Cuba Shocked at U.S. Treatment of Criminals

Five Cubans serving long US prison sentences for spying and conspiracy are demanding a retrial, saying they were found guilty because of anti-Castro bias.

FBI agents arrested the men in 1998 and they were convicted in 2001 of 26 counts of spying on the Cuban exile community in Miami, Florida on behalf of Fidel Castro's government.

Prosecutors also accused the men of trying to infiltrate US military installations to obtain secrets.

Lawyers for the five, who were not present in court today, said they deserved a fresh trial because the prosecution made statements in closing arguments in 2001 that violated court rules and because the sentences were harsher than the crimes deserved.

"The court should find that the defendants were prejudiced (by what the prosecution said) and the court should grant a new trial," defence lawyer Richard Klugh told a federal courtroom in Atlanta.

The "Cuban Five" are celebrated at home as national heroes victimised by Washington as part of its diplomatic campaign against the island's government since Castro took power in a 1959 revolution.

’This was a soberly tried case’

But to many members of the Cuban exile community they were justly convicted and Havana's support for the men is seen as an example of Cuba's pursuit of its own anti-US agenda.

Government lawyers refuted a defence argument that its case was "over-hyperbolic" and said there was no misconduct by the prosecution at the 2001 trial.

"This was a soberly tried case.

“It was squarely based on evidence...The government did not exploit red-baiting in this case," government lawyer Caroline Heck Miller told the court.

She was referring to claims by the defence that prosecutors unfairly characterised conviction of the men as of national importance because they represented a communist government opposed to the United States.

One of the men, Gerardo Hernandez, was also indicted for conspiracy to commit murder based on the allegation he passed information to Havana that led to the downing in 1996 by a Cuban MiG jet of two small planes operated by a Miami-based Cuban exile group and flying near Cuba.

Four people were killed.

’Inference upon inference’

Hernandez was sentenced to two life terms, Antonio Guerrero and Ramon Labanino got life, Fernando Gonzalez received 19 years in jail and Rene Gonzalez got 15 years.

Hernandez says he was spying on paramilitary exile groups in Miami, not on the United States itself, when he and four members of his so-called Wasp Network were arrested.

The mission was to prevent "terrorist" attacks on Cuba, according to Ramsey Clark, a former US attorney-general who was present in support of the men.

"There is an injustice in this case...The theory that the government used (to prosecute Hernandez) is a classic pile of inference upon inference upon inference," said Mr Klugh.

The three judges at the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta may take weeks or longer to make a ruling in the case, supporters of the men said.

Declassified documents have revealed the CIA tried to get the Mafia to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro in a "gangster-type action" in the early 1960s.

The CIA declassified hundreds of pages of long-secret records that detail some of the agency's worst illegal abuses during about 25 years of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying and kidnapping.

The documents are known in the CIA as the "Family Jewels," and some describe the agency's efforts to persuade Johnny Roselli, believed to be a mobster, to help plot the assassination of Castro.

Roselli was believed by the CIA to have been a high-ranking member of the crime syndicate and who controlled all the ice-making machines on the Las Vegas Strip.

He was approached by a go-between, Robert Maheu, who reckoned Roselli had connections leading into Cuban gambling interests. The story Roselli was to be told was that several international business firms were suffering heavy financial losses in Cuba as a result of Castro's action and they were willing to pay $150,000 for his removal.

"It was to be made clear to Roselli that the United States government was not, and should not, become aware of this operation," a document said.

Mobster plot

In documents that often read like a cheap detective novel, the story is outlined:

- The pitch is made to Roselli at the Hilton Plaza Hotel in New York. Roselli is initially cool to the idea.
- The contact leads the agency to two top mobsters, Momo Salvatore Giancana and Santos Trafficant, both on the US list of most-wanted men.
- Giancana, aka 'Sam Gold', suggests firearms might be a problem and a potent pill that could instead be slipped into Castro's food or drink.

Eventually, six pills of "high lethal content" were provided to Juan Orta, identified as a Cuban official who had been receiving kickback payments from gambling interests and who still had access to Castro and was in a financial bind.

"After several weeks of reported attempts, Orta apparently got cold feet and asked out of the assignment. He suggested another candidate who made several attempts without success," the document said.

SOURCE: Reuters