The defendants are all Cubans or Cuban-Americans. Three of them--Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labaniño, and Antonio Guerrero--were convicted of "conspiracy to commit espionage" and "conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent" and could get life imprisonment. Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez, convicted of "conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent," face possible 10-year sentences. The judge has set separate sentencings for each defendant, beginning in late September.

These convictions set new precedents for violation of democratic rights of all working people by Washington. They are also being used by the big-business media and capitalist politicians here to further the U.S. government’s "cold war" against Cuba.

In 1998, the FBI announced it had discovered a "Cuban spy network" in Florida and arrested 10 people. They were charged with trying to "infiltrate" the U.S. Southern Command, passing U.S. "military secrets" to Havana, and "infiltrating and "disrupting" right-wing Cuban-American groups in Miami that seek to overthrow the revolutionary government of Cuba. The charge of "conspiracy to commit murder" was added later.

Five of the defendants eventually pleaded guilty to some of the charges and one testified at the trial against the five defendants.  
 
Brothers to Rescue shootdown
The federal prosecutors’ case indicated how Washington can concoct documentation to frame up opponents of its policies. It rested on: 1) information allegedly contained in supposedly encoded messages the prosecution claimed the FBI copied off the hard drives of computers in the defendants’ residences; 2) shortwave radio transmissions the government claimed took place between the Cuban government and the defendants; and 3) the testimony of several of the original defendants who decided to cooperate with the frame-up to get their sentences reduced. No evidence was ever produced of "military secrets" supposedly stolen by the "spies."

The "conspiracy to commit murder" charge was made up of whole cloth. Gerardo Hernández allegedly provided Cuban authorities with flight plans of the four Brothers to the Rescue pilots whose planes were downed by the Cuban air force. A number of witnesses called by the defense offered ample evidence that these rightists repeatedly violated Cuban airspace and refused to heed warnings to head back before they were downed near Havana.

The defense argued that the five men on trial were seeking information, all of which was available to the public, about the terrorist Cuban-American groups in Miami in order to prevent further attacks on Cuba. William Norris, attorney for one of the defendants, said, for example, that "within the exile community here 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. [My client] states he was in Miami investigating these individuals and organizations."  
 
Planes did violate Cuban airspace
Retired U.S. Air Force colonel George Buchner testified that evidence in the records of the U.S. National Security Agency shows the Brothers to the Rescue planes were well within Cuban airspace when they were shot down. This contradicted earlier claims by Washington, and by a United Nations Security Council report, that the planes were shot down over international waters.

Buchner and other such witnesses stated that Washington was not only aware of the plans by Brothers to the Rescue pilots but had received warnings by the Cuban government to take steps to stop these flights. To no avail.

José Basulto--the central leader of Brothers to the Rescue who turned back his plane in 1996 and was not pursued by the Cuban air force--was also called to the stand by the defense. He initially tried to portray himself as a "nonviolent resister" to "Castro’s tyranny" and a follower of Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi. Under questioning he conceded "he broadly supports exile groups bent on overthrowing Fidel Castro violently," reported the Miami Herald.

In the aftermath of the trial, U.S. officials are threatening further "investigation" of supposed spies for Cuba here, trying to send a chill down the spine of all supporters of the Cuban Revolution or simply opponents of Washington’s policies here. U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis was quoted in the June 9 Miami Herald as saying, "There have been spies among us. Let the verdict serve notice, though, [that] we will not stand idly by and allow any foreign government to wreak its havoc upon our way of life."

Right-wing Cuban-American leaders here have picked up on the government’s line. "Yes, Castro is among us," declared Joseph García, head of the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF). The trial is proof, he said, that it is not "paranoia" on the part of Cuban rightists to think there are secret agents of Cuba here. The CANF and José Basulto have both called for the indictment of Castro for murder in the 1996 incident.  
 
Pretense of a ‘fair trial’
The courtroom proceedings here were carefully orchestrated by the government to give the appearance of a "fair trial" and to continue to advance Washington’s slanders against Cuba. The major media here hammered away at this theme. An editorial in the June 9 El Nuevo Herald, for example, stated, "Despite having attacked the United States...Castro’s agents got full protection of the law.

"It was a clear, fair trial. Just the opposite of what would have happened had the trial taken place in Havana." The Miami Herald, for its part, called the trial’s outcome "a well-earned victory for the federal prosecutors and for the country. As important, it gave the lie to defense claims that they were Cuban ‘patriots’ trying to protect their country against Cuban exiles."
 
 
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