Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean, North America

CUBA-US: Five Hostages to Bilateral Conflict?

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Sep 14 2007 (IPS) - Cuban officials and the supporters of five Cuban agents imprisoned in the United States appear to have more confidence in the impact of the international solidarity movement than in the possibility that a change of government in the U.S. might favour their case, trapped in the decades-old conflict between the two countries.

They are hoping that the international campaign that began Sept. 12 and will last until Oct. 8, on behalf of René González, Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino and Fernando González – known as the “Cuban Five” – will finally break the “conspiracy of silence” that Havana says has surrounded the case from the outset.

“We can’t set our hopes on a change of government” in the U.S., but must focus on our own strength, and on the demands of public opinion that U.S. laws be complied with in the case of the five men, Roberto González, René’s brother and lawyer, told IPS.

In his view, lawyers contribute “the logical reasons for people to understand that this is a just cause,” but this is complemented by international solidarity based on these reasons, which demands that the U.S. government respect the “system of law,” according to which “the Cuban Five should be freed.”

The five Cubans were arrested on Sept. 12, 1998. A jury in Miami, Florida found them guilty in a trial that lasted seven months, “the longest in U.S. history up to that time,” said Leonard Weinglass, Guerrero’s U.S. defence lawyer, in a book launched in Havana as part of the solidarity campaign.

Weinglass says Miami is the one city in the U.S. where the Cuban Five certainly could not receive a fair trial. He points out that there are approximately 650,000 Cubans who live there in exile, and who control the press and the media, occupy public offices, and are the major business figures in the area. They all have one thing in common, he adds: they take a hard line on Cuba.

The defence of the Cuban Five maintains that the charges of conspiracy to commit espionage and murder were never proven. However, as a result of these charges, Guerrero and Labañino were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, and Hernández was also convicted and given two life sentences.

Weinglass, a civil rights activist, says that conspiracy has always been the charge used by the prosecution in political cases, and its use relieves the government of the requirement of having to prove the crime, as the sentence for conspiracy is the same as if the crime had in fact been committed.

Cuban authorities have never denied that the five men, regarded as heroes and anti-terrorism fighters in Cuba, were government agents, but they argue that their work was to investigate possible violent attacks on the island, not to gather information that would jeopardise U.S. national security.

A report that Cuba submitted to the United Nations in 2001 documented 3,478 deaths as a result of alleged U.S. terrorism, aggression and acts of piracy and other actions committed against this socialist island nation in the past four decades.

González said that the time must come when Washington realises that the Miami-based groups hostile to the Cuban government are also a danger to the United States, in addition to preventing normal bilateral relations, against the wishes of many members of the business community and the U.S. Congress.

Regarding the candidate who will be elected in the U.S. presidential elections in late 2008, and his or her impact on the Cuban Five’s case, the key question is whether or not there is a policy change towards Cuba, said González.

“I hope the new government will recognise the absurdity of jailing people for saving lives,” he said, after stressing that the five men had not touched “a single classified document, nor had they been in a position to do so, yet they are serving life sentences.”

Without mentioning any names, González said it “makes no sense to free terrorists who were arrested in possession of an arsenal of weapons,” while imprisoning people who were working against terrorism. “These events are raising a lot of questions among the press and public opinion in the United States.”

In August 2005, a three-judge Atlanta Appeals Court panel threw out the convictions of the five men and ordered a new trial in another city, based on the fierce hostility to the Cuban government in Miami, where the trial was originally held. According to the case files, the decision was also influenced by the role of the press before and during the trial, which the judges ruled had prejudiced the jury against the accused, and by the prosecution’s behaviour in “falsely and intentionally” misrepresenting some of the facts of the case to the jury.

But in August 2006, the 12 judges of the full Atlanta Court overturned the decision, arguing that there was no cause to question the impartiality of the Miami trial, and sent the case back to the panel to decide pending issues.

On Aug. 20, 2007, an appeal hearing was held at the request of the five men’s defence attorneys, although there is no way of knowing when a new verdict may be available because the U.S. federal justice system does not impose deadlines on judges.

“The case could stretch on interminably…If the August 2005 decision had been upheld, we could be at a new trial, somewhere other than in Miami,” González said.