The arrests came almost two months after Hector Pesquera, special agent in charge of the FBI in Miami, had threatened more arrests of Cuban "spies." These moves have been aimed at intensifying a witch-hunt atmosphere against opponents of U.S. government policy towards Cuba and at further undermining democratic rights.

U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis said after the new arrests that the government is pursuing further indictments. "I've continued to say our arrests are ongoing," Lewis said in an interview published in the September 2 Miami Herald. "Frankly, I do expect the arrests of additional individuals."

On June 8, a federal court here convicted three Cuban citizens--Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, and Antonio Guerrero--of "conspiracy to commit espionage" and "conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent." They could face life in prison. Two others, Fernando González and René González, were convicted at the same time of "conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent." They face possible 10-year sentences.

Gerardo Hernández also faces a life sentence on charges of "conspiracy to commit murder" in deaths of four pilots belonging to the rightist Cuban-American group Brothers to the Rescue. The pilots were shot down by the Cuban air force in 1996, after provocatively entering Cuban air space and ignoring repeated warnings. The prosecution justified the charge by claiming Hernández had provided the Cuban government with flight information about the Brothers to the Rescue operation.

The sentencing of the five was scheduled to take place in early fall. On September 10, U.S. district judge Joan Lenard announced a delay in the sentencing to the week between December 11 and December 17, after a request from the federal probation office. Probation officer Debra Speas told the judge reportedly that "due to the complexity of the case" her office needed more time to complete pre-sentencing investigations of the five men.

Immediately after the June convictions, the Cuban government launched a campaign to demand their reversal and condemn Washington's hostile policies towards Cuba.

The five Cubans were part of an operation to "discover and report on terrorist plans hatched against our people," said a Cuban government statement published in the June 20 Cuban daily Granma.

Responding to the arrest of George and Marisol Gari, Cuban government officials said they have to continue uncovering such terrorist plans to defend Cuba's sovereignty, given the sanctuary Washington provides on its soil to rightist groups that have carried out provocations and violent attacks against Cuba. "Cuba believes there is no other option than to continue seeking this information by its own means," said Felipe Pérez Roque, Cuba's foreign minister, September 10. He explained that many of these groups, based in southern Florida, had carried out terrorist acts against Cuba, including hotel bombings in Havana that killed an Italian tourist and injured 11 others in 1997.

The convictions of the five, and the latest indictments, are an attack directed not only on revolutionary Cuba but constitutional protections for working people under the Bill of Rights. For example, FBI agents broke into the homes of the five repeatedly over three years prior to their arrests in 1998, violating the Fourth Amendment protection against arbitrary search and seizure. The five were denied due process or a fair trial. The prosecution's "evidence" consisted of information the FBI claimed to have collected in these raids and intercepted from short-wave radio transmissions between Havana and the defendants. The judge refused a defense motion to move the trial out of Miami, even though a number of potential jurors, especially Cuban-Americans, disqualified themselves, stating they were afraid of reprisals if they turned a "no guilty" verdict. And the big-business media all but convicted the five as spies even before the trial began.

Similar violations of democratic rights are under way in the case against the Garis. The FBI has charged the couple with conspiracy to "infiltrate" the Southern Command--Washington's headquarters for overseeing military operations in Latin America, based in Miami--and the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), the most prominent right-wing Cuban-American group here.

"It sounds like more of the same: people who talked about infiltrating military installations but who never did it, and who, in fact, focused on exile groups," said William Norris, lawyer for Ramón Labañino, one of the five convicted June 8.

George and Marisol Gari have lived in Orlando for 18 months, after moving there from Miami, and have three children. George Gari, who was born in Brooklyn and moved to Cuba as a child, worked for Firestone at the time of his arrest. He had been fired from Lockheed-Martin in Orlando earlier, where he worked as a machine tester, after the FBI told the company he was under investigation. The "evidence" of his alleged attempt to infiltrate the Southern Command consists of a claim by FBI agents of an unsuccessful attempt to get a job there.

Marisol Gari, who was born in Cuba, worked as a cashier at an Exxon gas station when she was indicted. U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis has alleged that while she worked for the U.S. Postal Service at Miami's international airport earlier she tried to gain access to CANF-related mail.

Unable to pay for their own attorneys, the Garis were assigned court-appointed lawyers September 5. The government has used the threat of stiff sentences--as it did with the five--to try to get the Garis to drop fighting the indictment in court. On September 14, Marisol Gari's attorney, Louis Casuso, told the press his client has decided to plead guilty on one count of "conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent for Cuba," for which she would face up to five years in prison. In exchange, prosecutors will supposedly drop another charge that could result in a 10-year sentence.

Argiris Malapanis is a meat packer in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
 

According to the Washington Post, the FBI had been following Montes since May, including surreptitiously entering her apartment. Attempting to justify further government espionage, DIA officials said that Montes communicated with Cuban intelligence through short wave radios, computers diskettes, and pagers, and compared the case to that of five Cubans convicted in Florida (see article above).  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home