Case appears closed on 'Cuban Five'

Case appears closed on 'Cuban Five'
By Tracy Wilkinson
June 20, 2009

Reporting from Mexico City -- To anyone passing through Havana's
international airport, or by the U.S. Interests Section on the Cuban
capital's seaside boulevard, the images of the Five are persistently
familiar.

On billboards and wall-size posters, they are honored as heroes in Cuba.
In the U.S., they are little-known convicted spies and saboteurs.

If one person's freedom fighter is another's terrorist, the case of the
Cuban Five illustrates the chasm that remains between Havana and
Washington, despite recent overtures that are gradually easing tensions
left over from the Cold War.

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear what may be the final
appeal for the five Cuban intelligence agents, who were convicted in
2001 of spying in the United States on behalf of the government of
then-President Fidel Castro.

Defense attorneys had argued it was impossible for the men to receive
fair trials in Miami, heart of a Cuban exile community where anti-Castro
sentiment runs high, and that the convictions should be overturned
because of a biased jury pool. (Even nearby Fort Lauderdale would have
been a better venue, they had argued.)

But the court, without comment, declined to review the case, letting
stand a 2008 appellate decision that said the men had failed to prove
they received an unfair trial.

"Based on the experience we've had, I'm not surprised by the decision,"
one of the defendants, Gerardo Hernandez, said, according to the Cuban
news agency Prensa Latina. "I have no confidence in the U.S. justice
system. . . . Ours has been a political case from the start."

Ricardo Alarcon, head of the Cuban parliament, branded the decision
"shameful," and the government body he leads decried the United States'
"corrupt and hypocritical" system dedicated to "brutal and cruel
treatment of our brothers."

Cuban exile groups in Miami praised the court's action, which came
despite the pleas of 10 Nobel laureates and a number of international
jurists to review the case.

The men were arrested in Miami by the FBI in 1998 and convicted three
years later by a federal jury on charges of acting as illegal foreign
agents and conspiring to obtain military secrets from U.S. Southern
Command headquarters in Miami.

Hernandez, the group's leader, who came to the U.S. as an immigrant, was
also found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder in the deaths of four
pilots from a Miami-based exile organization who were shot down by Cuban
fighter jets in 1996. The organization, Brothers to the Rescue, worked
to help people flee Cuba; the Cuban government said the planes violated
the country's airspace.

Hernandez was sentenced to life in prison, and the other men received
lesser terms.

Cuba has maintained that the agents were gathering information on
"terrorist" exile groups plotting to harm the island nation and were not
spying on the U.S. military.

In an interview in Havana this year, the brother of defendant Rene
Gonzalez argued that trying the men in "hostile" Miami was absurd. He
and others suggested the best way for the U.S. to improve its dealings
with Cuba would be to free them. "It would be good for there to be
better relations," Roberto Gonzalez said. "But I think that is almost
impossible without resolving the case of the Five."

Cuban officials have indicated that they will continue to press the case
of the Five and raise the issue in any talks that might be held with
U.S. envoys. But the U.S. government considers the case closed, that the
men were fairly convicted, and that the issue is not a priority.

The sharply opposing views are an indication of the nations' different
perspectives fed by half a century of estrangement. U.S. officials
continue to insist, for example, that Cuba release jailed dissidents and
other political prisoners.

President Raul Castro, who took over from his ailing brother last year,
reacted recently to the demand this way:

"A gesture for a gesture. We will send those prisoners" to freedom in
the U.S., he said.

"But give us back our five heroes."

Case appears closed on 'Cuban Five' - Los Angeles Times (20 June 2009)
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-cuban-five20-2009jun20,0,5495963.story