On May 30, Ileana Nuñez presented a report on terrorism to the United Nations Security Council. Over the last 45 years, 3,478 people had been killed and 2,099 others wounded or permanently disabled by acts of terrorism against her country. She also detailed the tremendous economic losses that this unremitting aggression has caused.
 Leonard Weinglass, attorney for Antonio Guerrero, addresses New York supporters of the Cuban Five, April 20, 2006. Photo: Roberto Mercado |
This grim assessment was largely ignored by the U.S. government and media, despite their routine rants about the “war on terror.”
That’s because Nuñez was speaking on behalf of socialist Cuba. She is the revolutionary government’s ambassador to the United Nations.
The U.S. government has been bent on overturning the Cuban revolution for over four decades. Harboring and supporting counterrevolutionary terrorists have been weapons in the U.S. arsenal against Cuba.
It was against this backdrop that Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González—known as the Cuban Five—came to the United States from Cuba in the early 1990s. Their mission was to infiltrate and investigate counterrevolutionary organizations based in Miami that conducted continual attacks against Cuba. The Cuban Five successfully gathered incriminating evidence of that terrorist activity, which was submitted to Cuban as well as U.S. authorities.
But instead of rounding up the terrorists, U.S. authorities arrested the Five on Sept. 12, 1998. After 17 months of solitary confinement, amid a virulently hostile atmosphere whipped up by the Miami media and U.S. prosecutors, the Five were convicted on outlandish charges including conspiracy to commit espionage and conspiracy to commit murder. The Miami federal district judge, Joan Lenard, repeatedly denied defense motions for change of venue out of Miami. They were sentenced to a total of four life terms and 75 years imprisonment and remain in prison to this day.
The legal front
Leonard Weinglass, attorney for Antonio Guerrero, described the circumstances surrounding the trial. “Miami is the one city in the United States where the Five certainly could not receive a fair trial,” he said. He was referring to the prominent role that counterrevolutionary Cuban exiles play in the city, and the influence they exert in the courts, media and local government.
On appeal, a panel of three judges of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta agreed unanimously that the Cuban Five were denied any semblance of a fair trial. On Aug. 9, 2005, the court overturned the conviction of the five Cuban heroes based on venue, a first in U.S. federal appeals court history.
But that was not the end of the story. In October 2005, the decision of the three-judge panel was vacated by the full 12-judge panel of the 11th Circuit and the convictions reinstated. Undoubtedly this was due to pressure from Washington. New appeals were filed and oral arguments took place before the full 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Five remain in prison waiting for a decision from the full court. Meanwhile legal and political efforts to win their freedom continue.
War on terror?
Exposing the hypocrisy of the U.S. “war on terror” is crucial to building support for the Five.
For example, the U.S. government continues to ignore Venezuela’s request for the extradition of infamous terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. Posada escaped from prison in Venezuela while awaiting trial for the 1976 bombing of a Cubana Airlines jetliner, flight 455. All 73 passengers and crew members aboard perished. Posada is widely known to have engineered the bombing along with Orlando Bosch.
Posada Carriles sneaked into the United States in late March 2005, expecting to receive the same freedom that his terrorist accomplice Bosch got in 1990 when then-president Bush overrode a Justice Department deportation order and gave Bosch permission to remain in Miami. Public opposition in the United States and worldwide to Posada’s presence forced Homeland Security to detain him. He remains in immigration custody in El Paso, Texas.
In a May 11 interview with the Cuban web journal antiterroristas.cu, Weinglass pointed out that the Posada case should help the Cuban Five.
“There are other cases pending in Florida, such as those of Santiago Álvarez Fernández-Magriñá and Osvaldo Mitat as well as the arrest in Los Angeles of Robert Ferro, who was found with a large number of weapons. They are all confessed terrorists.
“This shows once more that Cuba has been the victim of an aggression that emanates from the United States, and this has been the fundamental defense position we have taken in our case,” Weinglass explained.
Longtime Posada backers Álvarez and Mitat were arrested in November 2005 in southern Florida after a large cache of weapons was confiscated from Alvarez’s property. Ferro was recently caught with the largest cache of illegal weapons ever found in U.S. history. Despite admitting to the FBI that he was involved in plotting to assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro, he has not been charged with any terrorism-related crimes.
The political front
The unlawful nature of the convictions of the Five has been demonstrated over and over by their legal team. The fact that they remain in prison while known terrorists go about their business defies any legal basis. It can only be seen in the context of U.S. policy towards Cuba.
For that reason, political struggle is key to winning justice for the Five. “Their freedom depends on two things: the legal one and that of solidarity,” according to Cuban attorney Roberto González, brother of prisoner René González. “The one feeds the other.”
Solidarity with the heroes is abundant. On June 8, Ukrainian supporters protested outside the U.S. embassy in Kiev. On June 26, activists demanded freedom for the Five in front of the U.S. consulate in Malaga, Spain.
In fact, the Cuban News Agency reported 235 solidarity committees in 79 countries as of March 2006, including a new committee formed in the Philippines.
Widening awareness
In November 2005, the U.S.-based National Committee to Free the Cuban Five initiated the Five Freedom Fund to raise money for publicity, media outreach, organizing and mobilizing. There has been a strong outpouring of support from around the world. The National Committee’s goal of raising $250,000 is well on its way, according to organizers. From Toronto to Montreal, from Germany to Argentina and within the United States, Cuban Five committees have arduously raised funds and political support.
The fund has already allowed activists to contract a professional media agency in the days leading up to the February appeals hearing. It also facilitated an internationally broadcast interview with Andrés Gómez, director of Areíto Digital magazine, on “CNN en Español.” A team of youth volunteers in the San Francisco headquarters is helping build media publicity this summer. A national speaking tour of U.S. law schools is planned for the coming academic year.
Despite scant coverage of the Five’s existence and struggle in the U.S. media over the last eight years, there was finally a national breakthrough.
On June 3, the Washington Post published a front-page article on the Five—the first time a major national newspaper has written on their case. “For people in the United States in solidarity with the Five, the Washington Post article … brings important encouragement, after such a long struggle to win space in the U.S. media,” wrote Jean Guy-Allard for the Cuban daily Granma Internacional.
“The writer [Manuel Roig-Franzia] treats the mission of the Five as a legitimate issue, something unusual here,” commented Gloria La Riva, coordinator for the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five.
Worldwide days of action
A series of actions are scheduled to begin on Sept. 12, the eighth anniversary of the Cuban Five’s arrest, and end on Oct. 6, the 30th anniversary of the mid-air bombing of Cubana flight 455. Cuban television has reported that some 300 friendship organizations will participate worldwide.
The National Committee to Free the Five and other solidarity organizations have called for a Sept. 23 demonstration in Washington, D.C. The date falls two days after the 30th anniversary of the political assassinations of former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier and his associate Ronnie Moffit. They were car-bombed on Washington, D.C.’s “Embassy Row,” in a plot hatched by Posada Carriles and other U.S.-backed thugs.
The demands of the Sept. 23 demonstration include immediate freedom for the Five, visas for their wives to visit them, extradition of Carriles, an end to the blockade of Cuba and justice for the victims of the Cubana Airlines bombing as well as Letelier and Moffit. A forum on U.S.-backed terrorism will follow the demonstration. Keynote speakers include Saul Landau, attorney Weinglass and Francisco Letelier, the son of Orlando Letelier.
These are important steps in strengthening the political front ahead of the decision of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Building support for the Five is integral to the struggle in solidarity with the Cuban revolution.
Visit www.freethefive.org for more information.
