The federal government never proved any illegal actions by the five Cubans. Instead, it pushed through a series of "conspiracy" charges against them, including conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign power, to commit espionage for Cuba, and--in the case of Hernández--to commit murder. Hernández was given a double life sentence; Guerrero and Ramón Labańino, a life sentence; Fernando González, a jail term of 19 years; and René González, 15 years.
McKenna explained that the new motion is based on the fact that the five defendants were denied a fair trial by the court’s refusal to grant a defense request to move the proceedings to a city outside Miami, where it was virtually impossible to conduct an impartial trial. For months before the trial, which concluded in June 2001, the defendants were tried and convicted in the big-business media, which carried out a smear campaign against them and the Cuban Revolution. Jurors, especially Cuban-Americans, had reason to fear reprisals if they voted "not guilty."
The five Cuban revolutionaries were carrying out a mission in the United States to defend their country and revolution by gathering information about the activities of counterrevolutionary groups operating in the United States with a long history of organizing violent attacks against Cuba with the complicity of the U.S. government.
"We never tried to deny that our clients were foreign agents and that they had false documents. The sentences for these kinds of crimes are minor, the maximum sentencing for them is five years, and generally, in the history of these cases, the people involved are normally returned" to their countries, said McKenna.
"I believe that these men are innocent, and they are patriots, and we have to recognize their courage," he added.
The imprisoned Cubans all have a record of revolutionary activity, with the mission to infiltrate the ultrarightist groups being among their most dangerous. Hernández, Fernando González, and René González joined with other Cuban volunteer combatants to help defeat the invasion of Angola by the apartheid regime’s army in the late 1980s. Several distinguished themselves in Cuba as leaders of the high school student federation or the Union of Young Communists.
McKenna reported that Gerardo Hernández’s wife, Adriana Hernández, has not been allowed to see her husband for five years, a denial of the "fundamental human right to allow the family to see anyone in jail," he said.
An international campaign is being waged to tell the truth about the five Cuban prisoners and to demand their immediate release.
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