The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 71/No. 36      October 1, 2007

 
Campus meeting on Cuban 5
draws students, others in D.C.
(front page)
 
BY JANICE LYNN  
WASHINGTON, D.C., September 12—Some 175 students and others attended a meeting today hosted by the Howard University Law School on the case of five Cuban revolutionaries being unjustly held in U.S. jails.

The event was the first in a series of public events about the case in the area. They are part of a month of stepped-up activities in an international campaign to build support for the Cuban Five.

“This is the first time in history that we’ve seen a conviction on espionage charges without a single piece of classified documents,” said Leonard Weinglass, one of the attorneys for the Cubans. Weinglass was the featured speaker at the event. “Of 20,000 pages of documents that were seized, not one was classified.”

Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González have been locked up in U.S. jails since 1998. A federal court in Miami convicted and sentenced them on frame-up charges in 2001. The five were in the United States monitoring counterrevolutionary Cuban-American groups that have carried out violent attacks on Cuba from the United States.

Weinglass explained how defense lawyers had argued unsuccessfully for a change of venue just a few miles north to Fort Lauderdale. In Miami the “chances for a fair trial were virtually zero,” he said, due to the number of counterrevolutionary Cuban Americans there.

A three-judge panel threw out their convictions on this basis in 2005. The full 12-judge court later reversed the decision and reinstated the convictions.

At a Federal Appeals hearing last month (see September 10 Militant), defense attorneys argued for throwing out the convictions. “We are waiting for a decision we hope will vitiate this injustice and begin to set the record straight,” said Weinglass.

The meeting was chaired by Kurt Schmoke, dean of the Law School and a former mayor of Baltimore.

In response to a question from the audience, Weinglass urged people to join Free the Five defense committees to get out the word about this case.

“I thought the meeting was excellent,” Roland Blackman, 24, a law student from Atlanta, told the Militant. Blackman said that he had heard about the case before. “I believe Cuba has the right to protect its interests,” he said.

“You have to be optimistic,” law student Detravius Bethea, 30, said in an interview at a reception after the meeting. “They might have a chance if it is moved out of Miami.” He added that building support for the case and for other frame-up victims was important. He and other students are planning to travel to Jena, Louisiana, to support the Jena Six—Black students facing jail sentences for allegedly fighting with white students after nooses were hung from a school yard tree.

“I came because you don’t hear about these cases in school when people are being wrongfully convicted,” said Sasha, 26, a law student who preferred not to give her last name.

Law student Alexandra Gormely, 23, said she came because “I’m not so hot on things the U.S. government is attempting to sweep under the rug.”
 
 
Related articles:
Cuban academics attend Latin American Studies conference in Montreal
U.S. hostility toward Cuba marks Florida custody case
U.S. denies visas to wives of Cuban 5  
 
 
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