Cuban Five Win a New Trial!

MIAMI (AP).— A federal appeals court threw out the convictions and life sentences of five accused Cuban spies Tuesday, ruling that they did not receive a fair trial because of community prejudice and extensive publicity.

Given the finding of the Court of Appeals and the UN Panel, Ricardo Alarcón, president of the National Assembly, stated to Granma International that what the U.S. government should do now is simply, to release them.

“It is a very important decision,” Alarcón added, “because it is what we have been saying for all these years, both the accused and their defense lawyers and all the solidarity groups in the world created in recent years. The conviction and defense have been overturned and a new trial ordered. This is what the Atlanta Court of Appeals has decided.

“It is very important because it implies an acknowledgement that it was an invalid legal process, which has violated a series of fundamental legal rulings, including perhaps, the most obvious one: that this entire judicial farce was made against five anti-terrorist combatants who were accused of fighting Miami terrorist groups and were forced to stand trial in Miami. That was an extremely grave violation on the part of the judge and moreover, supreme evidence of the way in which the government of the United States acted, because as the judges acknowledged in their finding of today, just one year later the same government stated that there could not be an impartial trial in Miami on any Cuba-related issue.

“I believe that, in essence, the decision is fundamentally in line with a basic point made by the defense. Nobody can now say that our total condemnation of the legal procedure as false, as full of prejudice, was without any foundation, that it was even outside the realm of justice, including U.S. justice and that from a strictly technical U.S. point of view, the least that they would have to do is to overturn it and organize a retrial, and that was what the judges decided. Now it is the turn of the United States to respond. The response is very simple.

“A few days ago a group of UN experts determined that the arrest of these five Cubans and the whole legal procedure had been arbitrary and contrary to the law. To be deprived of one’s freedom against the law is kidnapping. Now a U.S. court has also ruled that what the U.S. government did against those persons was not legal, and for that reason overturned it and ordered a new trial, so that justice is done. What the U.S. government should do immediately is to release them.

“If they want to charge them with something else, let them charge them, let them present evidence, let them find an impartial court to try five men who are currently kidnapped and should be released. It is very important now to ensure that the major international media discover the news. I told CNN, let the people of the United States know the truth; it was for some reason that the three judges said what they said today; it was for some reason that the five UN experts said what they are saying today; let the U.S. people know the truth, let the people know the truth, the facts, what the parties stated in that trial, to see what conclusion the people reach.

“I do not have the slightest doubt that any honest and honorable person who analyzes this case will reach the same conclusion. The U.S. judges have just done so. My respect to them, they are eminent jurists in the United States, with a lengthy curriculum, and they have ruled in the only way that any honorable person could do, the same as the people of the United States will do when the monopolies that exercise hegemony over the media in that country allow it, knowing the truth, enjoying the First Amendment, which is what grants the right to information.”

A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ordered a new trial after agreeing with the arguments of defense attorneys about the 2001 convictions. None of the jurors was Cuban, but the defense argued that prejudice against Fidel Castro and his communist government runs high in Miami.

Federal prosecutors had no immediate comment on the court's decision.

Also overturned was the murder conspiracy conviction of ringleader Gerardo Hernandez. He was also convicted for his role in the deaths of four Cuban exiles shot down by Cuban MiGs in international airspace in 1996, an event that sparked widespread condemnation.

All five Cubans were convicted in June 2001 of serving as unregistered agents of a foreign government, to Tampa and the ring spied on Cuban exiles.

The five admit being Cuban agents, but said they were spying on "terrorist" exile groups opposed to Castro, not the U.S. government. The defense said the agents' primary mission was to thwart extremist exiles who supported terrorism in Cuba, including a string of Havana bombings that killed one tourist and injured 12 others in 1997.

The five were the only ones who went to trial after they were indicted in 1998 as part of the 14-member Wasp Network.