Cuba keeps fighting for intelligence agents imprisoned in U.S.
By ANITA SNOW
Associated Press Writer
HAVANA --
Their faces smile down from billboards along major highways, their
poetry and humor are bound into books, and minor developments in their
lives are meticulously recorded by Cuba's state media.
Five Cuban spies imprisoned in the U.S. for being unregistered foreign
agents are vilified in Miami as dangerous conspirators. But here they're
considered "Heroic Prisoners of the Empire" who only sought to protect
Cuba from anti-communist terrorists. During Cuba's annual May 1 workers
parade, hundreds of thousands of people will focus on their plight.
And Fidel Castro is closely watching their federal appeals.
Castro's government sent Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, Rene
Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando Gonzalez to South Florida to
gather information about anti-communist exile groups and send it back to
the island using encrypted software, high-frequency radio transmissions
and coded electronic phone messages.
While the so-called "Wasp Network" spy ring obtained no U.S. secrets,
federal prosecutors argued for stiff sentences.
Defense lawyers said they were merely trying to gather information that
might prevent exile groups from waging more attacks such as the bombings
at Havana hotels that killed an Italian tourist in 1997.
All five were convicted in 2001 of being unregistered foreign agents,
and three also were found guilty of espionage conspiracy for failed
efforts to obtain military secrets from the U.S. Southern Command
headquarters. Hernandez also was convicted of murder conspiracy in the
deaths of four Miami-based pilots whose small, private planes were shot
down on Feb. 24, 1996, by a Cuban MiG in international waters off Cuba's
northern coast.
Now serving terms ranging from 10 years to life, the men hope the 11th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta will grant their request for a
new trial outside Miami, where they say it was impossible to get a fair
trial in the months after the politically charged custody battle over
young Cuban castaway Elian Gonzalez.
A three-judge panel of the appellate court threw out their convictions,
agreeing that pretrial publicity and pervasive anti-Castro feeling in
Miami didn't allow for a fair trial. But the U.S. government asked the
full court to reconsider.
Elian was 5 when he was found clinging to an inner tube off Florida's
coast in November 1999. His mother had died when their boat carrying
would-be migrants capsized. After a court battle waged by his
anti-Castro relatives in Miami, the Clinton administration handed Elian
over to his father in 2000 and they returned to Cuba, where they too are
celebrated as heroes.
"They are grasping at straws," said Camila Ruiz, spokeswoman for the
Cuban-American National Foundation, a historically militant anti-Castro
group that was one of the spy ring's targets. "There was not a single
Cuban-American on the jury. Cuban-Americans make up a big part of the
community in Miami, but they aren't the whole community."
Both the exiles in Florida and Cubans on the island believe Americans
would take their side if they learned more about the case, especially
after the Sept. 11 attacks brought home the horrors of terrorism. And as
with the Elian Gonzalez affair, the agents' case has become a proxy
battle for American public opinion toward Cuba.
Communist officials garnered considerable sympathy in the United States
with their successful battle to reunite the boy with his father. And
after 9/11, they hoped Americans would see the agents as anti-terrorist
patriots, working peacefully to protect their island nation.
National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon, who said he and his
government feel a strong responsibility for the men, expressed
frustration the case hasn't made bigger news inside the United States.
"After 9/11, there is much more awareness of terrorism and terrorists in
the United States," the parliament speaker told The Associated Press
last month. "In that context, I would hope they would understand."
But Ruiz says the five men are anything but heroes - and that it's
precisely because of 9/11 that Americans should condemn their actions.
"This is an issue for all Americans and our common concerns about
foreign threats to our country," said Ruiz, who rejects the terrorist
label for her organization, which she says supports non-violent change
in Cuba.
On the island, the case is considered so important that the 80-year-old
Castro has carefully followed it while recovering from intestinal
surgery, said Alarcon. Castro temporarily ceded power to his brother
Raul Castro in late July after announcing his illness.
"I can assure you, that he is very well aware of the case of the Cuban
Five," said Alarcon.
Along with the appellate case, the agents' lawyers also have been
consumed with battles over visitation rights. The United States has
repeatedly declined to grant visas to the wives of Gerardo Hernandez and
Rene Gonzalez to visit their husbands behind bars.
"We have been trying to visit them all this time," said Hernandez's
wife, Adriana Perez, who hopes to visit her husband at the federal
penitentiary in Victorville, Calif.
Perez said U.S. authorities have expressed concerns she would try to
overstay her visa, or would present "a danger to the United States." The
State Department doesn't comment publicly on such decisions, citing
confidentiality concerns.
Rene Gonzalez's two daughters, 8-year-old Ivette and 22-year-old Irma,
were allowed to visit their father at the federal penitentiary in
Mariana, Fla., in December and January. But their mother, Olga
Salanueva, who was deported after her husband was arrested, has been
denied a U.S. visa.
"She thinks it's great to see her dad on the billboards, but she'd
rather see her dad at home," Salanueva said. "That's the logical place
for her dad to be."
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