Vol. 71/No. 15      April 16, 2007

To aid this campaign, the facts on who the five revolutionaries are and how they were framed up by Washington need to be told.

Gerardo Hernández, René González, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, and Fernando González—the Cuban Five, as they are known—have been imprisoned in U.S. federal penitentiaries for more than eight years. They are serving sentences of 15 years to a double life term.

The five men were arrested in 1998 and convicted in a June 2001 frame-up trial of “conspiracy to commit espionage” for the government of Cuba, “conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent,” and—in the case of Hernández—“conspiracy to commit murder.”

The five had entered and had been gathering information on right-wing Cuban American groups based in southern Florida that have an extensive record of carrying out violent attacks on Cuba from U.S. soil with Washington’s complicity.

In 1998 the FBI announced with much fanfare, which the media played up, that it had discovered a “Cuban spy network” in Florida. The five men were arrested and initially charged with trying to “infiltrate” the Florida-based U.S. Southern Command, passing U.S. “military secrets” to Havana, and “disrupting” right-wing Cuban American groups in Miami. The charge of “conspiracy to commit murder” was later added against Hernández.

Unable to prove that the five men had committed any such acts, including the supposed theft of U.S. military secrets, Washington charged them with “conspiracy” to commit espionage and related activities. A jury convicted the five on those charges on June 8, 2001.

The arrests, trial, and sentencing of the five revolutionaries were mired with violations of constitutional protections. These included use of “evidence” that FBI agents said they had collected by repeatedly breaking into the homes of the five over the three years prior to their arrests, violating Fourth Amendment protection against arbitrary search and seizure.

Furthermore, the judge refused a motion by the defense to move the trial out of Miami on the basis that it was not possible to get a fair hearing for such a case, given the number of opponents of the Cuban Revolution in that city and the media hype that had already branded the defendants as “guilty spies.”

In the legal brief appealing the convictions, Leonard Weinglass, a lead defense attorney, described how a rightist dressed in military fatigues and wearing pictures of bazookas had entered the courtroom in Miami during the 2001 trial.

“If the jury didn’t know before they knew now what the reaction would be,” said Weinglass. “The trial should have been moved 25 miles away to Fort Lauderdale.”

Acting on the appeal, a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta reviewed the trial. On Aug. 9, 2005, the panel ruled that the defendants were denied a fair trial because of the “perfect storm created by pretrial publicity surrounding this case,” the “pervasive community prejudice,” and “the government’s use of inflammatory statements during closing arguments.” It annulled their convictions and ordered a new trial. But this victory in the pursuit of justice for the five was short-lived.

Washington demanded a review and reversal of the three-judge panel decision. Exactly one year later—on Aug. 9, 2006—the full 12-judge panel of the same court upheld the convictions of the five.

Since then, the defense has been preparing the next steps in the legal battle, which may reach as high as the Supreme Court.  
 
History of attacks against Cuba
The five revolutionaries maintained that the information they were gathering on right-wing groups was publicly available.

“Our tiny nation, which has heroically survived four decades of aggressions and threats to its national security, of subversion plans, sabotage, and destabilization, has every right to defend itself from its enemies who keep using U.S. territory,” said the five men in a June 17, 2001, statement they released to the American people while behind bars.

Their defense presented extensive information during the trial on how U.S.-based Cuban American groups have carried out attacks against Cuba since the 1959 revolution. The defense also succeeded in exposing the way the U.S. government has provided a base of operations for these organizations, and has refused to take any effective measures to halt their activities, many of which violate U.S. laws.

These include the October 1976 bombing of a Cuban plane flying out of Barbados that killed 73 people, including the entire Cuban fencing team returning from an international competition; a series of bombings of hotels and tourist spots in Cuba in 1997; numerous acts of sabotage carried out against the Cuban people; and violent attacks on opponents of U.S. policy toward Cuba in Miami and elsewhere in southern Florida.  
 
Shoot down of contra planes
Gerardo Hernández was found guilty of “conspiracy to commit murder” for allegedly providing Cuban authorities with flight plans of four pilots belonging to Brothers to the Rescue. This is a Cuban American counterrevolutionary group, which, until 1996, had violated Cuba’s airspace by sending numerous provocative flights over the island and dropping flyers in an effort to incite the Cuban people to topple their government.

After repeated warnings by Havana that were ignored—both by Washington and this group—the Cuban Air Force shot down on Feb. 24, 1996, two Brothers to the Rescue planes that had entered the country’s airspace and refused once again to heed the order to turn back.

Claiming that the planes were shot down over international waters, Washington used the incident to launch a smear campaign against the Cuban Revolution and intensify its economic war against Cuba.

Evidence the defense presented at the trial showed that the Brothers to the Rescue pilots were well inside Cuba’s airspace when they were shot down, rebutting Washington’s claims.

Despite these facts, in mid-December 2001, Hernández was sentenced to two consecutive life terms plus 80 months in jail on these trumped-up charges. “Never before had a criminal charge been based upon the act of a sovereign state defending its own territory,” said Weinglass, about the unprecedented character of the case. “Hernández was not involved in any way in the shoot down.”

A few days later, Ramón Labañino was sentenced to one life term plus 18 years; René González received a 15-year sentence; Fernando González got 19 years in prison; and Antonio Guerrero was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 10 years.  
 
Who are the Cuban Five?
All five men have set unblemished examples as revolutionaries who have devoted their lives not only to the defense of Cuba’s sovereignty and its socialist revolution, but to the worldwide fight to end imperialist domination and for national liberation.

Prior to taking up their internationalist mission in the United States, three of the five—Hernández, René González, and Fernando González—were among the 300,000 Cuban volunteer troops that fought alongside the Angolan army to beat back the U.S.-backed invasion of that country by the South African army of the apartheid regime. All of the five played an active political role in the Cuban Revolution from their student years to their working lives. As a cadre of the Union of Young Communists, René González, for example, volunteered to go to the countryside as part of a teaching contingent. All of the five are members of the Cuban Communist Party.

Behind prison walls the Cuban Five have conducted themselves as exemplary revolutionaries with a keen interest in the U.S. class struggle. They have been passing on to fellow inmates revolutionary literature they receive and study. They have received messages of support and have extended their solidarity to workers involved in strikes and other struggles in the United States.

Washington has refused to recognize them as political prisoners.  
 
Prison conditions
After their arrests the five were held in solitary confinement for 17 months. Then again in February 2003 all five were thrown into the “hole” after a Justice Department order charging that the extensive solidarity they were receiving in the form of correspondence and the few visitors they were allowed made them a “national security risk.” They were kept in solitary for a month.

Right after their sentencing the five were separated into five different prisons across the United States, thousands of miles apart from each other. They have been subjected to the strictest conditions of incarceration. Their telephone contacts are controlled and limited. Correspondence and literature sent to the five often never reaches them because of arbitrary application of prison rules.

They have also been denied the right to receive regular visits, including from their loved ones. U.S. authorities have repeatedly denied visas to relatives of two of the five to travel from Cuba to visit them in prison.

Adriana Pérez, Hernández’s wife, has not seen her husband since his arrest in 1998. She has applied six times for a U.S. visa to visit him, and each time Washington has denied her request.

Olga Salanueva, wife of René González, has applied for a visa seven times with the same results. Their daughter, Ivette González, has not seen her father since the year 2000.

Salanueva and other relatives of the five have traveled around the world speaking out against these abuses, and asking for support for the right of the five men to see their loved ones.

“You don’t need to know anything about Cuba to start now… . Find out about what they were doing and you will join us, and I know you will get out there and fight for them,” said Irma González, another daughter of René González, in an Oct. 15, 2006, television newscast during a visit to the Bahamas.

The campaign to demand freedom for the five includes efforts to get the word out about their case as broadly as possible through house meetings and forums, film showings, and other events on campuses and elsewhere.

To learn more about the campaign, including how to get movies and literature on the case, and how to get involved, contact Militant distributors near you (see directory on page 8); the Young Socialists at 306 W. 37th St., 10th floor, New York, NY 10018 or youngsocialists@mac.com or call (212) 629-6649; or the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five at www.freethefive.org.
 
 
Related articles:
Young Socialists campaign for freedom for Cuban 5
Campaign to free the Cuban Five  
 
 
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