Though the international solidarity movement with the Cuban Five calls for their release, they remain behind bars, writes Faiza Rady "The five Cuban political prisoners shouldn't have been deprived of their freedom even for one second," said Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada, president of the Cuban parliament, after the re- sentencing of Ramón Labañino and Fernando Gonzàlez. The other three are Gerardo Hernandez, Rene Gonzàles and Antonio Guerrero. The Cuban Five all started their 12th year of incarceration in US high security jails in September. Arrested in Miami on 12 September 1998, the Cuban Five were charged with and convicted of "conspiracy to commit espionage" and "posing a threat to US national security" in a legally controversial and highly politicised trial in 2001. Their sentences ranged from 15 years, to a double life sentence. On 8 December, the United States Court for the Southern District of Florida reduced Labañino's prison term from life to 30 years, and Gonzàlez's from 19 years to 17 years and nine months. "Though still unjust, the re- sentencing is an additional argument for intensifying the struggle for their immediate release," says Alarcón. The lawyers of the Cuban Five appealed their initial sentences on the grounds that they were not granted a fair trial in Miami, a city notorious for its anti-Cuban sentiments. The lawyers' motion was granted by the Atlanta Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which considered the Florida Court ruling "excessive". In October, the Florida court re-sentenced Antonio Guerrero -- who had previously been sentenced by the same court to a life term plus 10 years for alleged espionage -- to a prison term of nearly 22 years. The Atlanta Court of Appeals ruled that Guerrero be re-sentenced because it had not been established that he gathered or transmitted any information concerning US national security. The new sentences were a victory of sorts, the result of the struggle of the international solidarity movement with the Cuban Five and the tireless efforts of Guerrero's US attorney, Leonard Weinglass. Referring to the duration of his client's re-sentencing Weinglass said it was "odd". "Here you have a man who was on a military base but who didn't take a single classified document and no one testified that he injured US national security, but the judge still rejects the prosecutors' request to lighten the sentence [further]," he commented. But the real setback for the Cuban Five occurred last June, when the United States Supreme Court turned down the defence's request for a retrial. Alarcon believes that the court's decision was political. "In May, the administration urged the Supreme Court to deny review of the case," he said. "The judges did what the Obama administration requested of them." International support for the Cuban Five has been consistent. It includes the likes of East Timur President José Ramos Horte, Noam Chomsky, and Nobel laureates in literature of the stature of Gunther Grass, Wole Soyinka and Nadine Gordimer. International unions and NGOs have joined the solidarity movement. In November, Ken Neumann, director of the United Steelworkers of Canada -- a union with a membership of some 280,000 workers -- sent a letter to US President Barack Obama to denounce the continued incarceration of the Cuban Five. "I am writing you today to ask you for the immediate release of five innocent Cuban men currently being held in US federal prisons. This is one of many letters you will no doubt be receiving. These men were not involved in terrorism, or in any way engaged in harmful activities against US national security," wrote Neumann. Neumann is right. Obama has been inundated with requests to free the Cuban Five. Last month, the secretariat of the Cairo-based African-Asian Peoples Solidarity Organisation sent a letter to the US president similarly condemning their detention. The NGO's president, Ahmed Hamrouch, referred to the incarceration of the Five as a "violation of US laws with high political motivation". In October, members from several countries of the European parliament addressed a similar letter to the US president. Even US cities have joined the fray. In October, the City Council of San Pablo, California, unanimously passed a resolution in support of the Cuban Five. In April, the city of Richmond, California, did the same. These resolutions were preceded by similar moves in Detroit, Michigan, in 2006, and in Berkeley, California, in 2003. The US press was conspicuously absent throughout the prosecution. "The trial was kept secret by the US media," says Weinglass. "It is inconceivable that the one case involving major issues of foreign policy and international terrorism was only covered by the local Miami media." A news blackout was ostensibly maintained to cover up the government's flimsy case. A spurious charge against Gerardo Hernandez alleged that he had conspired with Cuban officials to shoot down two planes flown by Cuban exiles from Miami to Cuba. After having repeatedly violated Cuban airspace, the two aircraft refused to identify themselves and land. Cuban MiGs then shot them down, killing all four aboard. The prosecution conceded that it had no evidence to prove any "agreement" between Gerardo and Cuban officials to shoot down the planes. The requirement of US law that an agreement be proven beyond a reasonable doubt was not satisfied. And even though the prosecution readily admitted that it faced an "insurmountable obstacle" in proving its case against Hernandez, the jury convicted him of a legally unfounded charge. At home, the Cuban Five are considered heroes because their job was to help save Cuban lives. In the early 1990s, the Cuban government sent them to Miami to gather information about planned mercenary assaults by Cuban-American rightwing groups against the island. Since the 1959 Revolution, 3,478 people were killed and 2,099 injured in terrorist attacks on Cuba. In 1997 alone, Cuban-American terrorists placed bombs in no less than 10 Havana hotels and restaurants, in addition to placing a bomb in one of Havana's airports. During their mission, the Cuban Five traced 64 known terrorists residing in the Miami area and provided four hours of film documenting illegal paramilitary training camps in Florida. The Cuban government then approached the FBI and offered to share the information on the assumption that the agency is in business of combating terrorism. They were mistaken. The FBI was well informed on the activities of the Cuban- American rightwing. Rather than act on the information and arrest their own indigenous terrorists, the Clinton administration arrested the Cuban Five on charges of "conspiracy to commit espionage". Not one of the thousands of pages seized by the FBI from the Five's dossier on Cuban- American terrorism contains classified government information. They were found guilty not of spying, but of the tenuous charge of "agreement" to spy. "Once such an agreement is established, the crime is complete," explains Weinglass. All the prosecution had to do was to convince the jury that there was an agreement among the Five that they would eventually engage in spying at some point in the future. The UN Commission on Human Rights condemned the "climate of bias and prejudice prevalent in Miami" that precluded the objectivity and impartiality that is required to conform to the standards of a fair trial. This conclusion set a precedent for it was the first time that the UN agency condemned a US judicial proceeding. In 2005, the Atlanta Court of Appeals of the 11th Circuit ruled for a retrial of the Five outside of Miami on the grounds that "the city is riddled by a perfect storm of prejudice," but that decision was reversed on appeal and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which turned down the demand for a retrial. "What you're dealing with in Miami is not simply prejudice against Cuba," explains Weinglass. "A Cuban American is the mayor of Miami, a Cuban American owns the major newspaper, a Cuban American is the chief of police, a Cuban American is the head of the FBI, and there is nothing wrong with any of this except that none of them could have achieved political office without having a very hostile attitude towards Cuba." Jurors had solid reasons to expect a backlash should they vote to acquit the Five. Thomas Goldstein, another US attorney for the Five, explains that US law specifies that defendants should only be prosecuted in a place where they are guaranteed a fair trial. "We don't expect you to be tried in a community where there's overwhelming hostility to you or to a group that you're a member of. Therefore, a body of due process law developed, saying that people have a right to a fair trial, not just to a trial." It is now up to Obama to address the Cuban Five's legal right to a fair trial, says Alarcon. It remains to be seen whether the US president will heed the international call for justice.
