Cuban Five
The Cuban Five, also known as the Miami Five,[1] are five Cuban intelligence officers (Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González) who were arrested in September 1998 and later convicted in Miami, Florida of conspiracy to commit espionage, conspiracy to commit murder, acting as an agent of a foreign government, and other illegal activities in the United States.
[2] The Five were in the U.S. to observe and infiltrate the Cuban-American groups Alpha 66, the F4 Commandos, the Cuban American National Foundation, and Brothers to the Rescue.
[13] In 1960s and 1970s, there were several attacks against Cuban civilians by U.S.-based exile groups such as Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU), Alpha 66, and Omega 7.
In a 2001 report by Cuba's Permanent Mission to the United Nations, the Cuban government cataloged 3,478 deaths as a result of "terrorism", "aggression", "acts of piracy and other actions".
[3] The U.S. government also accused the remaining four of lying about their identities and sending 2,000 pages of unclassified information obtained from U.S. military bases to Cuba.
[18] U.S. government organizations, including the FBI, had been monitoring Cuban spy activities for over 30 years, but made only occasional arrests.
[16] However, after the two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft were shot down by Cuban MiGs in February 1996 and four U.S. citizens were killed, on the basis of information sent to Cuba by an infiltrator of the group, the Clinton administration launched a crackdown.
[16] According to U.S. attorney José Pertierra, who acts for the Venezuelan government in its attempts to extradite Luis Posada Carriles, the crackdown was aided by the cooperation of the Cuban authorities with the FBI in 1997.
[2] After the agents were exposed, the spouse in the first case sued the Cuban government for rape on the basis that sexual intercourse had been procured by fraud.
[2] All five were arrested in Miami on September 12, 1998 and were indicted by the U.S. government on 25 counts, including charges of false identification and conspiracy to commit espionage.
Seven months later, Gerardo Hernández was indicted for conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the shoot-down of the Brothers to the Rescue aircraft.
[citation needed] The trial began in November 2000 in the U.S. District Court for Southern Florida in Miami and lasted seven months.
[26] In May 2009, in response to the request for Supreme Court of the United States review of the panel decision by Judge Pryor, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, on behalf of President Barack Obama, filed a brief asking that the petition for a writ of certiorari be denied.
On May 27, 2005, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted a report by its Working Group on Arbitrary Detention stating its opinions on the facts and circumstances of the case and calling upon the U.S. government to remedy the situation.
The Working Group notes that it arises from the facts and circumstances in which the trial took place and from the nature of the charges and the harsh sentences handed down to the accused that the trial did not take place in the climate of objectivity and impartiality that is required in order to conform to the standards of a fair trial as defined in article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States of America is a party.Amnesty International criticized the U.S. treatment of the Cuban Five as "unnecessarily punitive and contrary both to standards for the humane treatment of prisoners and to states' obligation to protect family life", as the wives of René Gonzáles and Gerardo Hernández were denied visas to visit their imprisoned husbands.
[36] The U.S. Government has responded to these claims,[37] stating that the prisoners have received over a hundred visits from family members granted visas.
Evidence presented at their husbands' trial revealed that one of these women was a member of the Wasp Network who was deported for engaging in activity related to espionage and is ineligible to return to the United States.
The other was a candidate for training as a Directorate of Intelligence U.S.-based spy when U.S. authorities broke up the network.Eight international Nobel Prize winners filed an amicus brief with the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five in 2009.
[45] American officials did not consider Gross, whom they viewed as unjustly detained for a comparatively minor offense, equivalent to spies, one of whom had been convicted of murder.
