IN March of this year, the eminent attorney Leonard Weinglass died. He graduated from Yale University in 1958 and some of his cases are studied today in law schools across the United States. He represented the defendants in many important trials such as the Chicago Eight who opposed the U.S. war in Vietnam, Jane Fonda, Angela Davis and Mumia Abu-Jamal.

In an interview with Cubadebate in 2004, Weinglass succinctly explained why he had decided to represent Antonio Guerrero and support the Five.

"I have never served as an attorney for money or in suits for financial gain, in which someone is trying to take advantage of someone else. Since I studied law and was taught that being a lawyer meant a commitment to justice, I have assumed the profession as such, with a passion. Since then I have been involved in cases in which justice has been trampled or which have a political character, as I understand politics - a commitment to those who are denied justice on a daily basis. And also, in cases in the U.S. which, at times, have acquired international importance. In this case, these three elements are entwined, but there is more. We represent five exceptional human beings. Antonio is not, for me, just another defendant. Being his attorney is more than this. It is, simply, an honor."

Granma reproduces here some of his writings and statements in the struggle to free the Five.

ON September 12, 1998, five Cubans – Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González and René González – were arrested in Miami, Florida, and accused of having committed 26 crimes proscribed by U.S. federal law.

The Five, as we will call then henceforth, arrived in the United States from Havana with the mission of infiltrating mercenary armed organizations within the Cuban exile community, tolerated and even protected by successive administrations, in order to thus uncover potential terrorist attacks on Cuba.

The country has suffered significant human losses and severe damage as a result of such actions. Its appeals to the U.S. government and the United Nations have been in vain. In the early 1990s, when Cuba was making an effort to develop tourism, anti-Castro forces in Miami unleashed a violent campaign to dissuade foreign visitors to the island. In 1997, bombs were discovered, others exploded in several Havana hotels. Several tourist facilities were targeted with machinegun fire from speedboats out of Miami.

The Five did not resist their arrest in any way. Their mission was not to seek U.S. military secrets, but rather to gather information on the terrorists and inform Cuba of plans [1]. They were immediately confined in cells reserved for the punishment of the most dangerous prisoners, where they stayed for 17 months, before the legal process began. At the conclusion of these proceedings, seven months later, in December of 2001, three months after the traumatic September 11, they were given maximum sentences: Gerardo Hernández, two life terms; Antonio Guerrero and Ramón Labañino life in prison; the other two, Fernando González and René González, 19 and 15 years respectively. Twenty four of these charges, of a technical and relatively minor nature, were related to the falsification of documents and the failure to report their status as foreign agents. None of the charges involved the use of weapons, violence or the destruction of property.

Nothing is more revealing than the contrast in the behavior of the U.S. government in this case versus the treatment afforded Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles. The two are, moreover, the organizers of the bombing of a Cuban airliner which exploded in flight in October of 1976, killing 73 people.

When Bosch solicited permission to reside in the United States in 1990, an official investigation reported: "For a number of years he has been implicated in acts of terrorism abroad, he is a self-proclaimed supporter of such attacks and sabotage, and has participated in several." Nevertheless, President George Bush Sr. granted him residency.

In 1985, while awaiting the verdict in his trial for the 1976 Cubana Airlines bombing, Posada Carriles "escaped" from a Venezuelan jail with the help of powerful "friends." He has admitted on two occasions that he is responsible for a 1997 bombing in Havana in which an Italian tourist was killed and a dozen people were injured. [2] Courts in Panama found Posada Carriles guilty of endangering the public security, after being arrested in November of 2000 as he was preparing an attempt on the life of President Fidel Castro, who was surrounded by hundreds of people, mostly students, while attending a regional summit.

Posada has inexplicably enjoyed the hospitality of the U.S. government, thanks to the illegal pardon granted him by the President of Panama, Mireya Moscoso, two days before the end of her mandate. While his presence in the U.S. was a well-known "secret", he was detained only after giving a press conference. With his lodging paid for by authorities, not in prison, but rather within a special residence situated in an [immigration] detention center, no charges have been filed against him as of yet, only administrative measures for not having a residence permit. He can therefore be deported to a country of his choice. The U.S. has rejected the idea of sending him to Venezuela which has requested his extradition and where he would face charges of terrorism.

To return to the issue, the Five were separated and placed in maximum security prisons, hundreds of kilometers apart. Two were later denied visits by their spouses, in violation of U.S. law and international norms.

The proceedings went on for seven months. More than 70 witnesses were called, including three generals, a retired admiral and a Presidential advisor, all for the defense. [3] The minutes fill 119 volumes of transcriptions and testimony gathered before the trial, additionally the instructions required another 15 volumes. More than 800 pieces of documentary evidence were submitted, some exceeding 40 pages.

The 12 members of the jury, led by their president who openly declared his hostility toward Fidel Castro, found the Five guilty on the 26 counts, without asking a single question or rereading the testimony, unusual in a case as long and complex as this.

The two principal charges are based on an accusation frequently used in political cases: conspiracy – an illegal agreement established between two or more people to commit a crime. The crime does not have to be committed. All that must be substantiated, through circumstantial evidence, is that an agreement "must have existed." Rarely does direct, concrete evidence appear of an illegal agreement, except when one of the accused decides to confess. In a case of this kind, the jury considers the agreement, with no evidence of a crime, taking into account political views, the minority status or nationality of the accused.

The first charge of conspiracy alleged that three of the Five had come to an agreement to "commit espionage." From the beginning, the government insisted that it was not obliged to prove that espionage had been committed, but only that there had been a plot to engage in espionage. Once free of the responsibility to prove the crime, the prosecutors focused on convincing the jury that these five Cubans must have conspired to meet their objectives.

In his initial statement, the prosecuting attorney admitted that the Five did not possess a single page of information classified as top secret by the U.S. government, while, on the other hand, he had managed to obtain access to more than 20,000 pages of correspondence between the Five and Cuba which a high-ranking Pentagon intelligence official had allowed him to review. [4]. When he was asked, the lawyer acknowledged that he could not remember finding any reference whatsoever to any issue of national security. According to law, in order to prove that the crime of espionage has been committed, this must be substantiated.

Moreover, the only element substantiating the accusation was the fact that one of the Five, Antonio Guerrero, worked at the Boca Chica naval training base in South Florida. The base is open to the public, and even has an area where visitors can photograph planes on the runway. While he was working there, Antonio at no time requested a security pass. He was not authorized to enter limited access zones and never attempted to do so. In the two years prior to his arrest, during which the FBI was watching him, no agent ever detected the slightest sign of inappropriate behavior on his part.

Guerrero's only mission was to observe and inform Havana of "what he could see" transpiring publicly; that is to say, the comings and goings of aircraft. Additionally, he occupied himself cutting articles from local newspapers which provided information about military installations located in the region.

Former Army officials and intelligence agencies have stated that Cuba does not constitute a military threat to the United States, that there was no military information to obtain at Boca Chica and that "Cuba's interest in the kind of information presented during the trial was to know if, in reality, we were trying to prepare an armed action against it." [5]

Information that is in the public domain cannot serve to support a charge of espionage. Nevertheless, after hearing the fantastic argument three times, according to which the Five had as their objective the destruction of the United States, the jury, motivated more by passion than by law and the rules of evidence, found the Five guilty.

The second charge of conspiracy was added seven months after the first, against one of the Five, Gerardo Hernández, for conspiring with Cuban officials to down two light aircraft piloted by Cuban exiles from the Brothers to the Rescue organization, which had repeatedly violated Cuban airspace despite warnings. Cuban MIG fighter planes intercepted the two planes, leading to the deaths of the four persons aboard.

The prosecutors admitted that there wasn't the slightest evidence substantiating an alleged agreement between Hernández and Cuban officials as to whether to down the exile planes or not, nor the way in which it could be done. Consequently, the legal standard of proof "beyond a reasonable doubt" of the existence of conspiracy was met. The government admitted before the court that it faced an insurmountable obstacle. The prosecution even proposed changing its initial charges, which the court of appeals did not accept. Despite all this, the jury found Hernández guilty of the manufactured crime.

The Cuban Five immediately appealed their conviction before the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta, Georgia. After a meticulous revision of the documents, on August 9, 2005, a panel of three judges released a detailed 93-page analysis of the trial proceedings and evidence and overturned the verdict, emphasizing that the Five had not received a fair trial in Miami. With its 650,000 Cuban exiles who had given Bush the votes he needed to secure a victory in the 2000 Presidential election, the federal appeals court found that the city was so hostile and irrational in its opposition to the Cuban government, and disposed to violence against it, that it could not provide a fair trial for the five defendants. Additionally, the conduct of the prosecutors, presenting exaggerated, unsubstantiated arguments to members of the jury, aggravated the jury's prejudices, as did information disseminated in the press before and during the trial.

A new trial was ordered. Beyond the acknowledgement that the basic rights of the accused had been violated, the court, for the first time in the history of U.S. jurisprudence, allowed the defense to submit evidence of terrorist attacks on Cuba launched from Florida, even citing the role of Posada Carriles, referring to him as a terrorist.

The three judge panel's decision shocked the Bush administration, even though it had been preceded by that of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Arrests [6], which supported the Five and appealed to the U.S. government to take steps to put an end to the situation.

Alberto González, Attorney General and Bush advisor made the unusual decision to appeal to the full 12-judge 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, requesting a review of the three judge panel decision, a rare procedure which was granted, despite the unanimity of the three judges and their erudite, fully substantiated opinion.

To the great surprise of lawyers who followed the case, the 11th Circuit Court agreed to review the panel's decision. The Five were not convicted of violating U.S. law, but rather for working precisely to expose those who were. By infiltrating criminal networks functioning openly in Florida, they exposed the hypocrisy of the U.S. government's opposition to terrorism, of which it so often boasts.

[1].The U.S. law of neutrality prohibits the launching of attacks from its territory against foreign countries with which it has peaceful relations.

[2]. Published in The New York Times July 12-13, 1998 and disseminated in Spanish by CBS television affiliates.

[3]. General James R. Clapper Jr. former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency; Army General Edward Breed Atkeson; Rear Admiral Eugene Carrol; Marines General Charles Elliot Wilhelm, Commander of SouthCom; Richard Nuncio, advisor to President William Clinton.

[4] Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, a three star general.

[5] Army General Edward Breed Atkenson.

[6] Subordinate to the Human Rights Commission.