On August 9,
after more than a year of weighing the evidence, the U.S. 11th Circuit Court
of Appeals overturned the convictions of the Cuban Five and ordered a new trial
with a change of venue. The court accepted that the original trial held in Miami was unfair because
of the presence of large numbers of Cuban exiles in that city and the biased
atmosphere that they created.
The Cuban Five
– Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez, Rene Gonzalez, Gerardo Hernandez
and Ramon Labanino – were convicted in 2001 of
charges ranging from spying to conspiracy to commit murder and received prison
sentences from 15 years to two consecutive life terms. In fact, the five men
were collecting information on various anti-Cuba terrorist networks which
operate openly in Miami with considerable
financial support from the U.S.
government. Over the past 40 years, these groups have committed numerous acts
of terrorism against the Cuban people, including scores of hotel bombings and
the mid-air destruction of an Air Cubana plane which
killed all 73 people on board. As a result of the information collected by the
Cuban Five, several terrorist attacks on Cuba were thwarted.
The Cuban
government shared this information with the U.S. Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) and called on it to shut down these anti-Cuba terrorist
gangs. The FBI requested and got a meeting with Cuban officials in Havana at which the
Cubans handed over a large number of documents to the Americans. The FBI
officials created the impression that they would use this evidence to prosecute
the terrorists. However, to date, not a single charge has been laid against the
Miami
terrorists. Instead, the FBI used the information it received from Cuban
officials to identify and arrest the Cuban operatives who had collected the
evidence. Since then they have been held in the most barbaric conditions,
denied access to family members and legal representatives for long periods of
time and subjected to lengthy periods of solitary confinement. A recent report
of the UN Human Rights Commission declared their trial to be patently unfair
and their treatment in prison to be inhumane and a violation of international
standards of human rights.
The American lawyers
for the Five hailed the appeal court’s decision as a major victory for
the defendants. In the past, they have stated that the Five would most likely
have been acquitted anywhere other than Miami.
Apart from the fact that hysteria about the Elian Gonzalez case was at a peak
during the trial, it was also common knowledge that any juror voting for
acquittal would most likely have been a target for attack by the anti-Cuba
terrorist groups in Miami.
While far from guaranteeing a fair trial, the change of venue will at least
give the Cuban Five a chance of being acquitted and vindicated.