Court overturns Cubans’ spying convictions

By Jane Sutton

MIAMI (Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday
overturned the convictions of five accused Cuban spies 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” convicted in 2001 on conspiracy
and espionage charges.

Three were serving life in prison and the others 15- and
19-year terms, sentences that a United Nations human rights
body condemned last month as arbitrary and unduly harsh.

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, the Cuban government has acknowledged.

The defendants and Havana’s Communist authorities said the
men were not spying on the United States but on extremist exile
groups in Florida, which Havana accuses of financing a wave of
bomb blasts in Cuba in 1997.

One defendant, ringleader 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.

Defense attorneys argued that pervasive prejudice against
Castro and the Cuban government and publicity surrounding the
charges made it impossible to hold a fair trial in Miami. The
area is home to more than 700,000 people of Cuban descent,
including thousands with relatives murdered, tortured or held
as political prisoners in Cuba, they argued.

The trial began eight months after federal agents removed
shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez from his Miami relatives, a
saga that flooded Miami with “waves of public passion” about
the relationship between Cuba and the United States, the
appeals judges said. The boy was returned to his father, who
took him home to Cuba.

“I JUMPED, I LAUGHED, I CRIED”

Castro’s government has turned the freeing of Cuba’s “Five
Heroes” into a national crusade and called the ruling “a first
step toward doing justice.”

Posters of the five proclaim “They Will Return” in most
government offices, and shrines calling for their release can
be found in the remotest villages of Cuba.

“I jumped, I laughed, I cried,” said Mirtha Rodriguez,
mother of defendant Antonio Guerrero, a Miami-born,
Soviet-trained civil engineer who worked as a janitor at the
Boca Chica naval training base in Southern Florida before his
arrest.

The appellate judges noted in their ruling that there had
been concerns for the safety of potential jurors, and fears of
reprisals and community unrest if there was an acquittal.

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 expressed negative views of Cuba and the
only three who said they had mixed views were dismissed.

U.S. prosecutors in Miami said they were reviewing the
opinion and had no further comment.

The defendants’ attorneys called the ruling a landmark on
the issue of venue and fairness, and said they would seek bail
or house arrest for their clients while awaiting word on a
retrial.

“It’s been a very long seven years for us with a lot of
twists and turns and I have to say that there were many times
when I doubted the outcome,” said Hernandez’s attorney, Paul
McKenna. “But I have new faith in the court of appeals and in
the system of law.”

(Additional reporting by Michael Christie in Miami and
Anthony Boadle in Havana)