Cuban troops guard Cubana airliner, hijacked april 1 after taking off from Isle of Youth. The craft was allowed to refuel in Havana before leaving for Key West, Florida.

At least half of the accused were convicted of "working with a foreign power to undermine the government." All 75 were prosecuted under Cuba’s 1977 Law of Criminal Procedure.

On April 8, in the wake of a string of hijackings of planes and boats, a Cuban court found another 10 people guilty of having hijacked a ferry six days earlier, using handguns and knives, in a failed attempt to reach Florida. The hijackers had been charged with "very grave acts of terrorism," and three men among them were given the death penalty and were executed April 11, after the country’s Supreme Court and Council of State upheld the death sentences. Another four men among this group were given life in prison, while three women were handed one- to five-year terms.

Washington has recently deepened its open collaboration with opponents of the Cuban Revolution inside the Caribbean nation and has organized provocations that are behind the incidents that led to these arrests and trials.

The U.S rulers have now seized on the sentences to justify ratcheting up their decades-long efforts to bring down the Cuban revolution. On April 8, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 414–0 for a resolution demanding the immediate release of the imprisoned "dissidents." The editors of numerous U.S. dailies--many of them liberals who have in the past called for easing Washington’s trade and economic sanctions against Cuba--have joined the chorus condemning Havana for alleged "human rights violations." A number have shifted away from their previous stance on the embargo.

During an April 9 news conference in Havana, Cuba’s foreign minister Felipe Pérez Roque detailed the provocations orchestrated by Washington since last summer that led to the arrests and trials. These recent actions, the foreign minister explained, built on the U.S. government’s unrelenting economic war, support for paramilitary forces operating from U.S. territory, assassination attempts against Cuban government leaders, and efforts to isolate Cuba diplomatically and politically for more than four decades. The people and the government of Cuba "are currently waging a hard struggle for their right to self-determination, for their right to independence," he said.

"In the last seven months," Pérez Roque stated, "there have been seven hijackings of Cuban air and sea crafts, encouraged by...the indiscriminate application of the Cuban Adjustment Act, by the practice of receiving people who use terrorism and violence to get there."

Approved by the U.S. Congress in 1966, the Cuban Adjustment Act encourages people to leave Cuba for the United States by providing virtually automatic asylum to any Cuban who lands on Florida’s shores regardless of whatever crimes they may have committed to get there.

In an accord signed by both governments in 1994, Washington agreed to provide 20,000 visas annually to Cubans wishing to emigrate to the United States and who apply to do so. Even though requests have exceeded this number every year, the U.S. government has been granting a diminishing number of visas. The number of visas issued has dropped from nearly 11,000 in the year 2000 to 8,300 in 2001 and just over 7,000 in 2002. In the first five months of this year, which for immigration purposes begins October 1, the U.S. Interests Section had issued only 500 visas, Pérez Roque pointed out. "We are dealing with a deliberate plan to make those who want to emigrate lose hope, so that they have no alternative but illegal immigration," he stated.

At the same time, the Cuban foreign minister noted, "The U.S. Interest Section’s diplomatic pouch is increasingly being used to bring in funds and other materials to carry out counterrevolutionary acts to groups in Cuba created and funded by the U.S. government."

The two countries have not had diplomatic relations since Washington broke them off shortly after the victory of the 1959 revolution: a popular insurrection that brought down the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and established a government that defended the interests of Cuban workers and farmers, not the property interests of U.S. ruling families. Each government’s diplomatic personnel operates out of an Interests Section, hosted formally by a third country’s embassy.

Pérez Roque accused James Cason, head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana since last July, of engaging in increasingly provocative actions. "The U.S. Interests Section in Havana has been instructed to establish there what is practically the headquarters of internal subversion in Cuba," the foreign minister said. "The head of this section has the highest profile of anyone in its 25 years of functioning, in open violation of the laws governing diplomatic conduct, openly interfering in Cuba’s internal affairs, with a tone and demeanor totally inappropriate for a diplomat." This course is consistent with "the obsession of U.S. governments to fabricate an opposition in Cuba," he stated.

Cuban authorities charged, tried, and convicted those arrested of having received large amounts of funds towards these ends. Most of these individuals had taken part in meetings with U.S. diplomats, including at Cason’s residence and U.S. diplomatic offices. Cason has also regularly met with Cuban-American counterrevolutionary groups during frequent visits back home. "Every time I go to Miami, I want to meet...with all the groups," the U.S. diplomat said in a recently televised interview in Miami. These include the Cuban-American National Foundation and the Council for the Freedom of Cuba. The latter is a paramilitary group that has carried out armed acts against Cuba from U.S. soil.

Pérez Roque also answered accusations leveled by Washington and the international big-business media that the recent trials violated basic rights of the accused. He stated that all those indicted had access to legal counsel, were allowed visits by family members during legal proceedings, and have been notified of their right to appeal their sentences up to the country’s Supreme Court. None of them have been subjected to solitary confinement or have been mistreated in jail, he said. In response to accusations that the legal proceedings were "secret," Pérez Roque said that the trial hearings were public, with an average of 100 people attending, including many family members, each of the 29 trials held so far.

The Cuban media reported that at least a dozen of the individuals the U.S. Interests Section was collaborating with were government agents who had infiltrated the counterrevolutionary groups working with Washington. Several of these undercover agents gained enough trust from U.S. diplomats that they had permission to use the computers of diplomatic personnel whenever they wished. The testimony of the Cuban security agents was part of the evidence presented in the trials. After being publicly identified, they are now being welcomed for their deeds by comrades and friends in events across the island. "Today we know the true face of the revolutionary and unbreakable nation," the Cuban daily Granma said, when their identities were revealed.
 
 
Related articles:
Washington adds restrictions on travel to Cuba
‘Independent libraries’ in Cuba a U.S.-promoted fraud  
 
 
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