Posted on 08/15/2002 1:16:27 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The jury that convicted the men did not include any Cuban Americans but was probably influenced by "vicious" anti-Castro sentiment, said Paul McKenna, an attorney for Gerardo Hernandez, said to be the spy group's ringleader.
MIAMI (Reuters) - A U.S. lawyers group launched a campaign on Tuesday to free five Cuban spies convicted of plotting against the United States, saying their trial had been tainted by Miami exile politics.
A federal jury in Miami convicted the five Cuban and Cuban American men on conspiracy and espionage charges in June 2001. Three were imprisoned for life and the others are serving 15- and 19-year sentences.
The National Lawyers Guild, a New York-based lawyers group, kicked off a campaign on Tuesday to win support for the five, who are appealing their conviction before the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
The guild, a left-leaning association that tackles a variety of civil liberties issues, planned to file friend-of-the court briefs urging new trials for the men.
Other supporters intend to collect signatures for a petition urging President Bush to free them.
"They do not belong in prison. They never harmed anybody and they were trying to prevent the violence of the ultra-right in Miami," said Gloria La Riva, a member of a support group called National Campaign to Free the Five.
The five men were convicted as part of a spy ring called the Wasp Network that infiltrated U.S. military bases and Cuban exile groups and fed information back to Havana.
The defendants acknowledged working for Cuba's Directorate of Intelligence but said they gathered information solely to defend their homeland from attacks by Cuban exiles.
Havana contends the men were merely engaged in thwarting anti-Cuban terrorism being plotted from U.S. soil. It cited past acts of aggression against Cuba, ranging from the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion to assassination plots planned in the United States against President Fidel Castro.
TRIAL SHOULD HAVE BEEN MOVED
The appeals will argue that the men's trial should have been moved out of Miami, home to a large Cuban emigre population that vehemently opposes the island's communist government.
The jury that convicted the men did not include any Cuban Americans but was probably influenced by "vicious" anti-Castro sentiment, said Paul McKenna, an attorney for Gerardo Hernandez, said to be the spy group's ringleader.
The trial began in a climate of tension and anger, just eight months after federal agents removed shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez from his Miami relatives and returned him to his father, who took him home to Cuba.
Defense lawyers tried to persuade jurors that the spies' activities did no real harm to the United States.
"We tried to explain these things in Miami but it's like talking to a wall, especially with the press coverage we had, which was awful, with the intense anti-Cuba, anti-Castro sentiment," McKenna said.
The appeal will also argue that Hernandez was wrongly convicted of conspiring to commit murder in connection with a 1996 incident in which Cuban MiGs shot down two small planes flown by Cuban exiles over the Florida Straits. Four men died in the incident.
Hernandez passed information about the exile group, Brothers to the Rescue, to Havana but its plans to fly near Cuba's coast were common knowledge and he had no role in Havana's decision to shoot them down, McKenna said.
"What the (U.S.) government did, they charged my client with an act of state, which I believe is a very dangerous precedent for any country to take, to make individuals responsible for acts of a nation," he said.
The U.S. government prosecuted the spies largely "to appease the exile community in Miami," said Bruce Nestor, the president of the lawyers guild. "There was a need to show the U.S. government was going to hold somebody responsible for the Brothers to the Rescue incident."
Prosecutors said they would respond only via court arguments but were confident the spies' convictions would be upheld.
In Cuba, Castro has made the spies' case a cause celebre, holding rallies and launching a "Free the Five" crusade with posters, T-shirts and banners bearing their images.
The men have been designated national heroes and their letters to their families are read out during televised discussions entitled "In the Entrails of the Monster."
After a six-month trial, the men were given sentences ranging from 10 years to life in prison for espionage conspiracy and lesser counts. Castro says the men are patriots who were protecting their country from possible terrorist attacks. During the special parliamentary session on Saturday, Castro told the assembly that because of the men's importance, 2002 would be officially known as the ``Year of the Heroic Prisoners of the Empire'' -- the ``empire'' being the United States. The Cuban government regularly chooses a slogan for each year, which is then used in official correspondence and in state media instead of the year's number.***
(September 21, 2001)-- Pentagon Analyst Accused of Spying for Cuba***WASHINGTON (AP)--A Pentagon intelligence analyst who attended war games conducted by the U.S. Atlantic Command in 1996 was charged Friday with spying for Cuba. Ana Belen Montes, an employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency, transmitted a substantial amount of classified information to the Cuban intelligence service, an FBI affidavit alleged. Montes appeared before a U.S. magistrate in Washington and was charged with conspiracy to deliver U.S. national defense information to Cuba. She entered no plea and was ordered held without bond.
The DIA, based at Bolling Air Force Base in southeast Washington, D.C., provides analyses of foreign countries' military capabilities and troop strengths for Pentagon planners. It also has offices within the Pentagon. Along with the CIA, National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, the DIA is one of the main agencies of the U.S. intelligence community. The FBI affidavit said Montes worked at Bolling Air Force Base.
In June, Mariano Faget, a U.S. immigration official convicted of disclosing classified information to aid Cuba, was sentenced to five years in prison. Faget, once the second-ranking immigration official in Miami, was convicted after an investigation that also lead to the expulsion of a Cuban spy.***
Accused spy for Cuba may cut plea deal***But professionally, Montes seemed above reproach. She spoke fluent Spanish because of her Puerto Rican heritage, and in 1990 she was tapped to brief Nicaragua's new president, Violeta Chamorro, about the Cuban-backed Sandinista military. In 1992 or 1993, she pulled off what seemed to be an intelligence coup. She traveled to Cuba and interviewed Cuban generals about economic reforms on the island. In 1998, she played an important role in drafting a widely cited analysis that found that Cuba's much diminished military posed no strategic threat to the United States. As recently as the week before last, she briefed top Pentagon policy-makers on Cuba.
According to the FBI affidavit, Montes, who had a high-level security clearance, spied for Cuba for at least five years, and possibly longer. She identified at least one U.S. undercover agent to the Cubans, disclosed a top-secret intelligence-gathering program and reported on U.S. training in the Caribbean, the FBI said. Current and former U.S. officials say she was in a position to tell have told Havana virtually everything the intelligence community knew about Cuba's military and might even have disclosed U.S. contingency plans for taking the island by force.
"I would think, if damage was done, it would be about what she learned about the U.S., how it was militarily prepared vis-a-vis Cuba," said Richard Nuccio, who was President Bill Clinton's special adviser on Cuba.***
Crack down on Castro*** It doesn't end there. Cuba is working with Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to undermine America. In a meeting with Mr. Khamenei last year, Mr. Castro said that, in cooperation with each other, Iran and Cuba can destroy America. He added that "the United States regime is very weak, and we are witnessing this weakness from close up." Senior State Department officials have discussed publicly the threat of Cuba's bioterrorism program. As we rush to protect our citizens from smallpox and anthrax, Mr. Castro is diverting the resources of his desperately poor economy to offensive biological-warfare research and development, and selling biotechnology to other rogue states. "We are concerned that such technology could support bioweapons programs in those states," says John Bolton, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.
Even more than with al Qaeda terrorists based in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Somalia, Cuba's geographic proximity to the United States offers Mr. Castro's agents opportunities to infiltrate and gain access to U.S. territory and our critical infrastructure. In this connection, the current regulations on U.S.-Cuba travel are a crucial tool for law enforcement to prevent the use of bioweapons against the American people. This week, Congress will vote on legislation to lift aspects of the embargo on Cuba. Doing so at this time would be a grave mistake. The theory of the legislation is that more travel and trade with Cuba will liberalize the regime - but in reality, virtually all of the money that Americans might spend in Cuba will go to the government. Worse, a significant expansion of human traffic between our nation and Cuba would hopelessly complicate the job of Customs, the FBI and counter-terrorism officials who are trying to protect against the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction into the United States.***
Doing Castro's bidding.
Thank God that Rudolf Hess is dead, they'd be marching to set him free. Of course they need the room so they can put Milosevic in his place.
Anyone know when these leftist clowns will give Castro the Nobel Peace prize?
Good grief. Can't the press spell it out? The National Lawyers Guild was determined to be a communist front group by the U.S. Senate over 40 years ago. At that time, the few members who were not communists but were sincere useful idiots, quit the organization.
Update bump... guess who Obama just released...?
I guess we shouldn’t be surprise, disgusted and revolted but not surprised.
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