Antonio Guerrero Resentencing Hearing

[Moorbey]

International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban adan

Antonio Guerrero Sentenced to 21 Years and 10 Months

Declaration of the US Movement in Solidarity with the Cuban Five to the rest of the International Movement for the Freedom of the Cuban Five

THE following organizations have issued this declaration: The National Committee to Free the Cuban Five; the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five; and the organizations of the Cuban Immigration in Miami that together comprise the Alianza Martiana (Marti Alliance): the Antonio Maceo Brigade, the Alianza Martiana as an individual organization, the Alliance of Workers of the Cuban Community (ATC), the José Martí Association, and political parties of the United States who are part of the Cuban Five solidarity movement.

With our declaration we reaffirm our unwavering commitment to maintain and strengthen our efforts to demand the immediate freedom of our five brothers: Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González, as they are innocent of the charges that the U.S. government has convicted them of.

Today, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2009, in Miami's United States Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida, a hearing was held to reduce the sentence of one of our five brothers, Antonio Guerrero. It is one of three re-sentencing hearings ordered by the full panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in September 2008. The U.S. Federal District Court has not yet set the date or dates of the other two re-sentencing hearings of our brothers Ramón Labañino and Fernando González.

In September 2008 the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the trial court's previous life sentence imposed on Antonio Guerrero and Ramon Labañino, and the 19-year sentence imposed on Fernando González in December 2001. The Five were convicted in June 2001.

Today the Court imposed a prison sentence of 21 years and 10 months on Antonio Guerrero for his unjust conviction of conspiracy to commit espionage.
Independently of the court process and the decisions that are issued by the court, we maintain our steadfast demand for the immediate freedom of the Cuban Five.

The judicial case prosecuted against our five brothers has nothing to do with justice. This is, and always has been, a political case.

Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, every administration of the U.S. government has maintained a policy of permanent aggression against the Cuban people. A fundamental part of this policy of aggression has been the use of violence against the Cuban people. For decades the U.S. administrations have been directly or indirectly involved -- through terrorist organizations of the Cuban-American extreme right wing in the United States -- in countless terrorist attacks against the Cuban people, causing the deaths of 3,478 Cuban men, women and children, and injuring 2,099 Cubans. The peace, security and well-being of the Cuban people have been tragically affected.

In the interest of defending its people -- as any other responsible government would do -- the government of Cuba assigned to the Five the task of infiltrating the terrorist organizations of the Cuban-American extreme right wing. Everyone in this city knows full well that the terrorist organizations have carried out campaigns of death and terror against the Cuban people for decades. Stopping terrorism was the mission of the Cuban Five.

Instead of arresting the terrorists and prosecuting them for their crimes, the U.S. government, a participant in these nefarious campaigns of death and terror, arrested the Five 11 years ago this past September. Since then it has kept them arbitrarily imprisoned.

It is for these reasons that today in Miami we reaffirm and make known to our Five brothers, to their families and all our sisters and brothers in the U.S. and the international movement to Free the Five, as well as the Cuban people, our unalterable decision to continue and strengthen our struggle for their immediate freedom.

Miami, October 13, 2009

The New York Times: Judge Reduces Sentence for One of Cuban Five
By Ian Urbina
10/14/2009

A federal judge in Miami approved a lighter sentence Tuesday for one of five Cubans convicted in 2001 of spying on anti-Castro Cuban exiles.

The case of the men, commonly known as the Cuban Five, has strained relations between the United States and Cuba for more than a decade.

An appeals court last year threw out sentences for three of them, finding the punishment too harsh because the government had never proved that they had traded in "top secret" intelligence.

In the late 1990s, the men infiltrated Cuban-American exile organizations that opposed the Castro government, including some of the more activist groups like Brothers to the Rescue, which regularly made unauthorized flights over Cuba to drop leaflets.

In Cuba, the five are considered political prisoners, and the Cuban government has lobbied for their release, arguing that they were not spying on the United States so much as trying to ferret out right-wing anti-Castro terrorists determined to hurt Cuba.

On Tuesday, Judge Joan A. Lenard of Federal District Court replaced the life sentence for one of the men, Antonio Guerrero, with a sentence of 262 months, or almost 22 years, which means he will be out of prison in about seven years, counting time served since his 1998 arrest and time off for good behavior. Prosecutors and Mr. Guerrero's lawyers had asked for the sentence to be reduced to 240 months.

"It was odd," said Leonard Weinglass, Mr. Guerrero's lawyer. "You have a man who was on a military base but who didn't take a single classified document and no one testified that he injured U.S. national security, but the judge still rejects the prosecutors' request to lighten the sentence."

Mr. Guerrero, a United States citizen, was convicted of spying for Cuba while working at the Naval Air Station in Key West.

In May 2005, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights ruled that the men's trial fell below international standards for due process and that the United States should either retry or release them.

All five men were arrested in 1998 and convicted of acting as unregistered foreign agents and conspiracy to commit crimes against the United States.

A sentencing hearing for two of the others has been postponed.

Robert A. Pastor, a professor of international relations at American University, said the case still raised concerns. "Holding a trial for five Cuban intelligence agents in Miami is about as fair as a trial for an Israeli intelligence agent in Tehran," said Dr. Pastor, who was President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser for Latin America. "You'd need a lot more than a good lawyer to be taken seriously."

New Sentence for Cuban Antiterrorist Jailed in the USA

A US judge today resentenced Antonio Guerrero, one of the five Cuban antiterrorist unjustly incarcerated in the United States, to 21 years plus 10 month in jail, two more years than what was agreed by the defense and the prosecution teams at the re-sentencing hearing.

Judge Joan Lenard didn't pay heed to the suggestion by the government and attorneys about a reduction to 20 years of the previous life sentence plus 10 years given to Antonio Guerrero, Alicia Jrapko, member of the International Committee for the Freedom of the Five, told Prensa Latina news agency.

Jrapko, who attended this Tuesday the re-sentencing hearing, held in Miami, explained that the government acknowledged that the Cuban Five case caused diverse reactions all over the world, where many voices demand their release.

Guerrero's hearing precedes those of Fernando Gonzalez and Ramón Labañino, which were postponed after the judge issued an order in response to a request by the defense.

The three antiterrorists were scheduled for re-sentencing after the 11th Circuit of Atlanta's Court of Appeals overturned the previous sentences for having considered them wrong and resulting from a murky trial.

Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labañino and Fernando Gonzalez, along Gerardo Hernandez and René Gonzalez, have been serving sentences that range from 15 years to double life term, for reporting to their country on terrorist actions planned by ultra-right and anti-Cuba groups based in the US state of Florida. Those sentences were also imposed by Judge Lenard in 2001. (ACN)
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
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