How the US Government Framed the Cuban 5

[magbana]

THE MILITANT
Vol. 72/No. 27 July 7, 2008

How the U.S. gov’t framed the Cuban 5
(feature article / First of a series)

BY MARTÍN KOPPEL
In the early morning hours of Saturday, Sept. 12, 1998, FBI agents raided
homes across Miami and the surrounding area. They arrested 10 people,
ransacking their apartments and seizing personal belongings. With much
fanfare, officials of the Clinton administration’s Justice and State
departments announced they had discovered a “Cuban spy network” in Florida.

The big-business media reported that those arrested were accused of trying
to “penetrate” the Pentagon’s Southern Command, pass U.S. military secrets
to the Cuban government, “infiltrate anti-Castro groups,” and “manipulate
U.S. media and political organizations.”

They had sought “to strike at the very heart of our national security system
and our very democratic process,” U.S. attorney Thomas Scott alleged at a
highly publicized press conference at FBI headquarters.

Federal prosecutors singled out five of those arrested as their main
targets. They were Gerardo Hernández, 33; Ramón Labañino, 35; Antonio
Guerrero, 39; Fernando González, 35; and René González, 42. The government
announced that they faced espionage charges carrying sentences of up to life
in prison.

The truth is that the Cuban Five, as their case has become known
internationally, were framed up by the U.S. government.

What was their “crime”? The five Cubans explained—proudly—that they had
accepted assignments to keep the government of Cuba informed about
counterrevolutionary groups based in South Florida that have a long record
of carrying out attacks on Cuba from U.S. soil, such as a string of bombings
of hotels in Havana in 1997. Not only has Washington not prevented such
attacks—it has given these groups a green light through five decades of U.S.
economic and military aggression against the Cuban Revolution.

In 2001 the five were convicted after an unfair trial marked by violations
of elementary rights, and despite the fact that the prosecution admitted
they had never handled any classified information. Hernández was sentenced
to a double life term, Labañino and Guerrero to life in prison, René
González to 15 years, and Fernando González to 19 years.

Purpose of frame-up
The railroading of the Cuban Five had a double purpose.

It was one more attempt by the U.S. billionaire class to punish
revolutionary Cuba for having the audacity to make a socialist revolution
and set an example for working people worldwide fighting against
exploitation and oppression.

It was also aimed against workers and farmers here in the United States. The
message was: think twice before standing up to the employers and their
government.

The U.S. rulers thought they would get away with this frame-up. However,
they underestimated the resistance by these five working-class fighters and
how the case would strike a chord among increasing numbers of people.

For the past 10 years the Cuban Five have been on the front lines of those
fighting against government and employer assaults on the rights and living
conditions of working people. Not only have they stood up to harsh treatment
by their jailers—including long stints in solitary confinement and the
restriction or outright denial of visas for their loved ones to visit
them—they have reached out in solidarity to many others fighting for
justice, both inside and outside prison walls, in the United States and
abroad.

This record is consistent with the exemplary role they played in Cuba,
whether as student leaders or as internationalist combatants among the
thousands of Cuban volunteers who helped defeat the racist government of
South Africa when it invaded Angola.

Over the past decade, the unfair trial, frame-up, and arbitrary treatment of
the Cuban Five by U.S. authorities have led growing numbers to demand their
release. They have become an example to others fighting for justice, from
meat packers jailed for working without proper papers to those opposing the
execution of Troy Davis, a Black man in Georgia framed up by police.

The five are well aware that their battle for freedom is a long-term one.
Because of their refusal to give up, however, the frame-up has suffered some
cracks in the legal arena.

In 2005 a federal appeals court panel overturned their convictions on the
basis that they received an unfair trial. A year later, after the U.S.
government challenged the ruling, the full court restored the convictions.
Then in June 2008 a third appeals court decision, while upholding the
convictions, threw out the sentences against three of the five—including two
life sentences—as being excessive even by U.S. legal standards. These cases
now go back to the original trial judge for resentencing.

Today, the fact that the five have remained locked up for 10 years leads
many people, as they learn the facts, to say: Enough is enough—elementary
justice demands that they be freed!

This article is the beginning of a series the Militant will publish on the
facts of case to get out the truth as broadly as possible.

Refuse to ‘cooperate’ with gov’t

In September 1998, a few days after their arrests, Hernández, Labañino,
Guerrero, René González, and Fernando González were dragged before federal
magistrate Barry Garber, who ordered them held without bail at Miami’s
Federal Detention Center (FDC). “Each represents a danger to the community,”
he stated, agreeing with the prosecutors. They were assigned public
attorneys.

“The goal now for prosecutors is to persuade the alleged agents to
cooperate,” the Miami Herald reported September 16, citing unnamed
government sources.

Ramón Labañino described what happened to him: “Everything started on Sept.
12, 1998, at about 5:30 a.m. at home, when we were detained and taken to FBI
headquarters in Miami for a ‘persuasive’ interview, where they asked us to
collaborate and betray our country with promises offered in return.
Obviously I had nothing to say, and after they were sure they were getting
nowhere, they put us in a car and took us to the Federal Detention Center in
downtown Miami, where we’ve been all this time.”

Labañino wrote these lines to his wife, Elizabeth Palmeiro, in January 2001,
as his trial was under way.

Under pressure, five of the 10 detainees soon pleaded guilty on lesser
charges—acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government—and agreed
to testify against the others. Among them were two married couples with
children who were warned they faced long prison terms and might lose
paternal authority over their children if they did not “cooperate.” In early
2000 they were sentenced to jail terms of between three and a half and seven
years, with promises of early release and federal witness protection.

Meanwhile, the Cuban Five were kept in solitary confinement. They were
confined to cramped, damp, moldy cells 23 hours a day, with only an hour of
“recreation” to stretch their legs. They would stay in “the hole” for 17
consecutive months.

A federal grand jury brought a 26-count indictment. The five pleaded not
guilty to all the charges, which included the following:

* Each was accused of “acting as an agent of the Republic of Cuba
without registering with the Attorney General,” and of “conspiring” to do
so.
* Guerrero, Hernández, and Labañino were charged with “conspiracy to
commit espionage.”
* Hernández was charged with “conspiracy to commit murder.”
* Each was accused of various minor charges such as possession of false
identification documents.

The initial indictment was brought in early October 1998. The charge against
Hernández of “conspiracy to commit murder,” however, was added in May 1999,
after it became clear the government had failed to break the defendants’
spirits despite eight months of solitary confinement.

In an unprecedented legal move, U.S. officials charged Hernández as
responsible for an action by a sovereign government—Cuba’s 1996 shootdown of
two planes flown over its territory by Brothers to the Rescue, a right-wing
outfit that had repeatedly violated Cuban airspace despite widely publicized
warnings.

Cops jail, deport Olga Salanueva

Federal officials tried other ways to break the five Cubans, but failed. One
particularly crude method was their arrest and deportation of Olga Salanueva
as a club against her husband, René González.

Salanueva wrote an account of what happened in Letters of Love and Hope: The
Story of the Cuban Five, a collection of correspondence between the Cuban
Five and their families. González, a U.S. citizen who grew up in Cuba, moved
to Florida in 1990, and Salanueva joined him six years later, becoming a
U.S. permanent resident. They have two daughters, Irma, born in Cuba, and
Ivette, born in the United States.

On Aug. 16, 2000, FBI and Immigration and Naturalization Service cops
arrested Salanueva. They confiscated her green card. “They told me that I
knew about my husband’s activities and that, as a result, my residency was
invalid,” she wrote. “I was taken to the state prison in Fort Lauderdale.”

She explained, “The real objective of my detention was to pressure Rene into
signing a confession prepared by the Southern Florida District Attorney in
which he would declare himself guilty and testify against the other
defendants.” The federal officials warned him that Salanueva, as a permanent
resident, could also be charged. González refused to sign the confession and
she was arrested three days later.

On the way to jail, the cops took Salanueva, dressed in an orange prison
suit, to see González at FDC. “They wanted to show him that they had made
good on their threat and that our daughters and I were at their mercy. He
looked at me and said, ‘Orange looks good on you!’ Even in front of the
guards, he hadn’t lost his sense of humor.” That was the last time she saw
him.

“I didn’t cry that day,” Salanueva added. “When you’re among friends you
cry—but not before your enemies. Dignity gives you strength and hardens
you.”

During the three months Salanueva was jailed, González was not given her
letters. “It was clearly an effort to try to destabilize him emotionally
since he did not know anything about me directly and the beginning of the
trial was near,” she noted.

They were barred from speaking to each other by phone. In a gesture of
solidarity, a Peruvian-born coworker at Salanueva’s telemarketing job helped
them get around that obstacle. Olga explained that “I called her and she
recorded my message for Rene. He did the same. He called her, listened to my
recording and then recorded” a message for his wife.

On Nov. 21, 2000, six days before the trial of the five began, Olga
Salanueva was deported. For the past eight years the U.S. government has
repeatedly denied her a visa to see her husband. She, along with other
relatives of the five, has never stopped speaking out for their release.

http://www.themilitant.com/2008/7227/722750.html

[EFerrari]

1. This is a very important story. Thanks for posting it here.