The singular story of the Cuban Five

Leonard Weinglass, Le Monde Diplomatique

Five Cuban men, were arrested in Miami, Florida in September, 1998 and charged with 26 counts of violating the federal laws of the United States. 24 of those charges were relatively minor and technical offenses, such as the use of false names and failure to register as foreign agents. None of the charges involved violence in the U.S., the use of weapons, or property damage.

The Five had come to the United States from Cuba following years of violence perpetrated by a network of terrorist made up of armed mercenaries drawn from the Cuban exile community in Florida. For over forty years these groups have been tolerated, and even hosted, by successive U.S. Governments.

Cuba suffered significant casualties and property destruction at their hands. Cuban protests to the United States Government and the United Nations fell on deaf ears. Following the demise of the socialist states in the early 90’s the violence escalated as Cuba struggled to establish a tourism industry. The Miami mercenaries responded with a violent campaign to dissuade foreigners from visiting. A bomb was found in the airport terminal in Havana, tourist buses were bombed, as were hotels. Boats from Miami traveled to Cuba and shelled hotels and tourist facilities.

The mission of the Five was not to obtain U.S. military secrets, as was charged, but rather to monitor the terrorist activities of those mercenaries and report their planned threats back to Cuba.. The arrest and prosecution of these men for their courageous attempt to stop the terror was not only unjust, it exposed the hypocrisy of America’s claim to oppose terrorism wherever it surfaces.

Nothing reveals this more than the contrast between the U.S. government’s handling of the Five’s case with that of Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles. Both Bosch and Carriles were members, even leaders, of the Miami terror network and self confessed terrorists, who planted a bomb on a Cubana airline in 1976, which exploded in midair, killing 73 people.

When Bosch applied for legal residence in the United States in 1990 an official investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice examined his 30 year history of criminality directed against Cuba and concluded, “…over the years he has been involved in terrorist attacks abroad and has advocated and been involved in bombings and sabotage.” Despite that official finding he was granted legal residence by the then President of the United States, George Bush Sr.

The case of Posada Carriles’ is no less revealing. A fugitive from justice, he “escaped” from a Venezuela prison in 1985 (with the help of powerful “friends”) where he was accused and prosecuted for master-minding the 1976 bombing of the Cuban airliner.

Twice Posada publicly admitted that he was responsible for a series of bombings in Havana in 1997, in which an Italian tourist was killed and dozens of others were wounded . He was convicted by a Panamanian Court in 2000 for “endangering public safety” by having several dozen pounds of C-4 explosives in his possession, which he intended to use at a public gathering at the University in order to kill President Fidel Castro (along with what would have been hundreds of others, mostly students, who attended that meeting). His long career in violence and terror is undeniable.

He, too, however, became the recipient of inexplicable hospitality from the government of the U.S.. His presence in the United States, following a fraudulent pardon by the outgoing President of Panama, was an open secret, but he was reluctantly taken into custody only after giving a televised press conference. He’s now housed by American authorities, not in a prison, but in a special residence inside a detention facility. He faces no prosecutions, only an administrative procedure for not having appropriate residential documents, which could lead to his deportation to a country of his choosing. Meanwhile the U.S. has refused to extradite him to Venezuela where he is facing charges related to terrorism.

Contrast that treatment with that of the Five who were arrested without a struggle and immediately cast into solitary confinement cells reserved as punishment for the most dangerous prisoners, and kept there for 17 months until the start of their trial. When their trial ended 7 months later (more on the trial to follow) they were sentenced three months after 9/11 to maximum prison terms, with Gerardo Hernandez receiving a double life sentence and Antonio Guerrero and Ramon Laba