Federal prosecutors have filed unprecedented charges against one defendant, Gerardo Hernández, of conspiracy to commit murder for allegedly providing Cuban authorities with flight plans for Brothers to the Rescue flights, which were violating Cuban airspace after taking off from the United States. The Cuban air force shot down two of three Brothers to the Rescue planes deep inside Cuban airspace in 1996. The charges against Hernández, described by prosecutors as the "lead defendant," carry a sentence of up to life imprisonment.

The prosecution case, now entering its fifth month, also indicates how Washington can concoct documentation to frame up opponents of its policies. The accusations of the FBI are based on two pieces of "evidence": information allegedly contained in supposedly encoded messages the FBI copied from hard drives of computers in the residences of the defendants; and testimony by one of those indicted in 1998 who later pleaded guilty to some of the charges and is now serving a four-year sentence. Five of the 10 people arrested two-and-a-half years ago subsequently pleaded guilty.

FBI agents have testified they broke into the homes of the defendants many times over a three-year period prior to the arrests. The government's actions, the severity of the charges against Hernández, and a frame-up underway against the five in the big-business media here, are all meant to send a chill down the spine not only of those who defend Cuba or attempt to expose the activities of counterrevolutionary groups in Miami, but of any working person seeking to oppose U.S. government policy or assaults by the employers.

Defense lawyers have been able to present extensive information on how Florida-based Cuban-American groups have carried out decade, and against opponents of Washington's economic war on Cuba in Miami. They have also succeeded in revealing how the U.S. government has provided a base of operations for these organizations and refused to take any effective steps to halt their activities. This is despite being provided information by the Cuban government on these plots.

For example, a series of bombings of tourist spots in Cuba in 1997 was "organized, planned, and financed from the United States," declared Roberto Hernández Caballero in the trial. Hernández, currently a lieutenant colonel for the State Security Department of the Interior Ministry of Cuba, testified as a defense witness at the trial March 29 and 30.

The prosecution sought to prevent Hernández's testimony, arguing that he was not personally present when the bombs went off in Cuba. U.S. District Court Judge Joan Lenard, presiding over the trial of the five Cubans accused of espionage, overruled the U.S. government attorneys.

This evidence further boosted the defense case that the five men face frame-up charges that should be dropped. Testimony by a series of witnesses brought to the stand by defense attorneys over the last month has also shed further light on Washington's unceasing cold war against Cuba.

Retired U.S. Air Force colonel George Buchner testified March 21 that evidence from the records of the U.S. government's National Security Agency shows that the Brothers to the Rescue pilots were well within Cuba's airspace when they were shot down (see last week's Militant). This contradicted earlier claims by Washington, and by a 1996 United Nations Security Council report, that the planes were brought down over international waters. Buchner's testimony and similar evidence presented in a federal courtroom here, however, has received little media coverage beyond Miami.

The revelations by U.S. military officers and other witnesses called on by the defense have further divided backers of Wash-ington's policy towards Cuba in southern Florida. Some Cuban-American groups here have denounced recent developments in the trial and urged other rightists to boycott it. Ramón Saúl Sánchez, for example, president of the Democracy Movement, told El Nuevo Herald March 28 that opponents of the Cuban Revolution should not appear on the witness stand because the defense "is trying to blame the exiles for a series of aggressions and to present the regime of Fidel Castro as the victim."

The Democracy Movement organized several anti-Cuba flotillas from Miami a few years ago, at least one of which entered Cuban waters and ended up having one of its boats forcibly turned around by Cuba's gunboats. The organization also has an "air command," consisting of several small planes that accompany the flotillas.

Sánchez and others complain the defense has turned the tables, putting them on trial, instead of the defendants. These rightists were not too pleased with how Basulto's cross-examination by defense attorneys turned out.

The Brothers to the Rescue leader had tried to portray himself in earlier testimony as a "nonviolent resister" to "Castro's tyranny" and a follower of Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi.

After the defense grilled him on the stand for five days, however, Basulto testified March 16 that he would do nothing to stop illegal arms shipments to Cuba because "he broadly supports exile groups bent on overthrowing Fidel Castro violently," according to the March 17 Miami Herald.  
 
Attempt to whitewash frame-up
At the same time, statements by U.S. government officials, the prosecution claims, and news coverage of the trial along with editorial comments have pushed the ruling-class effort to cover up the attempted frame-up of the five men.

An editorial in the January 8 Miami Herald is one such example. Titled "Cuban Justice?" the editorial claimed the defendants are getting a fair trial here, something that could supposedly never happen in the courts in Cuba.

"What kind of justice could accused spies in Cuba expect?" the Herald editors began. "Certainly nothing like the process affording a vigorous defense and civil-rights protection to the five men accused of spying for Cuba on trial in Miami's federal court."

The editorial described with derision the fact that four of the five defendants have private criminal defense lawyers appointed by the court and "paid by public dollars." The fifth is represented by a public defender.

The editorial portrayed the trial proceedings as advantageous to the defendants. "Jury selection took nearly two weeks in a painstaking effort to get impartial jurors, and no Cuban American now sits in judgment," it stated. The Herald editors made no mention of statements by several potential jurors, however--a number of Cuban-Americans and other Latinos, in particular--who asked to be disqualified for fear of recriminations if they voted "not guilty" at the end.

"Our justice system presumes even accused spies innocent until proven otherwise," the editorial said, and praised the coverage of the trial by the "media--beholden to neither court nor government."

Such presumption of innocence, however, has not been the Miami Herald's stock in trade around this trial. Miami's main daily has all but convicted the five men as "Castro's spies" in numerous headlines, news articles, and opinion columns. One of the first feature articles on the case the paper ran, for example, was titled "Spies Among Us: Castro Agents Keep Eye on Exiles." The article, published in the April 11, 1999, Herald not only outlined the government's plan, but implied that "Cuban spies" are plentiful in Miami, especially among Cubans who defend the Cuban Revolution.  
 
Violation of Cuba's sovereignty
In a related case, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Alan Postman ordered the Cuban government March 23 to pay $20 million to Ana Margarita Martínez, the former wife of Juan Pablo Roque. The judge ruled that Havana committed acts of "sexual battery, torture, and terrorism by orchestrating Roque's phony marriage with Martínez so he could penetrate the exile community," according to the March 24 Miami Herald.

Juan Pablo Roque was one of four men indicted in absentia on "spy" charges, in addition to the 10 people arrested by the FBI in 1998. Roque, who reportedly had joined Brothers to the Rescue in Miami, returned to Cuba in 1996 prior to the shootdown of the Brothers to the Rescue planes and declared publicly his support for the Cuban Revolution.

In an earlier hearing, Postman had announced he wanted to impose $20 million in punitive damages but stopped short of doing so because that would be prohibited "under federal law because of Cuba's immunity as a sovereign nation." The judge said March 23 he changed his mind after lawyers for Ana Margarita Martínez claimed they found an exemption for this case in the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.

Using the same act, another federal court issued a similar ruling violating Cuba's sovereignty in February. The court ordered Havana to pay $93 million in damages to the families of the four pilots of the Brothers to the Rescue planes shot down in 1996. In both cases, Washington has indicated it will allow those affected to use frozen assets of the Cuban government in the United States to get their awards.  
 
 
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