Recent testimony by witnesses called by the defense has shed further light on Washington's policy of providing a base of operations on U.S. soil for counterrevolutionary forces carrying out provocations against Cuba.

Retired U.S. Air Force colonel George Buchner testified at the trial March 21 as a defense witness. Buchner answered questions about two Cessna planes flown by pilots belonging to the Miami-based Brothers to the Rescue group, which repeatedly violated Cuba's air space and were shot down by the Cuban Air Force Feb. 24, 1996.

The former U.S. military officer presented evidence from records of the U.S. government's National Security Agency. His testimony showed that the planes, which took off from Florida, were about six miles inside Cuba's air space when they were shot down five years ago. The Brothers to the Rescue pilots had ignored repeated warnings from Cuban authorities.

"The trigger was when the first aircraft crossed the 12-mile territorial limit," Buchner said. "That allowed the government of Cuba to exercise their sovereign right to protect its airspace." A third plane flown by Brothers to the Rescue leader José Basulto also violated Cuban air space but turned back and was not hit. Buchner testified the Cuban MiG pilot tracking Basulto's plane "showed restraint" by breaking off pursuit.

Buchner is a former commander of the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), which was charged with overseeing nuclear "missile defense" over U.S. territory.

Buchner's testimony contradicted earlier U.S. government statements and a report issued by the United Nations Security Council in 1996 alleging the planes were shot down over international waters.

According to the Cuban government's account, corroborated in part by Buchner, the invasion of Cuban airspace on Feb. 24, 1996, was the second hostile incursion that day by the same type of aircraft, and the 10th such violation of Cuban territory over the previous 20 months, involving some 30 planes.

Throughout this period, Washington had known about these escalating provocations and permitted them to continue. Prosecution witness Charles Leonard, an aviation expert, said in cross-examination by defense attorneys March 1 that Brothers to the Rescue pilots repeatedly violated Cuban air space. He acknowledged that Havana had repeatedly warned Washington that the planes might be downed if they persisted in their provocative flights.

While the major national television networks, daily papers, and news agencies in the United States gave headline coverage for days in 1996 to White House allegations against Cuba, outside Miami they have virtually blacked out coverage of the testimony in a federal courtroom here that strikingly refutes earlier reports.  
 
Federal indictments
In September 1998 the FBI announced the arrests of 10 people in Miami, whom it accused of spying for Havana. These individuals were charged with attempting to "infiltrate" the U.S. Southern Command--which oversees Washington's military operations in Latin America, and was relocated from Panama to Miami in 1997--and other military installations, passing on "military secrets" to the Cuban government, and "infiltrating" and trying to disrupt Brothers to the Rescue and similar rightist Cuban-American groups in Miami. The government indicted another four people in absentia on similar charges.

One defendant, Gerardo Hernández, is also charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the Brothers to the Rescue case. Hernández is accused of being the main leader of what the government calls the "Wasp Network," the term the FBI uses to describe the 14 indicted in this case. If convicted, the defendants could face sentences of 15 years to life in prison.

Five of the individuals have pleaded guilty to some of the charges and are serving jail sentences of three-and-a-half to seven years. One of them, Joseph Santos, testified in January against those now on trial. Santos had been sentenced to five years. Prosecutors recommended he serve only four and U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard, who is presiding, has reportedly agreed.

The U.S. government's case against the five defendants is based almost entirely on information allegedly contained in supposedly encoded messages the FBI copied from hard drives of computers in their residences.  
 
Washington's political aims
For the last two years, statements by U.S. authorities, articles in the big-business press, and more recently the prosecution case have been used by Washington to further its unrelenting "cold war" against Cuba. One goal of the U.S. rulers has been to attempt another political frame-up of Cuba's revolutionary government. A second aim is to cover up the political blow U.S. imperialism suffered with the shooting down of the Brothers to the Rescue planes, and more recently with the outcome of the Elián González case.

Defense attorneys have stated that the government has no evidence to back up its charges. On March 2 the attorney for Gerardo Hernández asked that the charges against him of "conspiracy to commit murder" and "giving defense information to a foreign government" be dropped. "There is no clear evidence that the defendant knew the planes would be downed," attorney Paul McKenna stated.

William Norris, attorney for defendant Luis Medina, earlier submitted a motion for information from FBI investigations of right-wing Cuban-American groups. According to Norris's motion, "within the exile community there exist extremists [trying] to destabilize the Cuban government, and [their] acts have effectively been planned, financed, and carried out by organizations or individuals in the United States. Mr. Medina states he was in Miami investigating these individuals and organizations."

On March 27 defense lawyers brought to the stand Rodolfo Frómeta, a former Alpha 66 member who later founded Commandos F-4. Both groups have been responsible for armed attacks against Cuba and defenders of the Cuban revolution in Miami in the past. Frómeta testified that his group's goal has always been to assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro, minister of the Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces Raúl Castro, and other Cuban government officials.

Commandos F-4 has taken responsibility for arson attacks on Cuban buses and vans, Frómeta testified. In 1993 and again in 1994 Frómeta and others were caught by U.S. government agents on boats carrying high-powered weapons near the Florida Keys heading south. They were not arrested either of those times. Later in 1994, Frómeta was arrested and served three years in federal prison for trying to buy weapons for a plot to kill Castro.
 
 
Related articles:
'Cuban revolution is the achievement of millions'
Build Cuba-U.S. youth exchange
'We knew we were defending the gains of the revolution'
Conference event presents books on Playa Girón
Cuban groups invite U.S. youth to Havana for summer exchange
October Crisis and the U.S. class struggle
 
 
 
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