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Belated Decision for Cuban 5
by Gerry Foley /
September 2005 issue of Socialist Action
In August, the 11th Circuit Federal Appeals Court in Atlanta
overturned the conviction and sentences of five Cubans who were condemned
to crushing prison terms for informing the American and Cuban government of
plots to commit terrorist acts in Cuba.
At the time of their trial, the defense argued that the Cubans could
not get a fair hearing in Miami, a city dominated by Cuban
counterrevolutionaries and
Mafiosi. Finally, after Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo, Ramon Labaņino
Salazar, Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez, Fernando Gonzalez Llort, and Rene
Gonzalez have spent seven years in prison, the Atlanta appeals court was
forced to recognize this obvious truth.
The five were arrested in September 1998 and held in prison 33
months before their trial, 17 of which were in solitary confinement.
Gerardo Hernandez was sentenced to two life terms plus 15 years for
"conspiracy to commit homicide" on the charge that he had aided
in the destruction of a plane flown by a counterrevolutionary group that
was shot down by the Cuban airforce in 1996 after intruding into Cuban
airspace.
Labaņino Salazar was given two life terms plus 18 years, and
Guerrero Rodriguez two life terms plus 10 years. Gonzalez Llort got 19
years and Rene Gonzalez 15. They were also charged with failing to register
as foreign agents. They rejected that charge on the grounds that they were
not spying against the U.S. but exposing plots to commit terrorist crimes
in Cuba.
The Mexico City daily La Jornada noted in its Aug. 9 issue:
"From the start of the case, there was incontrovertible evidence that
the five were engaged
in antiterrorist work and that the information they gathered was not
only given to Cuba but also presented to the U.S. authorities by the Cuban
government
itself, as a token of cooperation against terrorist attacks."
The five had infiltrated Cuban terrorist groups, like the one headed
by Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA agent, responsible among other things
for planting a bomb on a Cuban airliner that killed 72 people. Posada
Carriles was jailed in Venezuela, and then escaped and fled to the United
States, where he is being held for illegal entry but not charged with
terrorism.
Venezuela is demanding his extradition, but the U.S. refuses to hand
him over.
The scandal created by the publicity around the Posada Carriles case
may have been a factor in the decision of the Atlanta court.
In an article written for the Cuban press service Aug. 9, Gabriel
Molina quoted the response to the Atlanta decision by Ricardo Alarcon,
president of the Cuban National Assembly: "A few days ago a group of
UN experts determined that the arrest of these five Cubans and the whole
legal procedure had been
arbitrary and contrary to the law. To be deprived of ones freedom
against the law is kidnapping.
"Now a U.S. court has also ruled that what the U.S. government
did against those persons was not legal, and for that reason overturned it
and ordered a new trial, so that justice is done. What the U.S. government
should do immediately is to release them."
After the Atlanta court ruling, the U.S. had 21 days to appeal it,
or accept a new trial. If it accepted a new trial, it would have to file
charges again and the
question of bail for the prisoners would be open. Or they could
simply be released, as Alarcon said, if the U.S. authorities had any sense
of justice or shame.
In Havana, Celia Hart, one of the most eloquent defenders and
international emissaries of the Cuban Revolution, hailed the appeals court
decision with an
article entitled "A Smile in the Darkness." "Our five
compaņeros," she wrote, "are not only innocent, brave, honorable.
They are, above all else, internationalist revolutionaries, being held
kidnapped as I write this by the worst enemy the history of the world has
ever known."
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