The Story Behind the Injustice: 15Yrs of Unjust Imprisonment

Embassy of the Republic of Cuba to New Zealand
Press Release

The Story Behind the Injustice: 15 Years of Unjust Imprisonment

September 12 marked 15 years since the unfair arrest and frame-up of René González, Fernando González, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero y Gerardo Hernández, known as the ‘Cuban Five’.

Who are they? Why they were framed? Why they should be free?

They are brave Cuban patriots that became political prisoners in the US after facing an unfair and manipulated trial and grave injustices and violations of their rights, and having abusive sentences imposed on them. Their ‘crime’? — to prevent and defend the Cuban people from terrorist actions prepared and organized from the US territory and with the knowledge of the US government.

They refused to plea bargain. They won’t cave-in to pressure by the US government and prison authorities to break their spirit. They proudly acknowledge their assignment from the Cuban government to defend their homeland.

Throughout the years Cuba has been victim of terrorist and hostile actions. As a result, more than 3000 Cubans have died and more than 2000 have been permanently disabled.

In the 1990s, Florida-based Cuban exile paramilitary groups — who have a fifty-year record of planning and carrying out bombings, assassinations and other assaults against Cuba — began bombing Cuban tourist sites. When the FBI refused to do anything to deter these actions the Cuban government sent the five men to Miami to infiltrate the groups in order to prevent those deadly operations as much as possible.

They were NOT gathering information about the US military, or US security or any other U S government activity. They were searching information on actions against Cuba. In a spirit of cooperation the Cuban government passed the information to the FBI, hoping that it would act on the evidence and break up the terrorists in Florida. Instead, the FBI used the information to identify the Five Cubans and arrested them.

Their trial took place in Miami, the home of the anti-Cuba groups they infiltrated, and it was politically motivated and manipulated.

The US government and the Miami media conspired to create a hostile environment of propaganda and prejudice for that trial. This prevented them from receiving justice, and the sentences imposed on these brave men were unjust and abusive.

The nature of the conspiracy was to use these media to unleash an unprecedented propaganda campaign of hatred and hostility. To this end they used a large group of “journalists” –in true fact government cover agents- who published articles and comments time and again, day and night, to produce an authentic flood of misinformation. From November 27, 2000 — when the trial started — to July 8, 2001 when they were found guilty, the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald alone had published 1111 articles, an average of more than 5 per day.

In Miami, the case had out-of-proportion coverage, and the “journalists” and local media were instrumental in the creation of an environment of irrational hatred that would result in the outcome anticipated by the US government. Self-appointed journalists distorted the facts, lied and fabricated an image that showed the accused as current threats to the community.

Outside Miami, the trial of the ‘Cuban Five’ did not catch the interest of the big corporate media. Details of the case were not reported in news agency dispatches, published in the print media, or covered by radio or TV outside Florida. It found no space — not even once — on the TV channels that are devoted exclusively, 24 hours a day, to reporting US court news.

How to explain such lack of interest? It was, at the time, the longest trial in the history of the United States. Generals, colonels, high-ranking officials and experts, an admiral and an advisor to the president were called as witnesses; well-known terrorists identified as such — some of them wearing their insignia– took the stand. This was a squabble involving international relations and issues related — truly or allegedly — to national security and terrorism, the favourite topics of the big media. Yet nobody said anything except the local media. For the rest of the population the trial simply did not exist.

The environment created for the hearing permitted the amazing impunity with which the authorities protected the terrorists and, unjustly and cruelly, punished five men who confronted them heroically, unarmed, without resorting to violence, without hurting anyone.

On May 27, 2005, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, after reviewing the arguments advanced by the family of the Cuban Five and the US government, concluded that their imprisonment was arbitrary and urged the US government to take the measures needed to rectify the situation.

The Working Group stated that, based on the facts and the circumstances in which the trial was held, the nature of the charges and the severity of the convictions, the imprisonment of ‘The Five’ violated Article 14 of the International Convention on Civil and Political Liberties, to which the United States is a signatory.

In August 2005, the three judge panel in the Court of Appeals unanimously ruled the Miami process a mistrial because it had taken place under what they described as “a perfect storm of prejudice and hostility”, created by the local media. Then in an unexpected move, the US government asked the twelve judges of the Court of Appeals of the Eleventh Circuit to review the panel's decision through a so-called banc procedure.

On August 2006, in spite of the strong disagreement voiced by two of the three judges who made up the panel, the Court of Appeals revoked, by majority, the decision of the three judges.

In October 2010 Amnesty International’s report of the case concludes; ‘… the organization believes that the concerns outlined above combine to raise serious doubts about the fairness of the proceedings leading to their conviction, in particular the prejudicial impact of publicity about the case on a jury in Miami. Amnesty International hopes that these concerns can still be given due consideration by the appropriate appeal channels. Should the legal appeals process not provide a timely remedy, and given the long prison terms imposed and length of time the prisoners have already served, Amnesty International is supporting calls for a review of the case by the US executive authorities through the clemency process or other appropriate means’.

The Washington DC-based Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) is bringing a lawsuit against the US State Department to release evidence it holds covering secret payments by the US government to Miami-based journalists reporting on the case at the time, using 'hostile, inflammatory and prejudicial stories which propagandized US-based domestic public opinion including the jury pool and sitting jury', as described in the complaint. And this month a US Federal Court has ordered the State Department to hand over those materials.
Additionally the ‘Cuban Five’ defence team has presented habeas corpus petitions based on the manipulation of evidence and the fact that the lawyers had access to only 15 percent of it. But although a final decision is still pending the US government has already asked the South Florida District Court to reject the habeas corpus petitions.

The PCJF says it is joined by Amnesty International, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions, and individuals including ex-president of the US Jimmy Carter, former US attorney general Ramsey Clark, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to secretary of state Colin Powell, author Noam Chomsky, ten Nobel Prize winners and many thousands of people and organizations in the US and world-wide.

Upon completion of 15 years of unjust imprisonment, a wave of solidarity kicked off the movement to support the five Cuban antiterrorist fighters. During this international campaign, from September 5 through October 6, thousands of people worldwide are wearing symbolic yellow ribbons in solidarity with the imprisoned men. They are raising their voices for the freedom of the ‘Cuban Five’ in a collective effort to build what Gerardo Hernández rightly described as the “jury of millions that will make our truth be known”

Embassy of Cuba to New Zealand

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