• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Court overturns Cubans' spying convictions

Posted on: Tuesday, 9 August 2005, 15:54 CDT

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)

Source: REUTERS

More News in this Category