Vol. 75/No. 14      April 11, 2011

An affidavit filed March 21 presents new evidence refuting the trumped-up charge of “conspiracy to commit murder” slapped on one of the five, Gerardo Hernández.

Another brief filed earlier in March by lawyers for Antonio Guerrero points to the government’s payment of local journalists to taint the trial with prejudicial articles. (Both are available at www.freethefive.org or www.thecuban5.org.)

The Cuban Five, as they are known, had been tracking the activities of Cuban American paramilitary groups in Miami with a long history of armed assaults and acts of sabotage against Cuba—activities tacitly supported by Washington.

Hernández was sentenced to life on murder conspiracy charges for the Cuban government’s decision on Feb. 24, 1996, to shoot down two hostile aircraft that had repeatedly and provocatively invaded its territory, despite repeated warnings from Havana. The planes were piloted by the counterrevolutionary Cuban American group Brothers to the Rescue (BTTR).

Hernández is now requesting the opportunity to present testimony at a new, separate trial on the murder conspiracy charge. In his affidavit, he says his previous court-appointed counsel did not explain to him his right to separate out this charge, which would have allowed him and others to testify on his behalf without their statements possibly being used against them on other charges.

In the 2001 trial, the defense presented evidence, including testimony from a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, that the BTTR planes were shot down inside Cuban territory. But the Miami jury bought the U.S. government’s claims that it occurred over international waters.

The defense, however, did not present testimony to prove that, regardless of where the incident occurred, Hernández did not know it was going to happen, and therefore could not have played a role in any alleged “plot.” In his new statement, Hernández lays out what he would have testified to had he been given the opportunity. He explains why he could not have had foreknowledge of the shootdown and demonstrates how the prosecution misrepresented and twisted evidence to boost its speculative claims.

In addition to Hernández and Guerrero, the Cuban Five include Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González. Hernández, Guerrero, and Labañino were all convicted of “conspiracy to commit espionage” for which they received life sentences. For the two bogus conspiracy accusations and other charges Hernández received two life sentences plus 15 years.

In face of an international campaign for justice, a district court commuted the extraordinary life sentences for Guerrero and Labañino in 2009 to 21 years and 10 months and 30 years, respectively. But Hernández’s life sentence for the same charge was left standing on the pretext that, given his other life sentence, it would be “irrelevant to the time he will serve in prison,” making any breakthrough on the murder conspiracy frame-up particularly significant in the legal battle for his freedom.

The other memorandum, filed by Guerrero’s attorneys March 5, presents evidence that the U.S. government secretly paid at least 10 influential journalists in Miami “hundreds of thousands of dollars to advance an anti-Cuba propaganda campaign in the very community in which the defendants were to be tried.” The Miami Herald first reported the media operation in an article titled, “10 Miami Journalists Take U.S. Pay,” published in September 2006.

During the trial, the memorandum states, the paid-for reporters professed the defendant’s guilt before and during the trial, conjured wild, fictitious stories about supposed Cuban conspiracies, misrepresented purported evidence against the defendants, and published prejudicial evidence that the court ruled was inadmissible.

The charge takes on added weight given the government’s successful effort to thwart defendants’ efforts to change the venue from Miami, a city well known as the center of anti-Cuba counterrevolutionary activity.

Thus far the government has refused to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests to disclose its records related to the propaganda campaign.  
 
 
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