People's Democracy

Free The Five

Muralidharan

COINCIDING with the eighth anniversary of the arrest of the Cuban Five, an International Solidarity Campaign is being conducted between September 12 and October 5, 2006. The campaign has assumed diverse shapes in different countries. While there will be largescale petitioning of the US administration by representatives of various democratic organisations and intellectuals in some countries, in the US a huge march is slated to be held on September 23 demanding their release.

On September 12, 1998, five Cuban nationals, viz. Fernando Gonzalez, Llort Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo, Ramon Labanino Salazar, Rene Gonzalez Sehwerert and Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez were arrested by the FBI in Florida. Later, they were charged with indulging in espionage and threatening US security.

Right from the 1959 revolution, which the US has tried to undermine and overturn, anti-Cuba groups have staged innumerable terrorist attacks from Florida, actively aided by the CIA. Many US presidents have approved assassination attempts against Castro and other Cuban leaders, including attempts at sabotage like the 1961 CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion.

One anti-Castro zealot, Luis Posada Carriles, has unsuccessfully spent several decades trying to assassinate Fidel Castro, with CIA help. Held for immigration fraud, a US court recently recommended his release because the government was unable to find, within the time allowed, a country willing to give him asylum if he were to be deported. This, despite persistent demands by Venezuela for his extradition. It is from Venezuela that Posada had plotted the 1976 bombing of a Cuban aircraft over the Barbados. The Cuban government has accused the United States of double standards after a judge recommended release of Posada the same week that it was mourning the September 11 attacks.

After repeated attempts by the Cuban government offering information and cooperation to the US administration to combat the Miami-based terrorist groups failed to elicit any response, these five Cuban patriots entered Florida to infiltrate these groups in an attempt to stop terrorist attacks directed at Cuba.

The five Cubans never denied that they had entered the US to infiltrate Cuban-American terrorist groups. Neither did they deny that they operated as unregistered agents of the Cuban government. The first is a crime by no stretch of imagination. The second is a violation, though of not much significance in view of the intention being to save innocent Cuban lives. Even if they were tried for the second offence, the sentences would not have been more than what they have already put in prison. However, charges of espionage were brought against them in the Miami court, which, given the surcharged atmosphere, sentenced them to various periods of imprisonment. The media in Miami played a major role in building up pressure on the court to influence the verdict. 

In the entire transcript of the trial, no evidence of espionage was recorded. Moreover, it was also evident that the information that the Cuban Five had collected was not classified information but what was there in the public domain and in no way constituted a threat to US security. 

After spending 17 months in solitary confinement, the Cuban Five, were convicted in June 2001 by a US federal court. They were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 15 years to double life sentences. It was never expected that the Cuban Five would get a fair trial. Faced with mounting threats from Cuban American right-wing terrorist organisations, defence lawyers pleaded for a change of venue, which were promptly denied. Defence evidence was suppressed and key witnesses were not allowed to testify. The whole trial and conviction were a mockery of justice. 

On August 9, 2005, the 11th Circuit US Court of Appeals took cognizance of these facts and concluded, "Pervasive community prejudice against Fidel Castro and the Cuban government and its agents and the publicity surrounding the trial and other community events combined to create a situation where they were unable to obtain a fair and impartial trial." This decision concurred with an earlier UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ruling, which found the conviction of the Cuban Five "arbitrary" and against international law. 

Though a year later, the court by a majority has turned down a request for the shifting of the venue, the conclusions arrived at by the appellate judges in 2005 stand valid. 

September 2006 also marks the 30th anniversary of the car-bomb murder in Washington DC of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt by Cuban counter-revolutionaries working closely with the CIA. Letelier was Chile’s ambassador to the US during the time that Salvador Allende was president of Chile. After the CIA coup and the assassination of Allende, Letelier was a leading voice in exposing the crimes of the Pinochet regime and its US backers. Letelier and his aide Ronni Moffitt were made to pay for the crime of speaking out. Just two weeks after the murder of Letelier and Moffitt, the bombing of the Cuban airliner took place killing all 73 on board.

It was never in doubt that the charges against the Cuban Five were politically motivated. It was part of the hostile US policy towards Cuba, a policy that is finding the US getting more and more isolated by the day. The US continues to make use of its Helms-Burton Act to penalise businesspersons from other countries who maintain contacts with Cuba. The blockade of Cuba has been designed to isolate and cripple the country – economically, politically and technologically. But the valiant efforts of the Cuban people and the strength of the Socialist system have not only foiled these efforts but also ensured impressive social, economic and technological progress in Cuba. Recently, Cuba has withstood and defeated a new spate of hostile measures and sanctions by the Bush administration. 

In India, during the course of the campaign to ‘Free the Five’, activists of trade unions, student, youth and women’s organisations, intellectuals and prominent personalities will petition the US administration.