Vol. 78/No. 6      February 17, 2014

What were their allegedly criminal activities?

They were gathering information on the plans and actions of counterrevolutionary Cuban American organizations, including murderous paramilitary outfits that operate with impunity on US soil. These groups and the individuals who belong to them have a more than half-century-long record of carrying out bombings, assassinations, and other assaults on Cubans and other supporters of the Cuban Revolution — within the United States, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Panama, and elsewhere, as well as in Cuba.

Since 1959, nearly 3,500 men, women, and children in Cuba have been killed in such attacks, most originating from the United States. The task of the Five was to keep the Cuban government informed of deadly operations being prepared in order to prevent as many as possible from coming to fruition.

The Five were brought to trial and convicted by a federal court in Miami on frame-up charges that included conspiracy to commit espionage and, in the case of Gerardo Hernández, conspiracy to commit murder. The latter charge, added on months after his arrest, was based on the allegation that Hernández had advance knowledge of the Cuban government’s February 1996 shootdown over Cuban waters of two planes whose Miami-based sponsors had rebuffed Havana’s repeated warnings to cease recurring provocations within Cuban airspace.

Each of the Five proudly acknowledged before the court and to the world that they were working for the Cuban government to prevent future murderous acts from taking place — and they would gladly do so again if asked. On their unbowed heads, the judge imposed maximum sentences, ranging from fifteen years for René González, to life without parole for Guerrero and Labañino, and a double life sentence for Hernández, who led the effort.

Conceding the blatantly prejudiced atmosphere surrounding the trial, a three-judge federal appeals court panel unanimously overturned the convictions in 2005. Following a government appeal, the full court reinstated the convictions a year later.

A 2008 federal court decision ruled that the sentences imposed on three of the five — Guerrero, Labañino, and Fernando González — exceeded federal guidelines. Labañino’s time was reduced from life without parole to thirty years, Guerrero’s from life without parole to twenty-one years and ten months. Fernando González’s sentence was shortened only slightly, from nineteen years to seventeen years and nine months. The court refused even to consider reducing Hernández’s sentence on the grounds that he is serving not one but two life terms, so it would make no difference!

In May 2013 René González, after completing every day of his sentence — more than fourteen and a half years in US custody — became the first of the Five to return to Cuba. Also having served his entire sentence, Fernando González is scheduled for release on February 27, 2014. Were they to serve their full time, Guerrero would not be released until September 2017, and Labañino in October 2024.

For Hernández there is no release date. Moreover, as an additional, intensely cruel punishment throughout his entire imprisonment, Washington has denied his wife, Adriana Pérez, a visa to enter the United States to visit him.

The 2009 sentence reductions, however, registered the pressure on the US from growing international condemnation of the trial and the unconscionable length of the prison terms imposed on the Cuban Five. At the court hearing where Guerrero was resentenced, federal prosecutors acknowledged they were seeking to “quiet the waters of contentiousness” and “noise” swirling around the case worldwide.

Since then, moreover, evidence has come to light that a number of journalists writing about the trial in the Miami press were simultaneously receiving payments from the US government’s Office of Cuban Broadcasting. This further proof of the corruption of the trial process has become part of the habeas corpus appeals filed on behalf of Hernández, Labañino, and Guerrero.

Why are the Cuban Five in prison for even a day?

Because they are exemplary sons of the Cuban Revolution, of the men and women who brought into being and defend “the first free territory of the Americas.” They are held hostage not only as punishment for the audacity of the Cuban toilers who dared to defend Angola’s sovereignty, to help free Namibia, and to fight and die to liberate Africa from the scourge of apartheid. They are being punished for the determination of Cuba’s workers and farmers to make and defend a socialist revolution in what was once a virtual US colonial protectorate. They are in prison because they represent the men and women of Cuba who to this day refuse to submit to the dictates of Washington.

It was for these deeds the Five were arrested, framed up, and locked away through three US administrations of William Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.

The unbending integrity, dignity, courage, truthfulness — and humor — of each of the Five, and growing knowledge of the consistency of their revolutionary conduct from Cuba and Angola to US prison cells, is winning them ever-increasing support.

As long as even one of them remains behind bars, however, none of us is “free.”
 
 
Related articles:
‘Voices From Prison’ shows who Cuban 5 are, give workers
reason to admire them
Prisoners’ accounts reflect on revolutionary integrity of Five
“They offered ‘Whatever you want’ if I’d be a traitor
Showings of paintings by Antonio Guerrero [exhibit.pdf]  
 
 
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