Cuban Five

File:Svenskfreecuban5.jpg

This poster from a Swedish-Cuban friendship organization says: Free the 5 Cubans, political prisoners in the USA

The Cuban Five are Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando Gonzáles, and René Gonzáles. After being arrested in Miami in September 1998, they were indicted on 26 different counts ranging from using false identification to espionage and conspiracy to commit murder. In June 2001, they were convicted of all 26 counts, 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.

The arrest and conviction incited an uproar from the Cuban government and sympathetic groups, and an international campaign to free the five took form. The five convicted men say that they were in Miami to monitor anti-Castro Cuban exile groups which they claim were engaged in terrorist activities against Cuba; the Cuban government claims that since 1959, 3,478 Cubans died in such attacks, 68 of them occurring in the 1990s. [1] However, Holly Ackerman, professor of Latin American studies at Tulane University, argues that Cuba's contention that it is threatened by US-based "terrorists" is questionable at best. [2]. 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. [3].

Defenders of the Cuban Five claim that terrorism against Cuba has been carried out by exile groups such as CORU, Alpha 66, Omega 7 and Brothers to the Rescue, with impunity. The Founder of Brothers to the Rescue, José Basulto, was in the early 1960's involved in subversion and sabotage activities in Cuba, and once was involved in shelling a hotel which Basulto said was "full of Russians". [4] Brothers to the Rescue, formed decades later, sent planes into Cuban airspace to assist rafters emigrating Cuba as well as drop political leaflets over the country. In the course of this, Basulto's organization made many unauthorized flights into Cuban airspace and was threatened with being shot down upon further incursions. In 1996 two Brothers to the Rescue planes were shot down by the Cuban Air Force killing all four people onboard. Basulto, who was flying another plane, survived this incident.

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 Hernandez, infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue and sent information back to Cuba that led to the downing of the plane. The remaining four lied about their identities and sent 2,000 pages of unclassified information obtained from U.S. military bases to Cuba.

After the arrests, petitions by the defense to move the trial out of Miami were refused, although the jury consisted no Cuban-Americans [5]. They spent almost three years in jail between their arrest and the beginning of their trial. The trial went on for seven months, but jury deliberations lasted four days.

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. In November 2005 this ruling for a new trial was reversed by the full panel of 11th circuit court [6] . As of now the original convictions are reinstated. A rehearing is pending in the 11th United States circuit court of appeals.

Paintings of the five are proudly displayed throughout Cuba, and there are state sponsored posters explaining the Cuban position hanging in most resorts.

International Support

Since their conviction, there has been an international campaign for the case to be appealed, with support groups in twenty-seven countries. In the United States, the campaign is most conspicuously represented by the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five[7], which is represented in fourteen cities. Many other American groups, such as the Socialist Workers Party has been known to campaign for the release of the Cuban Five.

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. [8]

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), Gunter Grass (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1999).[9]

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 immediately release the Five.

External links

• National Committee to Free the Cuban Five
• "Expedient Terror", by Jim Carey.
• AP: "Cuban Prosecution recommends death penalty in hotel bombing case"
• "Cubans Jailed in US as Spies Are Hailed at Home as Heroes" Washington Post, United States - Jun 2, 2006.
• Ricardo Alarcon's extensive discussion of the case in CounterPunch
• "Why Five Might Have "Conspired" to "Spy" and why they might have been justified." Listing of 70+ examples of anti-Cuban terrorism itemized by the Cuban government.
• antiterroristas Cuban Anti-Terrorist site.