A decade of shameful injustice
By
Manuel E. Yepe
To
cases of infuriating injustice in the nation that most loudly
proclaims the alleged excellence of its judicial system — cases like
those of immigrant workers Sacco and Vanzetti, the Rosenbergs, the
Spanish immigrant Joaquín José Martínez, the
statesman Pedro Albizu Campos and other Puerto Rican patriots, the
young black Larry Youngblood, black journalist and activist Mumia
Abu-Jamal, and the founder of the American Indian Movement, Leonard
Peltier — the case of five young Cubans was added 10 years ago.
Their
crime consisted of infiltrating, unarmed and at the risk of their
lives, the paramilitary groups of anti-Cuban right-wing extremists in
Miami, for the purpose of obtaining the necessary evidence to
buttress before the courts their denunciation of the extremists’
terrorist plans, thus serving the security of the peoples of Cuba and
the United States.
There
was no option to combat those plans and avoid such criminal attacks,
given the consistent inaction of the U.S. government, which denied
objectivity to the denunciations.
Once
the essential evidence was obtained, the Cuban government informed
its U.S. counterpart, through proper channels, and in June 1998 a
delegation of the FBI traveled…
By
Manuel E. Yepe Read Spanish Version
To
cases of infuriating injustice in the nation that most loudly
proclaims the alleged excellence of its judicial system — cases like
those of immigrant workers Sacco and Vanzetti, the Rosenbergs, the
Spanish immigrant Joaquín José Martínez, the
statesman Pedro Albizu Campos and other Puerto Rican patriots, the
young black Larry Youngblood, black journalist and activist Mumia
Abu-Jamal, and the founder of the American Indian Movement, Leonard
Peltier — the case of five young Cubans was added 10 years ago.
Their
crime consisted of infiltrating, unarmed and at the risk of their
lives, the paramilitary groups of anti-Cuban right-wing extremists in
Miami, for the purpose of obtaining the necessary evidence to
buttress before the courts their denunciation of the extremists’
terrorist plans, thus serving the security of the peoples of Cuba and
the United States.
There
was no option to combat those plans and avoid such criminal attacks,
given the consistent inaction of the U.S. government, which denied
objectivity to the denunciations.
Once
the essential evidence was obtained, the Cuban government informed
its U.S. counterpart, through proper channels, and in June 1998 a
delegation of the FBI traveled to Cuba and received full
documentation about the activities of the Miami terrorists. The FBI
representatives thanked Cuba for the information and promised to take
the necessary measures.
On
Sept. 12, 1998, the FBI proceeded to arrest the five brave Cuban
antiterrorists in their homes. Meanwhile, the terrorists were not
even disturbed and could coolly continue their ill-intentioned
training in South Florida.
For
17 months, the five young men were kept in isolation cells before
their case could be presented to the court.
Notwithstanding
the defense attorneys’ requests for a reasonable judicial process,
the trial was held in the admittedly hostile environment of Miami,
and the court sentenced them in 2001 to severe prison terms that
would not have been viable in any other context.
It
was a trial filled with irregularities. It lasted more than six
months, becoming the longest trial in the judicial history of the
United States up to that time. A ferocious press campaign,
particularly intense in the local media, worsened the threats and
intense pressures in the process of selection of the members of the
jury. A headline in Miami’s El Nuevo Herald on Sept. 15, 1998, saying
"They are traitors and should be given the most severe
punishment," illustrates the environment in which the trial was
held.
During
the jury selection process, the only three members of the jury pool
who expressed neutrality about Cuba were disqualified by the
government. Even so, many of the jurors selected complained about the
pressure exerted on them through Mafia methods to exact their bias in
favor of the interests of the Cuban counter-revolutionaries in Miami.
About
120 volumes of testimony that included the testimony of three Army
generals and one Navy admiral (all retired), President Clinton’s
former adviser on Cuban affairs, as well as top-ranking Cuban
officials (all summoned by the defense) and more than 20,000 pages of
documents were compiled to prove that the five Cuban antiterrorists
had acted in defense of their country without attacking the interests
of the United States or violating its laws, other than disregarding
(for obvious reasons) those laws that obliged them to formally
declare their objectives.
Once
the five Cubans were declared guilty, they were confined in five
maximum-security prisons far from each other. Gerardo Hernández
was sentenced to two life terms; Antonio Guerrero and Ramón
Labañino to one life term each; Fernando González to 19
years’ imprisonment, and René González to 15 years. The
three men given life terms were the first persons in U.S. history to
receive such punishment for espionage-related crimes, with the
additional peculiarity that, in their case, there was no element that
proved that crime and not a single secret document was handled by the
defendants.
On
May 27, 2005, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions of the United
Nations’ Human Rights Commission ruled that "the privation of
freedom of Messrs. Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González Llort,
Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino and René
González Sehwerert is arbitrary, contravenes Article 14 of the
International Convention on Civil and Political Rights" and
urged the government of the United States to rectify that injustice.
In
August 2005, the Court of Appeals of the Eleventh Federal Circuit in
Atlanta, by unanimous decision of its three judges, annulled the
arbitrary sentence imposed on the five young antiterrorist activists,
who had already served four years under bitter conditions in prisons
dispersed throughout the nation.
The
Court of Appeals verdict pointed out that it was impossible to hold a
fair trial in a city "dominated by such a marked prejudice
against the government of Cuba that makes a due process of justice
impossible, in a case in which the defendants identify fully with the
government of their country and with the objective need to defend the
Cuban people from terrorism."
Such
a categorical pronouncement by the Appeals Court should have led the
Attorney General’s office to drop the charges and release the five
Cubans immediately, but — in an unprecedented judicial aberration at
the urging of the federal government — the ruling was ignored and
the unfair imprisonment of the five Cuban patriots fighting terrorism
was upheld.
In
the following three years, countless violations of the legal
proceedings have taken place, through a clear manipulation of the
justice system to serve objectives of foreign policy. This has been a
political reprisal against Cuba, intended to gratify the
counter-revolutionary groups that aim to control Cuban immigrants to
benefit the objectives of the extreme right in the U.S.
"establishment," which has committed electoral fraud and
other political crimes.
"When
this happens and the existence of this political prejudice is
revealed, Americans experience a deep sense of shame and mistrust in
the laws, the justice system and the courts," said defense
attorney Leonard Weinglass.
The
infamy against the five, which has included serious violations of
their human rights as prisoners and the rights of their relatives,
has elicited such broad and vigorous world solidarity that it has
broken the silence of the media, which Washington could suppress only
through the early years of the shameful imprisonment.
Ten
Nobel laureates, more than 6,000 intellectuals, more than 1,000
legislators, several dozen parliaments and parliamentary commissions,
international and regional forums of diverse kinds have spoken out
against the injustice that has victimized these fighters against
terrorism.
The
fortitude with which these brave men have confronted their captors is
a clear reflection of the attitude of the people they represent, for
whom they have become living examples.
Manuel
E. Yepe Menéndez is a lawyer, economist and journalist. He is
a professor at the Higher Institute of International Relations in
Havana. He was Cuba’s ambassador to Romania, general director of the
Prensa Latina agency; vice president of the Cuban Institute of Radio
and Television; founder and national director of the Technological
Information System (TIPS) of the United Nations Program for
Development in Cuba, and secretary of the Cuban Movement for the
Peace and Sovereignty of the Peoples.
