cuban-Americans.

[edit] Activities

The "Cuban Five" were Cuban intelligence officers who were part of "La Red Avispa", or Wasp Network, which the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) dismantled with 10 arrests in 1998.^[5] The network observed and infiltrated a number of Cuban-American groups: Alpha 66, the F4 Commandos, the Cuban American National Foundation, and Brothers to the Rescue.^[6] It also attempted to infiltrate the United States Southern Command headquarters in West Miami-Dade.^[5] The US government also accused the remaining four of lying about their identities and sending 2,000 pages of unclassified information obtained from US military bases to Cuba. The network received clandestine communications from Cuba via the Atención numbers station.

US organizations including the FBI had been monitoring Cuban spy activities for over 30 years, but made only occasional arrests.^[7] However after two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft were shot down by Cuban MiGs in February 1996 and four US citizens were killed, on the basis of information sent to Cuba by an infiltrator of the group, the Clinton administration launched a crackdown.^[7]

[edit] Arrests, convictions and sentences

All five were arrested in Miami, Florida, on September 12, 1998 and were indicted by the US government on 26 different counts, including charges of false identification, espionage and (for Hernández) conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the shoot-down of the Brothers to the Rescue aircraft.

From the day of their arrests, the so-called "Five" spent 17 months in solitary confinement.^[8] Evidence, which the President of the Cuban National Assembly Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada maintains "belonged to the defendants themselves and included family photographs, personal correspondence and recipes"^[9] - was classified as "secret", preventing the defendants and their attorneys from seeing it.^[9]

The trial, beginning in November 2000, went on for seven months and jury deliberations lasted a few hours.^[9] In June of 2001, the group was convicted of all 26 counts in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida in Miami, including the charge of first-degree murder against Gerardo Hernandez which the prosecution had applied to withdraw.^[9] In December of 2001, the members of the group were 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. In addition, the prosecution sought a post-release sentence of "incapacitation", imposing specific restrictions on them after their release, which would be enforced by the FBI.^[9]

After the arrests, motions by the defense for a change of venue, on the basis that Miami was a venue too associated with exile Cubans, were refused.^[9] 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."^[10] A year later, an application to change venue for the same reason was granted by the same court in an employment case with a Cuban connection.^[9] As a result the Five applied for annulment of the trial and a change of venue for a retrial; the motion was denied.^[9] Purportedly, the Five's appeal to a higher court was inhibited by further month's solitary confinement in early 2003, and by denial of access to their attorneys.^[9] 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.^[10] This was the first time a Federal Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a trial court's finding with respect to venue.^[11] However, on October 31, 2005 the Atlanta court agreed to a US government request to review the decision, and in August 2006 the ruling for a new trial was reversed by a 10-2 vote of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeal sitting en banc. Charles R. Wilson wrote the opinion of the majority.

On June 4, 2008, a 3-judge panel of 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.^{[12] [13]} The court held that the sentencing judge had made six serious errors, but nonetheless remanded the case back to the same court. The decision was drawn up by William Pryor.^[14] In January 2009, the Five appealed to the US Supreme Court.^[15] 12 amicus curiae briefs were filed.^[16]

In May 2009, in response to the request for Supreme Court of the United States review of the panel decision by Judge Pryor, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, on behalf of President Barack Obama, filed a brief asking that the petition for a writ of certiorari be denied. ^[17] On June 15, 2009, the Supreme Court denied review ^[18]

[edit] 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 ^[19], which is represented in twenty US cities and over thirty countries.

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.^[20] 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 has criticized 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. ^[21] 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. ^[22]

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). ^[23]

In the United Kingdom, among other actions, 110 Members of Parliament wrote an open letter to the US Attorney General in support of the Five. ^[24] Six others 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.^{[citation needed]} Blair declined to do so.

In April 2009 a Brazilian human rights group, Torture Never Again, awarded the Five its Chico Mendes Medal, because their rights had been violated.^[25]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• National Committee to Free the Cuban Five
• Miami 5 — site run by the Cuban newspaper Granma
• antiterroristas.cu — on terrorism against Cuba, and on the Cuban Five

v • d • e Cuba-United States relations Bay of Pigs Invasion · Brothers to the Rescue · Cuban American · Cuban-American lobby · Cuban Five · Cuban Missile Crisis · Elián González affair · Guantanamo Bay Naval Base · Helms-Burton Act · List of Cuba-US aircraft hijackings · Luis Posada Carriles · Mariel boatlift · Opposition to Fidel Castro · Operation Pedro Pan · Platt Amendment · Spanish-American War · United States embargo against Cuba · United States Interests Section in Havana · United States Ambassador to Cuba