The Untold Story of the Cuban Five

[XXPANTHAXX]

Forbidden Heroes

By Ricardo Alarcón, president of the National Assembly of People's Power

"It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place"
Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

REMEMBER Elian?

The case of Elian González, a six year-old boy forcefully retained by
his unknown great-uncles against the will of his father and in clear
defiance of U.S. law and decency was widely reported by media around the
world. Miami, the place of the kidnapping, became a kind of secessionist
city in North America when the Mayor, the chief of police, the
politicians, every newspaper and local radio and TV broadcasters,
together with religious and business institutions, joined with some of
the most notorious terrorist and violent groups in opposing the courts'
and government's orders to free the boy.

It was necessary for a Special Forces team sent from Washington DC to
launch a surreptitious and swift operation to occupy several houses,
disarm the heavily armed individuals hidden there and in the
neighborhood to save the child and restore law.

Everybody followed that story. Day in and day out.

But practically nobody knew that, at the very same time, in exactly the
same place--Miami--five other young Cubans were arbitrarily deprived of
their freedom and subjected to a gross miscarriage of justice.

Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González
and René González were detained in the early hours of Saturday September
12th, 1998, and locked for the next 17 months in punishment cells, in
solitary confinement. The main accusation against them--as recognized by
the prosecutors and the judge from their indictment to the last day of
the trial--was that they had peacefully, with no weapons, penetrated
ant-Cuban terrorist groups with a view of reporting back to Cuba about
their criminal plans.

Was it conceivable to have a fair trial in Miami for any Cuban
revolutionary facing such an accusation? Could that happen while the
kidnapping of Elian was going on with its surrounding atmosphere of
violence, hatred and fear?

According to the prosecution it was perfectly possible. In their words
Miami was "a very large, diverse, heterogeneous community" capable of
handling any sensitive issue, even those involving the Cuban Revolution.
The prosecutors repeated that line when rejecting the more than ten
motions presented by the defense lawyers requesting a change of venue
before the start of the trial.

The same government that was obligated to deal with Miami as a sort of
rebel city and to secretly send there its forces to restore legality,
lied repeatedly about the venue issue, denying the defendants a right so
cherished by Americans, and refused to move the proceedings to the
neighboring city of Fort Lauderdale, half an hour away from Miami.

Ironically, a few years later, in 2002, when the government was the
object of a civilian complaint of an administrative nature, of far
lesser significance--later resolved by an out of Court settlement--and
only indirectly related to the Elian case, they asked for a change of
venue to Fort Lauderdale, affirming that "anything related to Cuba" was
impossible to get a fair trial in Miami. (Ramírez vs. Ashcroft, 01-4835
Civ-Huck, June 25, 2002)

Such a flagrant contradiction, a clear proof of prosecutorial
misconduct, of real prevarication, was one of the main factors leading
to the unanimous decision of the Court of Appeals panel, in 2005, to
vacate the convictions of the Five and order a new trial. (Court of
Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, No. 01-17176, 03-11087).

That historic decision was later reversed by the majority of the entire
Court under pressure from Attorney General Alberto González in an action
that went contrary to the normal US legal practice. Mr. González's
successful move, a manifestation of his peculiar legal philosophy,
foreclosed the possibility of a just resolution of this case in a manner
that would have honored the United States.

The panel decision, an exceptionally sound and solid 93 pages document,
including irrefutable facts about the half century old terrorist war
against Cuba, remains an outstanding moment in the best American
tradition and will continue to be a text to be analyzed with respect by
scholars and law school students.

But that’s another chapter in the long saga of the Cuban Five.

Elián González now is about to finish high school and continues to
attract the attention of foreign media and visitors who keep going to
Cardenas, the beautiful town where he lives. When traveling towards
Elian’s home they will be surprised by billboards demanding freedom for
five youngsters they never heard off before.

In Leonard Weinglass’s words:

"The trial was kept secret by the American media. It is inconceivable
that the longest trial in the United States at the time it was taking
place was only covered by the local Miami press, particularly where
generals and an admiral as well as a White House advisor were all called
to testify for the defense. Where was the American media for six months?
Not only was this the longest trial, but it was the one case involving
mayor issues of foreign policy and international terrorism. The question
should be directed to the American media, with continues to refuse to
cover a case with such gross violations of fundamental rights, and even
violations of human rights of prisoner". (Response by Leonard Weinglass
in the forum organized by Five Cuban Prisoners - Antiterroristas.cu - Cuba vs Terrorism on September 12, 2003).

Elian was saved because Americans knew about his case and got involved
and made justice prevail. The Five are still incarcerated – it will be
11 years next September – victims of a terrible injustice, because
Americans are not permitted to know.

The Five are being cruelly punished because they fought against
terrorism. They are heroes. But forbidden heroes.

Justice in Wonderland

"Sentence first-verdict afterwards"
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Having been defeated on the issue of venue the outcome of the Cuban
Five's trial was predetermined. It will go strictly in accordance with
the Queen’s prophecy.

The American media played a very important two-pronged role. Outside
Miami it was, and it continues to be, how Attorney Leonard Weinglass so
aptly described contrasting sharply with their role within Dade County,
both offering an impressive show of discipline.

The local media not only intensively covered the case, but intervened
actively in it, as if they were part of the prosecution. The Five were
condemned by the media even before they were indicted.

Very early in the morning on Saturday September 12th 1998, each media
outlet in Miami was talking breathlessly about the capture of some
"terrible" Cuban agents "bent to destroy the United States" (the phrase
that prosecutors love so much and will repeat time and again during the
entire process). "Spies among us" was the headline that morning. At the
same time, by the way, the Miami FBI chief was meeting with Lincoln
Díaz-Balart and Ileana Ross Lehtinen, representatives of the old Batista
gang in federal Congress.

An unprecedented propaganda campaign was launched against five
individuals who could not defend themselves, due to the fact that they
were completely isolated from the outside world, day and night, for a
year and a half, in what is accurately described in prison jargon as the
"hole".

A media circus has surrounded the Five since they were detained all the
way until now. But only in Miami. Elsewhere in the United States the
ordeal of the Five has only gotten silence. The rest of the country does
not know much about this case and is kept in the dark, as if everybody
accepted that Miami--that "very diverse, extremely heterogeneous
community" as described by the D.A.--belongs to another planet.

That might have been a reasonable proposition, if it were not for some
rather embarrassing facts recently discovered. Some of the media people
involved in the Miami campaign--"journalists" and others--were paid by
the US government, were in its payroll as employees of the radio and TV
anti-Cuban propaganda machine that has cost many hundreds of millions of
US tax payer’s dollars.

Without knowing it, Americans were forced to be very generous, indeed.
There is a long list of "journalists" from Miami who covered the entire
trial of the Five and, at the same time, were receiving juicy federal
checks (for more on the "work" of these journalist see:
National Committee to Free the Cuban Five).

The Court of Appeals decision in 2005 provides also a good summary of
the propaganda campaign before and during the trial. That was one of the
reasons leading the panel "to vacate the convictions and order a new
trial". Miami was not a place to have even the appearance of justice. As
the judges said "the evidence submitted in support of the motions for
change of venue was massive". (Court of Appeals for the Eleventh
Circuit, No. 01-17176, 03-11087)

Let’s clarify something. Here we are not talking about journalists in
the sense Americans outside Miami may be thinking of. We are referring
to Miami "journalists," something quite different.

Their role was not to report the news, but to create a climate
guaranteeing conviction. They even called for public demonstrations
outside the office of the defense counsel and harassed prospective
jurors during the pretrial phase. The Court itself expressed concern
about the "tremendous amount of requests for the voir questions in
advance of them being asked, apparently destined to inform their
listeners, including members of the venire, of the questions prior to
the time they are posed to them by the Court".

We are talking about a bunch of individuals who harassed the jurors,
following them, with cameras, through the streets, filming their car
licenses and showing them on TV, tracking them inside the Court
building, down to the jury room’s door, during the entire seven months
trial proceedings, all the way to the last day.

Judge Leonard more than once protested and begged the government to stop
such a deplorable masquerade. She did that at the very beginning of the
trial, on several occasions thereafter and until the very end. To no
avail. (Official transcripts of the trial, pp. 22, 23, 111, 112, 625,
14644-14646).

The government was not interested in having a fair trial. During the
jury selection process, the prosecution was very keen to exclude the
majority of African American prospective jurors. It also excluded the
three individuals who didn’t manifest strong anti-Castro sentiments.

By that time Elian González has been rescued but he was very much in the
minds of the jurors. As one of them said during voir dire: "I would be
concerned about the reaction that might take place … I don’t want
rioting and stuff like that to happen like what happened in the Elian
case". Or in the words of another: "I would be a nervous wreck if you
wanted to know the truth … I would have actual fear for my own safety if
I didn’t come back with a verdict that was in agreement with the Cuban
community".

In that ambience of fear began the longest trial to date in American
history. And the one that the big media "chose" to ignore.

The Face of Impunity

As they recognized during voir dire, the kidnapping of Elian González
and its consequences for the community was very much in the minds of
those chosen to be jurors at the trial of the Cuban Five a few months
after the six-year-old boy was rescued by the federals.

Like everybody else they had followed the events related to Elian which
saturated the news. The faces of the kidnappers, their promoters and
supporters, as well as others involved in the scandal had become quite
familiar to the jury members. The faces, and two features of the Elian
drama: its unique nature and its direct connection with the trial of the
five Cubans.

First, the perplexing behavior of every Miami public official, from its
Federal Congress members, the mayor and the city commissioners, to
firefighters and members of the police force, who openly refused to obey
the law and did nothing to put an end to the most publicized case of
child abuse ever to occur. And, secondly, but no less incredibly, that
nothing happened to a group of individuals who had so clearly violated
the law with the abduction of a child and the violence and disturbances
that they created all over the city when he was rescued by the federal
government. Nobody was prosecuted, arrested, or fined. No local
authority was dismissed, replaced or asked to resign. The Elian case
demonstrated how anti-Castro impunity reigns in Miami.

When the jurors first took their seats in the Court room to do their
citizens’ duty they were probably taken by surprise. There, live, were
the "Miami celebrities" that they were so used to seeing, day and night,
on local TV. And they were together, sometimes smiling and embracing
each other, like old pals. The kidnappers and the "law enforcement" guys
hand and glove with the prosecutors (those valiant people who never
showed up when a little boy was being molested in front of the media).

The jurors spent seven months in that room looking at, and being watched
by the same people so familiar to them who now were on the witness
stand, in the public area or at the news corner, the same people there
frequently going to find in the parking lot, at the building entrance,
in the corridors. Some of them now and then proudly displaying the
attire used for their last military incursion to Cuba.

The jurors heard them explaining in detail their criminal exploits and
saying time and again that they were not talking about the past. It was
a strange parade of individuals to appear in a court of law,
acknowledging their violent acts against Cuba planned, prepared and
launched from their own neighborhood.

There, making speeches, demanding the worst punishment, slandering and
threatening the defense lawyers.

The judge did what she could to try to preserve calm and dignity. She
certainly ordered the jury, many times, not to consider certain
inappropriate remarks but, in doing so, could not erase their
prejudicial and fearsome effects from the jurors’ minds.

The consequences were obvious. The Court of Appeal panel’s decision
stated it in clear terms: "The evidence at trial disclosed the
clandestine activities not only of the defendants, but also of the
various Cuba exile groups and their military camps that continue to
operate in the Miami area. The perception that these groups could
inflict harm on jurors who rendered a verdict unfavorable to their views
was palpable". (Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeal, No. 01-17176,
03-11087)

But there was more. After hearing and seeing the abundant evidence of
terrorist acts that the defendants had tried to avert, the government
succeeded in defending the terrorists by having the Court inexplicably
agree to remove from the jury the right to exonerate the Five on the
basis of legal necessity, which was the foundation of their defense.

The heart of the matter, in this case, was the need for Cuba to protect
its people from the criminal attempts of terrorists who enjoy total
impunity in U.S. territory. The law in the United States is clear: if
persons act to prevent a greater harm, even if they violate the law in
the process, they will be excused from any criminality because society
recognizes the necessity – even the benefit – of taking such action.

The United States, the only world superpower, has interpreted that
universal principle to take war to distant lands in the name of fighting
terrorism. But at the same time it refused to recognize it in the case
of five unarmed, peaceful, non-violent persons who, on behalf of a small
country, without causing harm to anybody, tried to avert the illegal
acts of criminals who have found shelter and support in the United
States.

The U.S. government, through the Miami prosecutors, went even further,
to the last mile, to help those terrorists. They did it very openly, in
writing and with passionate speeches that, curiously, were not
considered newsworthy.

That was happening in 2001. While the Southern Florida prosecutors and
the local FBI were so caught up in harshly punishing the Cuban Five and
protecting "their" terrorists, the criminals preparing the 9/11 attack
had been training, unmolested, in Miami for quite some time. They must
have had a weighty reason for preferring that location. (Taken from
Counterpunch) •