AMAZING INJUSTICE TO CUBAN AMERICANS PARTIALLY REVERSED

The Cuban Five, anti-terrorist fighters jailed in the United States since 1998, had their convictions reversed on Tuesday Aug. 9th in a historic and unanimous decision by three judges of the US Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta. Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, René González, and Fernando González were serving sentences ranging from 15 years to two life sentences plus 80 months in separate prisons around the US for various alleged spying offences, and one for conspiracy to commit murder.

The Appeal Court decision follows hot on the heels of a report by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of the UN Commission on Human Rights, which concluded that the detention of the Five Cubans was both arbitrary and in breach of international law. The Five were part of a larger group of 14 Cubans living in Miami in 1995 who infiltrated and monitored Miami-based terrorist groups, with the sole aim of warning of, and frustrating, their planned attacks, a principle considered legitimate by the US Administration to defend their country after the September 11 attacks.

In July 1998, the Cuban government submitted to the F.B.I a memorandum documenting the terrorist activities of the Miami-based groups, based on the information provided by the 14 Cubans. Instead of arresting the Miami terrorists, on whom the FBI had their own extensive files, 10 of the 14 Cubans were arrested, five accepted plea bargains and were tried separately, and the remaining Five were subjected to a farcical politically motivated trial that has finally been judicially exposed for the travesty of justice it was.

The judges´ decision addressed only one of the eight or nine issues raised at the appeal hearing on 10 March 2004, that of change of venue. The defendants´ lawyers argued that the pervasive community prejudice against Fidel Castro and the Cuban government and its agents, and the publicity surrounding the trial and other community events, combined to create a situation where they were unable to obtain a fair and impartial trial. The judges agreed, unanimously reversing the convictions and overturning their sentences, and remanding them for a new trial on a date yet to be determined.

Aside from making legal history, the successful appeal represents the first small shred of justice to surface in the sorry saga of US misadministration of due process that led to these convictions, and while welcoming the Appeal Court decision as an important step towards the Five´s freedom, there is still the matter of remand to be addressed, and possibly yet another trial to be endured by the defendants and their families.

Still on Remand

In the US justice system, a person is considered innocent until proven guilty. The convictions of the Five have been reversed, rendering their guilt unproven. On 12 September these innocent men will have already spent seven years behind bars, during which time US prison authorities acknowledge they have all been model prisoners. How long will the retrial process take to play out - another two, three, four, five years? Given the time already served by these innocent men, and their impeccable behaviour while incarcerated, is there any need to remand them to further periods of imprisonment pending the retrial?

As evidence from US military personnel at the first trial demonstrated, the Five posed no threat to US security, and these anti-terrorist fighters certainly pose no threat to the US public or to any peaceful citizen of the world, rather the opposite. Do they pose a threat of flight? Hardly - they openly and voluntarily handed over all of the information on their activities to the FBI months before they were arrested, months during which they had plenty of time to leave the US, if that was their intention. No, there is no justification to hold these five innocent men in prison for another moment, until and unless they are found guilty of a crime.

Much more here


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