Vol. 73/No. 41      October 26, 2009

Guerrero and the other four Cuban revolutionaries have been unjustly held in U.S. prisons for more than 11 years on a variety of trumped-up charges, including “conspiracy to commit espionage” and “conspiracy to commit murder.” In June 2008 a federal appeals court vacated the sentences for three of the Five—Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, and Fernando González—ruling the sentences were excessive because they were inconsistent with the court record. The appeals court ordered that each of the three be resentenced.

In the case of Guerrero and Labañino, the appeals court ruling noted they had been convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage, yet no evidence had been introduced that they had actually gathered or transmitted any top secret information to the Cuban government.

Sentencing hearings for Labañino and González, originally scheduled for today, have been postponed until arguments can be heard over the contention of defense attorneys for the Five that the prosecution must provide them with any assessments by the government of damage to national security caused by the alleged espionage.

In addition to the reduced sentence and possibility of parole for the first time, there is also a reasonable possibility coming out of today’s hearing that Guerrero will be assigned to a medium-security federal correctional institute instead of a maximum security penitentiary such as the one in Florence, Colorado, where he has been confined since 2002. As Guerrero’s attorney Leonard Weinglass noted in addressing the court today, lockdown time at the federal penitentiary in Florence has averaged 30 percent!

In handing down today’s decision, the federal court rejected arguments by both the lead government lawyer, Caroline Heck Miller, and Guerrero’s attorney, Leonard Weinglass, in favor of a prehearing agreement they had reached to propose to the judge reducing Guerrero’s sentence to 20 years. That would have been one year and 10 months less than the federal guidelines for the trumped-up charges on which Guerrero was convicted. Instead, Lenard imposed the minimum sentence within the federal guidelines, which are advisory to judges, but not mandatory.

Lenard pressed Caroline Heck Miller—who was also the federal government’s lead attorney at the time of the 2001 trial of the Five, where she had argued vigorously for a life sentence—to explain the government’s reasons for proposing a penalty below the minimum statutory sentencing guidelines.

Alluding to the effectiveness of the international campaign in defense of the Five, Miller noted that the case has been surrounded by great “contentiousness and noise” and that the government was in favor of “giving something up” in order to try to “quiet the waters of contentiousness that swirl around this case worldwide.”

What better reason to step up that international campaign demanding freedom for the Cuban Five!

The Militant will carry further coverage of the hearing for Antonio Guerrero next week.
 
 
Related articles:
Puerto Rican political prisoner fights for release
New York picket demands: Free the Cuban 5!
Free Carlos Alberto Torres now!
U.S. arts figures promote Cuba cultural exchange  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home