Cuban Five: Hope they can believe in
Cuban Five: Hope they can believe in
By Patrick Doherty
From the Havana Note blog
Yesterday (June 15, 2009), the Supreme Court of the United States officially refused to hear the case known as the “Cuban Five.” That puts an important ball back in the administration’s court.
The Cuban Five are five men convicted in federal court as unregistered foreign agents. To grossly oversimplify, the men were indeed agents of the Cuban government trying to infiltrate the various right-wing paramilitary groups — and the groups supporting them — that are operating outside U.S. law in South Florida and seeking to destabilize Havana. What brought the case to the Supreme Court, however, was not the question of whether the Five were spies. Rather, the case went to the highest court in the land because instead of getting the standard 6 year prison sentence they got 25 years and the Five were not granted a change of venue. They were tried in Miami, where it is arguably impossible for accused Cuban agents to get a fair hearing. It was, plain and simple, a miscarriage of justice.
We will never know on what grounds the Court refused to certify the Cuban Five case. But what we do know is that this action by the Supreme Court is making our diplomatic efforts with the Cuban government that much more difficult.
That’s because Cuba had its hopes up that the American justice system would live up to its name and rectify what they see as a grave injustice by releasing the Five and deporting them back to Cuba. Their hopes were raised, in part, because of our new president, Barack Obama, and his promises of change.
Ah, but Cuba policy has been changing, you might say. From an American perspective, yes, but for the average Cuban citizen the Obama administration’s actions so far have not materially improved their lives while the economy is going from bad to worse.
So here was an opportunity for a branch of the U.S. government to address a symbol of how dysfunctional the U.S.-Cuban relations have become and… nothing.
Time to turn lemons into lemonade. Before too much time passes, the Obama administration needs to consider sending a hopeful signal to the Cuban people, to show that there is a new government in Washington that actually cares about the hopes of the Cuban people. Raul Castro has offered to trade 200 political prisoners for the Five.
Pardoning and deporting the Cuban Five, though constitutionally possible, is politically out of the question … at this time. Instead, the American President can and should expeditiously grant visas to the families of the Cuban Five so they can visit their husbands, fathers and sons on a regular basis, until diplomacy can catch up with justice.
That would, at least, be hope they can believe in.
Patrick C. Doherty is deputy director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. He is also director of the foundation’s U.S.-Cuba 21st Century Policy Initiative, which seeks to take advantage of recent developments to move U.S.-Cuba policy in a more sensible direction to the benefit of both countries.
http://thehavananote.com/2009/06/cuban_five_an_opportunity_for_1.html
