U.S. court reverses Cubans’ spying convictions

By Jane Sutton

MIAMI (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday
overturned the convictions of five men found guilty of spying
for Cuba and said pervasive prejudice against the government of
President Fidel Castro had prevented them from getting a fair
trial in Miami.

The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ordered
new trials for the “Cuban five,” who were convicted in 2001 on
conspiracy and espionage charges.

Three had been sentenced to life in prison and the others
to 15- and 19-year terms, sentences that a United Nations human
rights body condemned last month as arbitrary and unduly harsh
for the men hailed in Cuba as national heroes.

The appeals court in Atlanta acknowledged in its ruling
that reversing the convictions would be unpopular and offensive
to many U.S. citizens.

“However the court is equally mindful that those same
citizens cherish and support the freedoms they enjoy in this
country that are unavailable to residents of Cuba,” the court
said. “One of our most sacred freedoms is the right to be tried
fairly in a noncoercive atmosphere.”

The five men were part of a ring that infiltrated U.S.
military bases and Cuban exile groups and fed information to
Havana, prosecutors said. The defendants said they caused no
harm to the United States and gathered information solely to
defend their homeland from attacks by Cuban exiles in America.

One defendant, Gerardo Hernandez, was convicted of
conspiring to commit murder in a 1996 incident in which Cuban
MiGs shot down two small planes flown by Cuban exiles over the
Florida Straits. Four men died.

Hernandez admitted feeding information about the exile
group to Havana but had no role in ordering the shootdown, his
lawyer has said.

Defense attorneys argued that pervasive prejudice against
Castro and the Cuban government and publicity surrounding the
trial made it impossible for them to obtain a fair trial in
Miami, which has a large Cuban exile population.

The trial began eight months after federal agents removed
shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez from his Miami relatives, a
heart-wrenching and divisive saga that received wide attention.
The boy was returned to his father, who took him home to Cuba.

The jury that convicted the men did not include any Cuban
Americans. But 16 of the 160 members of the jury pool knew the
victims of the shootdown or knew trial witnesses who had flown
with them.

Nearly all the jury candidates expressed negative views of
Cuba and the only three who said they had mixed views of the
island were dismissed, defense attorneys said.