Mike Fuller
The August 9 overturning of the Miami court decision that unfairly jailed five Cubans charged with conspiracy to commit espionage was a major victory and they deserve an apology, stated their defence counsel Leonard Weinglass.
By a unanimous vote, the judges of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta overturned the verdict handed down by a Miami court in June 2001, and ruled that a new trial should take place, as requested by the defence, in a city other than Miami.
According to the ruling, the volatile anti-Cuban political climate and intense media coverage, both amplified in the wake of the Elian Gonzalez drama, made a fair trial in Miami an impossibility. Since the very beginning, the defence attorneys had asked Miami judge Joan Lenard to move the trial out of Miami.
After a trial that legal analysts considered was framed, the Cuban Five — Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labanino, Rene Gonzalez, and Fernando Gonzalez — detained in 1998 on several spying charges, were sentenced by Judge Lenard to harsh jail times.
Actually they were just gathering information on anti-Cuban terrorist plans in Miami in an effort to thwart such violent actions that would also affect US citizens.
Hernandez, Labanino and Guerrero received life sentences from Lenard, who added a second life imprisonment sentence to Hernandez. Rene Gonzalez was sentenced to 15 years in prison and Fernando Gonzalez to 19 years.
The Atlanta ruling comes less than a month after a UN panel ruled that the detention of the five men was arbitrary and in violation of international law.
"This is a political issue", Weinglass warned, voicing fear over possible appeals by the US government prosecutors in an effort to delay the process. He said his team is reviewing appropriate steps for bail.
When asked if he supported Cuban parliament chairperson Ricardo Alarcon's demand for their immediate release, he agreed, lamenting the fact that "they've already done seven years".
In remarks to the media in Caracas, Venezuela, where he was attending the World Youth Festival, Alarcon hailed the ruling as "a victory against those who promote terrorism, against hypocrites who tout a supposed war on terror and in reality protect terrorists and jail young men who only acted to oppose terrorism in the United States".
According to the defence lawyer, "the next step is up to the US government. They have 21 days to decide whether or not to take the case to the full circuit court."
Massive protests in Cuba, deep-seated support from the international community and a considerable amount of backing from US people may have finally brought about an ethical judicial decision.
Gloria La Riva, coordinator of the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, was quoted in an article at <freethefive.org> as saying, "This is a huge victory! We are ecstatic about this decision. It confirms that the five Cubans are completely innocent, as we know they always were."
These victims of lawlessness have spent the better part of a decade languishing in US jails, two of them without seeing their families, and as Weinglass says, "instead of a retrial, they deserve an apology from the US government and to be sent home".
[Abridged from Prensa Latina news service.]
From Green Left Weekly, August 17, 2005.
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