Vol. 74/No. 26      July 12, 2010

Hernández, Ramón Labañino, René González, Antonio Guerrero, and Fernando González had been gathering information on right-wing groups in Florida with a long history of conducting physical attacks against Cuba with the complicity of Washington. Known internationally as the Cuban Five, they all received stiff sentences after being found guilty in 2001 in a Miami trial marked by numerous violations of their democratic rights.

During the trial the defense was denied access to documents, including those taken from the five upon their arrest. Five motions to move the trial out of Miami due to the prejudicial atmosphere there were denied.

As a result of international support to their fight for freedom, a federal appeals court vacated the sentences for three of the five in June 2008. After a new hearing on the sentences, Guerrero’s sentence of life plus 10 years was reduced to 21 years and 10 months, Labañino’s life plus 18 years sentence was reduced to 30 years, and Fernando González’s sentence of 19 years was reduced to 17 years and 9 months. But the court refused to vacate Hernández’s sentence.

Hernández is serving a draconian double life sentence plus 15 years, on unprecedented charges that he was responsible for the sovereign act of the Cuban government in shooting down two “Brothers to the Rescue” planes that violated Cuban airspace on Feb. 24, 1996.

Brothers to the Rescue, led by CIA-trained counterrevolutionary José Basulto, had violated Cuban airspace 10 times in one 20-month period, including provocative flights over Havana, despite numerous warnings.

In a statement after their sentences were reduced, Guerrero, Labañino, and González noted that Hernández “has been arbitrarily excluded from this re-sentencing process… . The U.S. government knows the accusations against him are false and that his sentence is unjust.”

Not content with the stiff sentences given the five, Washington for more than 10 years has denied visas to Adriana Pérez, Hernández’s wife, and to Olga Salanueva, René González’s wife, preventing them from visiting their husbands in prison.

In the federal habeas corpus “Section 2255” motion, also known as a collateral appeal or attack, the legal team is arguing that there is new evidence that Hernández is innocent and the U.S. government attorneys committed violations in the handling and falsifying of evidence during the trial.

According to Leonard Weinglass, lead attorney for Hernández, among the information that first came to light in 2006 is evidence that many news articles published during the trial that raised unsubstantiated charges against the five were written by journalists paid by the U.S. government.

The articles, which often referred to the five as “spies,” contributed to an atmosphere in Miami that made it impossible to have a fair trial.

“Cuba used hallucinogens to train its spies” was the headline on one such article in the Spanish-language daily El Nuevo Herald, which quoted an anonymous source who claimed that Cuban “agents” were given LSD and other drugs to make them more “aggressive.”
 
 
Related articles:
Greetings to Cuban Five  
 
 
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