[NYTr] Cuban 5 August 20 Hearing in Atlanta - Workers World Report

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Workers World - Aug 23, 2007
http://www.workers.org/2007/us/cuban5-0830/

Justice demands freeing the Cuban Five

By Cheryl LaBash
Atlanta

The latest step in the international fight to free the Cuban Five
unfolded in Atlanta on Aug. 20, where defense attorneys argued for a
new trial before a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court. For a
full two hours before the hearing, supporters—including both national
and international notables and jurists—lined up along the sidewalk in
the summer heat waiting for the courthouse doors to open, and then
filled every seat.

On Sept. 12, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, Gerardo Hernández,
René González and Ramón Labañino begin their tenth year of imprisonment
in five separate U.S. prisons—in California, Texas, Florida, Wisconsin
and Colorado. Their only “crime” was to monitor private paramilitary
organizations based in Florida that planned and carried out violent
attacks against Cuba when the U.S. government did nothing to stop them.

At a reception the evening before the court hearing, attorney Leonard
Weinglass summarized the facts to be presented to the court that
require either a new, fair trial or outright dismissal of the most
serious convictions.

First, Gerardo Hernández was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder—a
charge the U.S. prosecutors themselves admitted to the court the
government could not prove.

“This is the first time in anyone’s memory that an individual person is
being held accountable for what an Air Force of a sovereign state does
in protecting its own airspace,” Weinglass said about the shooting down
of “Brothers to the Rescue” planes that had repeatedly overflown Cuban
airspace.

Second, three of the Five—Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero and Ramón
Labañino—were sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiracy to commit
espionage. During the original trial two U.S. generals and an admiral
testified that no “secret” classified U.S. government information was
among the 20,000 pages of evidence taken from the Five by the U.S.
government. These maximum sentences handed out by the Miami court,
which violate sentencing guidelines, were equal to those imposed in
cases where actual U.S. government secret documents have been given to
other governments.

In court, defense attorney Richard Klugh pointed out the Five “were
never directed to obtain espionage-level information,” and “are serving
a life sentence for what could’ve been published in the Miami Herald.”

The third major point in the appeal argument was the prosecutorial
misconduct riddling the entire six-month long trial. One example given
by Weinglass occurred during the closing arguments. Prosecutors
charged, not once but three times, that the Five aimed to “destroy the
United States.” This statement was totally untrue and certainly
unproven, but was used to enflame the Miami jury and unjustly convict
the Cuban Five.

U.S. government attorney Caroline Heck Miller exposed a small sample of
how venomous the prosecution of the Cuban Five could get when, arguing
before the appeals court on Aug. 20, she again falsely claimed the Five
were “well-trained spies” intending to steal U.S. military
intelligence. She accused the 11th Circuit Court of reading only the
defense arguments. 

[The US government attorney sounds not to venomous as much as defensive
and desperate, actually, if the one paragraph above is any indication of
the tone of the proceedings. -NY Transfer]

[...]

Observers included Dagoberto Rodrí­guez, chief of the Cuban Interests
Section in Washington, D.C.; Roberto Gonzá­lez, Cuban attorney and
brother of René González; Ramsey Clark; Cynthia McKinney; Judge Juan
Guzmán from Chile, who directed the prosecution of Augusto Pinochet;
Dr. Norman Paech MdB, expert in international law, Germany; Heidi
Boghosian; Father Geoffrey Bottoms, coordinator, British Campaign to
Free the Miami Five; Vanessa Ramos, president, American Association of
Jurists USA; José Pertierra, attorney for Venezuela in the extradition
case of Posada Carriles; Andrés Gómez, Antonio Maceo Brigade and
representative of a coalition of six Cuban organizations from Miami;
Alicia Jrapko, International Committee to Free the Five-U.S.; Sobukwe
Shakura, co-chair, National Network on Cuba; and many more.

[...]

Copyright 2007 Workers World.