September 12, 2008 - No. 118
- Supplement
Chronicle of an Injustice --
Brief Summary of the Case
of the Cuban Five
- Leonard Weinglass, July 2008 -
After decades of enduring attacks within its own borders
(acts of arson, sabotage, assassinations and the use of biological
weapons) perpetrated by anti-Cuban terrorist groups based in southern
Florida that enjoy the support and consent of the U.S. government, and
after the United States repeatedly refused to implement
measures to prevent such attacks, a group of unarmed men traveled from
Cuba to the United States to monitor the activities of mercenary groups
responsible for those attacks and organizations that support them and
to warn Cuba of their aggressive intentions.
In September 1998, five of these men, who would later be
known as the Cuban Five, were arrested in South Florida by FBI agents
and kept in isolation cells for 17 months before their case was even
brought before a court. Initially, they were accused of the vague crime
of conspiracy which, according
to U.S. law, constitutes a commitment to carry out acts of espionage
(the U.S. government never accused them of actual espionage, nor did it
affirm that real acts of espionage had been carried out, as no
classified military document had been confiscated from the men). In
addition the men faced minor charges associated
with the use of false names and for failing to inform federal
authorities that they were working on U.S. soil on behalf of Cuba.
Seven months later, a new charge was brought against the
accused: again, that of conspiracy, but this time to commit murder.
This charge was brought specifically against one of the Five, Gerardo
Hernández, the result of an intense public campaign which sought
to avenge the downing, by Cuba's Air
Force, of two light airplanes piloted by members of an anti-Castro
group and the death of its four crew members, an event that had taken
place two years before, when those airplanes were within Cuban
airspace. The planes belonged to an organization which, in the 20
months preceding the incident in which they
were downed, had penetrated Cuban airspace 25 times, something which
had been denounced repeatedly by the Cuban government. The downing of
the planes took place after Cuban authorities had officially warned the
United States that it would defend its airspace. In spite of the
vigorous objections raised by the
Five's defense, the case was tried in Miami, Florida, a community that
is home to more than half a million Cuban exiles with a long history of
hostility toward the Cuban government, an environment that a U.S.
federal court of appeals would later describe as a "perfect storm" of
prejudices, which, in this case, prevented
the holding of a fair trial. Each and every one of the 12 members of
the jury selected to try the case expressed negative opinions regarding
the Cuban government and was a hostile jury member. The three potential
jury members who expressed a neutral stance toward Cuba were
disqualified by the government
The trial, which lasted over six months, became the
longest trial that the United States had known until then. More than
119 volumes of testimony and over 20,000 pages of documents were
complied, including the testimonies of three retired Army generals, a
retired admiral, a former Clinton advisor
on Cuban affairs (all called by the defense) and high Cuban officials.
Near the trial's conclusion, when the case was about to be presented to
the jury for its consideration, the U.S. government presented an
extraordinary appeal before a higher court, seeking its intervention,
recognizing that it had failed to prove the
main charge of conspiracy to commit murder and alleging that it was
facing an "insurmountable obstacle" in connection with winning the
case. After that appeal was turned down, the jury nonetheless found the
Five guilty of all charges, under intense pressure brought to bear on
them by the local media, whose cameras
followed jury members even while driving, so that their license plate
numbers were made public, and by anti-Castro activists, who did not
cease their protests before the court.
Found guilty, the Five were given unprecedented long
sentences and imprisoned in five completely separate maximum security
prisons. Gerardo Hernández was given two life sentences, Antonio
Guerrero and Ramón Labañino a life sentence each,
Fernando González 19 years and René González 15
years. The three men sentenced to life imprisonment became the first
three people ever to be sentenced to life imprisonment for espionage in
the United States in a case where no secret document was ever handled.
The initial appeal process lasted 27 months and
concluded with a decision by a three-judge panel of the court of
appeals that revoked all of the convictions on the grounds that the
five accused had not received a fair trial in Miami. In an unexpected
move, the government asked the twelve judges of
the Court of Appeals of the Eleventh Circuit to review the panel's
decision through a so-called en banc
procedure. Exactly one year later,
in spite of the strong disagreement voiced by two of the three judges
who made up the panel, the Court plenum revoked, by majority, the
93-page decision of the three judges and
refuted the claim that a climate of violence and intimidation prevailed
in Miami. In the quarter century before this decision, that court had
never ruled in favor of a person accused of a federal crime.
All the
while, on May 27, 2005, the UN Work Group on Arbitrary Detentions,
after reviewing the arguments advanced
by the family of the Cuban Five and the U.S. government, concluded that
their imprisonment was arbitrary and urged the U.S. government to take
the measures needed to rectify the situation.
The Work Group stated that, based on the facts and the
circumstances in which the trial was held, the nature of the charges
and the severity of the convictions, the imprisonment of the Five
violates Article 14 of the International Convention on Civil and
Political Liberties, to which the United States
is a signatory.
On August 20, 2007, an oral hearing called by a
three-judge panel took place at the Atlanta Court of Appeals for the
11th Circuit. As in the two previous hearings held in March 2004 and
February 2006, the parties "U.S. government and the defense" put forth
their arguments and replied to the questions
put to them by the judges.
This hearing was yet another step in the long appeal
process for the Cuban Five undertaken the moment they were sentenced in
2001. On this occasion, the U.S. government once again proved unable to
refute the arguments of the defense or to substantiate its accusations.
The defense, however, offered
irrefutable proof of the improper conduct shown by the government
throughout the legal proceedings brought against the Five, a flagrant
violation which affects the entire case, related to prosecution's
invention of crimes which it could not prove during the trial,
promotion of a hostile atmosphere and manipulation
of the evidence and the jury.
The lack of evidence needed to substantiate the two main
charges "conspiracy to commit espionage and conspiracy to commit
first-degree murder" and the imposition of completely irrational and
unjustifiable life sentences, has been another key argument advanced by
the defense in its efforts to reveal
the arbitrary nature of the process. The government itself recognized
during the trial that it could not produce a single secret document to
prove the charge of espionage and that it had met an "insurmountable
obstacle"; in its efforts to prove the charge of conspiracy to commit
murder.
Throughout the rigged process, the government admitted
that its true aim was to protect the anti-Cuban terrorist groups that
operate, with complete impunity, from Miami and to punish those who
fight against them.
On June 4, 2008, the 3-judge panel expressed its
opinion, ratifying the guilty verdicts of the Five; ratifying the
sentences of Gerardo Hernández and René Gonzalez;
annulling the sentences of Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González
and Ramón Labañino and referring the cases once again to
the Miami
District Court so they could be re-sentenced at a hearing to be called
for this purpose.
On September 12 these five men will have served their
tenth year in prison for crimes they did not commit, but for having
tried to protect Cuba from terrorist actions. Cuba, like the United
States and any other country in the world, has a legitimate right to
defend itself from this scourge, which has
already claimed many lives.
The case against Gerardo Hernández, Ramón
Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and
René González is still in the appeal process at the
Atlanta Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
Human Rights Violations
Between the time of their arrest and trial, the Five
were detained, with no right to bail, for 33 months. In addition to
this, they were kept in isolation cells for 17 months. They were denied
all contact with their relatives and small children and even each
other. In August
2001, before they were convicted at their hearings, they were once
again sent to the "hole" for 48 days.
Just as the defense was preparing to submit their
documents to the court and the appeal process for the cases was about
to commence in March 2003, the Five were once again summarily sent to
isolation cells, "on orders from Washington," as the administrators of
the local penitentiaries declared, perplexed
at that order, as the Five had maintained exemplary conduct during
their imprisonment.
At the time the U.S. Department of Justice decided to
keep the Five in solitary confinement for "national security"
interests. U.S. authorities applied the so-called Special
Administrative Measures (SAMs) by virtue of federal regulations passed
in 1996. These measures are applicable in cases where there
is reason to suspect that communication between federal prisoners can
put the country's national security at risk or lead to acts of violence
or terrorism.
The Five were once again sent to the "hole"; thus
prevented from any contact with the world. All communication with their
lawyers was denied them. They were not allowed to receive visitors, not
even from the consulate. They were not allowed to receive any
correspondence or make telephone calls,
not even with their families. This measure was adopted by the U.S.
government at a crucial stage of the legal process, when contact
between lawyer and client is crucial and the defense was preparing its
declarations for the appeal.
The "Special Administrative Measures" were amended by
virtue of the 2001 Patriot Act,
which extended the period of time these
measures can be applied from 120 days to a year, and modified the norms
governing the approval of such extensions. As a result of this
amendment, the "Special Administrative
Measures" could be applied to the Five again at any time in the future.
The Five have been in prison for more than 9 years.
During this time, Adriana, Gerardo Hernández' wife, has never
been granted a visa that will allow her to visit her husband. Olga,
René González' wife, has also been denied the possibility
of visiting her husband. With respect to the other relatives,
the U.S. government has continued unnecessary delays in the granting of
entry permits. The average number of visas granted for every member of
the family (including parents, wives and children) is solely one visa
for every family member a year.
As a result, in most cases, relatives have been able to
visit the Five on average only once every year, when, in conformity
with the regulations governing visits at the different prisons, more
frequent visits could have been coordinated, had the visas been granted
for this purpose.
Amnesty International has condemned these acts as
violations of international law. In a letter addressed to the U.S.
Department of State, Amnesty International declared: "Such denial of
family visits for convicted prisoners would represent a substantial
hardship in any case. This is of even more urgent
concern in the present cases given the serious questions which have
been raised about the fairness of the convictions," adding: "this
measure is unnecessarily punitive and contrary both to standards for
the humane treatment of prisoners and to states, obligation to protect
family life."
The Most Recent Decision In Atlanta
On June 4, 2008, the three-judge panel of the Atlanta
Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit responsible for reviewing the
case of the Five, made up of Judges Stanley Birch, Phyllis Kravitch and
William Pryor, expressed its opinion, after that Court plenum's
August 9, 2006 annulment of its previous decision of August 9, 2005
that overturned the convictions of the Five and called for a new trial,
having found that they had not received a fair trial. On that occasion,
the plenum instructed the judges to review the other arguments behind
the appeal.
In its new opinion, the panel ratified the guilty
verdicts of the Five, ratified the sentences imposed on Gerardo
Hernández and René González, annulled the
sentences imposed on Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and
Ramón Labañino and referred these last three cases to the
Miami District Court,
so that they would be re-tried at a hearing to be held for that purpose.
Unanimously, the panel defeated each and every one of
the arguments advanced in the appeal by the defense, alleging that they
were "devoid of merit," save those related to the sentences imposed on
Ramón, Antonio and Fernando. Only in connection with the charge
of conspiracy to commit murder
brought against Gerardo, a charge which the prosecution itself
recognized before the court of appeals during the trial t hat it could
not prove, the decision was 2 to 1, with a 16-page decision presented
by Judge Kravitch, who affirmed that the government had not presented
any evidence to prove that Gerardo was
guilty of such a crime.
The 99-page decision was drawn up by Judge Pryor, member
appointed in 2007, who, with a politicized language completely out of
place in a legal document, explicitly favored the government's position
and even changed a number of facts invoked by that same panel in its
previous decision in favor
of the Five, regarding the issue of venue, and manipulated other facts
in the case files.
Pryor, whose appointment as federal judge proved highly
controversial (owing to his far-right positions) and which was
denounced by important U.S. newspapers as well as criticized within the
Senate, was proposed by Bush in April 2003 and disallowed on that
occasion by the Senate. Subsequently,
in June 2005, he managed to secure his appointment, although 45
senators voted against, through a negotiated arrangement with the
presumed current Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
In an interview for Cuban television aired the day after
the three-judge panel made its decision public, attorney for the
defense Leonard Weinglass affirmed:
"When The Five were arrested in 1998, the Pentagon and
the Department of Justice issued a statement saying that the United
States' national security had not been damaged. Now, after they've been
in prison for 10 years, we have an assertion from a high-level court
that there was no espionage and
that no top secret information was obtained or transmitted. That's what
the Court found. Yet, they are remanded to be re-sentenced and we're
not sure what the new sentence will be."
Gerardo's case was the simplest, according to all the
lawyers, and could have been withdrawn. However, although his case is
easy from the legal point of view, it is the most difficult from the
political point of view, due to the political climate that exists in
Miami. The [Florida] Court did not have the
courage to set aside a sentence for conspiracy to commit murder when
four Miami residents were the victims.
When one reads the Appellate opinion, in particular the
first 40 pages, it is very clear to attorneys there is ideological
prejudice in the emitted decision.
This 99-page ruling finds that Judge Lenard made
mistakes when she sentenced Fernando. She made mistakes when she
sentenced Antonio; she made mistakes when she sentenced Ramón.
She made mistakes in the instructions she gave the jury about Gerardo
and -- according to two of the three [Atlanta]
judges -- made a mistake when she denied a change of venue. Despite
these six or seven serious errors, the [Atlanta] court remands the case
to Judge Lenard (!)
Lamentably, this is one of those situations where the
government of the United States is utilizing its justice system to
achieve a foreign-policy objective, and can be compared to the opposite
tack in the case of Posada Carriles. Historically when this happens and
the existence of political prejudice is
revealed, the American people feel greatly ashamed at the failure of
their system of justice and the courts of justice."
Difficulties Surrounding Family Visits to the Cuban
Five Imprisoned in the United States
During these years of unjust imprisonment, the delay in
the granting of visas to the relatives of the Cuban Five, imprisoned in
the United States since September 12, 1998, has, in most cases,
prevented these
relatives from visiting the Five more than once a year on average,
despite the regulations of the different prisons allowing monthly
visits.
Since 2006, when a new procedure for the request of
temporary entry visas was introduced, this situation has worsened, and
the time relatives have had to wait to obtain a visa and, thus, the
time the Five have been denied visits from these relatives, has
increased significantly (up to 19 months, to date).
According to these regulations, relatives in the United
States must request the visit at the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba via
phone. This has forced the relatives of the Five to resort to an
exceptional mechanism which has made the securing of visas an even
more complicated process than before 2006.
What follow are some examples of the above-mentioned
difficulties:
Gerardo
Hernández Nordelo (2 life sentences plus
15 years): Since the time of his arrest on September 12, 1998,
he has
not received a single visit from his wife, Adriana Pérez.
* On 8 different occasions, Adriana Pérez has
requested a visa to visit him and, on these 8 occasions, the U.S.
government has denied her the visa.
* In 2002 she was granted a visa and, upon arriving at
the airport in Houston, Texas on July 24, 2002, authorities arbitrarily
detained her for 11 hours, denied her recourse to Cuban consular
officers and revoked her visa, preventing her from entering the United
States.
All of this has been psychologically torturous for
Gerardo Hernández who, sentenced to life imprisonment, will
therefore never see his wife again.
*His sister, Isabel Hernández Nordelo, submitted
her visa request on November 2, 2006 and had to wait until November 21,
2007, to receive the visa, that is, she had to wait 12 months to
receive a visa.
René
González Sehwerert (15 years): August
16, 2000 was the last time he was visited by his wife Olga Salanueva.
From 2002 to date, the U.S. government has denied his
wife, Olga Salanueva, authorization to enter the United States to visit
the prison where her husband is held. She has requested the visa to
visit him on 8 occasions and has been denied it by the U.S. government
on all 8 occasions. In 2002, she
was granted a visa. This visa was revoked the following week.
*His mother, Irma Sehweret, had to wait 17 months (from
September 12, 2006 until February 5, 2008) to obtain her last visa.
*His father, Cándido René González,
presented his visa request on April 16, 2007, and it was granted him on
February 5, 2008, 10 months after he requested it.
Ramón
Labañino Salazar (life imprisonment
plus 18 years): For exactly two years, since June 2006 to date,
he has
not received any visits from his relatives owing to the delay in the
granting of visas.
*His wife, Elizabeth Palmeiro, and his two daughters,
Laura Labañino and Lisbeth Labañino, have been waiting
for 19 months, since September 2006, when they presented their visa
requests at the U.S. Interests Sections in Havana (USINT). They have
yet to obtain them.
* Ramon's older daughter, Ailí Labañino,
presented her visa request on November 2, 2006. The visa was granted
her 12 months later, on November 6, 2007, but, upon arriving at the
prison, its complete shutdown was decreed as a result of disturbances
(in which Ramón Labañino did not participate).
As a result of this, she was unable to make a single visit in the
course of her 29-day stay.
Fernando
González Llort (19 years): He has been
unable to see his mother, Magali Llort, and his wife, Rosa Aurora
Freijanes, for a year, owing to the delay in the granting of visas.
*From the time of his transfer to Oxford prison in
Wisconsin, until 2007, his mother and wife, the only relatives who have
ever visited him, were not recognized as such by prison authorities and
were not included in the list of visitors. Thus, not only did they face
the usual difficulties to obtain the
visas, their visits to the prisons required special authorization from
the establishments.
*His mother, Magali Llort, has been waiting for 15
months (since March 19, 2007, when she presented the visa request) to
obtain a visa.
*His wife, Rosa Aurora Freijanes, presented her visa
request on December 15, 2006 and had to wait 11 months, until November
2007, when she finally received it.
Antonio Guerrero
Rodríguez (life imprisonment
plus 10 years): For two periods of over 17 months, he has not
received
visits from his relatives because of the delay in the granting of visas
to his mother, Mirtha Rodríguez, and his son, Antonio Guerrero.
*In December 2003, after obtaining the pertinent visas
and traveling to the United States, his mother, Mirtha
Rodríguez, and son, Antonio Guerrero, were unable to visit him
as planned because Antonio had been unexpectedly transferred to a
different prison. It was not until 2005 that they received
a new visa to visit him.
*His mother, Mirtha Rodriguez, presented her visa
request on April 16, 2007 and obtained the visa on February 5, 2008, 10
months after having requested it.
*His son, Antonio Guerrero Cabrera, presented his visa
request on March 8, 2007, and obtained the visa on February 5, 2008, 11
months after having requested it.
Open Letter to The Attorney General of the United
States
of America
Mr. Alberto Gonzales Attorney General of the United
States of America
According to the information supplied by the
international press, on August 9, 2005, the Court of Appeals of the
Eleventh Circuit Court of Atlanta declared null and void the decision
passed in Miami which had condemned Gerardo Hernández Nordelo,
René González Sehwerert, Ramón Labañino
Salazar,
Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez and Fernando González Llort
for infiltrating the extremist Cuban American groups in the south of
Florida in order to obtain information about terrorist activities
directed against Cuba. Their prison sentences have already been
declared illegal by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions
of the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations.
For the past seven years, these five young men have been
held in maximum security prisons; they have been held incommunicado in
isolated cells for long periods of time and two of them have been
denied the right to receive family visits.
At this present time, considering the nullification of
the sentence, nothing justifies their incarceration. This arbitrary
situation which is extremely painful for them and their families cannot
be allowed to continue. We, who have signed below, are demanding their
immediate liberation.
NOBEL PRIZE LAUREATES: Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer,
Desmond Tutu, Rigoberta Menchú, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel,
José Saramago, Harold Pinter, Zhores Alfiorov, y Gunter Grass
and over 6,000 intellectuals and artists from around the world,
including Noam Chomsky, Oscar Niemeyer, Mario
Benedetti, Harry Belafonte, Pablo González Casanova, Ernesto
Cardenal, Thiago de Mello, Danny Glover, Walter Salles, Eduardo
Galeano, Alice Walker, Manu Chao, Atilio BorÓn, Francois
Houtart, Ignacio Ramonet, Luis Sepúlveda, Tariq Ali, Ramsey
Clark, Gianni Miná, Frei Betto, Miguel Bonasso, Howard Zinn,
Jorge Sanjinés, Rusell Banks and Alfonso Sastre, have signed
this letter.
*More than 1,000 parliaments around the world have
declared their support of the Five through motions and letters
addressed to the U.S. government which demand their release.
*The parliaments and parliamentary commissions of Great
Britain, Ireland, Russia, Mexico, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Bolivia,
Venezuela, Panama, Peru, Brazil, Paraguay and Mali, among others, have
pronounced themselves in favor of the Five.
*The 113th Assembly of the Interparliamentary Union, the
Latin American Parliament, the Central American Parliament, ParlaSur,
the Andean Parliament and the Indigenous Parliament have passed
resolutions in this connection.
*The Women's Forum of the Joint ACP-EU Parliamentary
Assembly and the Network of Parliamentary Women of the Parliamentary
Conference of the Americas have denounced the situation of two wives of
the Five, to whom the United States has denied visas.
*In February 2007, 187 members of the European
Parliament signed a written declaration which asks the U.S. government
to grant the wives of two of the Five, Olga Salanueva and Adriana
Pérez , and other relatives, the needed visas as expeditiously
as legally possible, and asks the European Commission
Council to call on the U.S. government to adopt the measures needed to
rectify the situation.
Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions of the UN Human
Rights Commission May 27, 2005
"The deprivation of liberty of Messrs. Antonio Guerrero
Rodriguez, Mr. Fernando González Llort, Mr Gerardo
Hernández Nordelo, Mr. Ramón Labañino Salazar and
Mr. René González Sehweret is arbitrary, being in
contravention of article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights.
Important associations of lawyers, ombudsmen and human
rights activists have voiced their support of the cause of the Five:
- International Union of Jurists
- Ibero-American Union of Jurists
- National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
- National Association of Federal Defenders
- Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
- Order of Defense Lawyers of Brazil o Puerto Rico
Lawyer's College
- International Association of Democratic Lawyers
- American Association of Jurists
- National Lawyers Guild o Ibero-American Federation of
the Ombudsman
- Amnesty International
Other Cases Tried in the Last Years by United States
Courts. Compare with the Treatment Received by Our Five Heroes
1. An Iraqi citizen living in Chicago Khaled Abdel-Latif
Dumeisi, accused of being a member of Saddam Hussein's intelligence
service and of monitoring the activities of
exiled Iraqis in the United States was sentenced to 3 years and 10
months in prison for the charge of acting as a non-registered foreign
agent. He was not charged with espionage, because the U.S. prosecutors
recognized that he was seeking information not from the U.S.
government, but from the exile groups opposing
Saddam Hussein government. In the middle of the war with Iraq, the U.S.
government could differentiate between the actions of this man and
espionage.
2. Leonardo Aragoncillo, a former FBI intelligence
analyst who worked under two vice presidents, whom the FBI said had in
his possession 736 secret documents belonging to the White House, the
Pentagon and the State Department, and whom it accused of espionage in
favour of Philippines government not of conspiracy to commit espionage,
was sentenced to a ten-year
prison term, but his sentence could be reduced with good behavior.
3. Zacarías Mozawi, born of Moroccan parents in
France. He was arrested, charged and sentenced in the United States for
supposedly being one of the participants in the 9/11 attacks. According
to the charges, he was going to pilot one of the 9/11 planes.
His Moroccan mother, a resident in France, requested a
visa to go to the U.S. and visit her son. She was granted an unlimited
visa for humanitarian reasons in a situation involving someone that
they presented as the only survivor of the commando that attacked the
Twin Towers in New York.
4. John Walker Lindh, captured in Afghanistan when the
U.S. war against that country began. This young man was wearing a
Taliban uniform, was armed and fighting against the U.S. forces. They
captured him. Since he was a U.S. citizen, they didn't take him to the
Guantanamo Naval Base, located
on Cuban territory and illegally occupied by the U.S. He was condemned
to 20 years, but he would be eligible for release in 17 years, with
good behavior.
At the sentencing hearing there appears to have been an
agreement between the government and this man, including one that
allowed him to serve his sentence close to where his family lives in
San Francisco, to facilitate them visiting him, to make it easier for
the family.
5. José Padilla is an American citizen, arrested
in 2002, and charged with Conspiracy to commit murder, kidnapping and
mutilation and conspiracy to aid terrorists. In 2007 Padilla was found
guilty on all counts and was sentenced to 17 years and four months (or
208 months) in prison by the United
States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, the same
that condemned the Cuban Five.
6. Donald W. Keyser is a former official of the United
States Department of State who is accused of espionage. In 2005, he
pleaded guilty to unauthorized possession of secret documents, and to
having a relationship with a Taiwanese intelligence officer. In January
2007, Keyser was sentenced for charges
of possessing secret documents and lying to investigators. He will
serve one year and one day in jail, and be fined $25,000.
7. Lawrence Anthony Franklin is a U.S. Air Force Reserve
colonel who has pleaded guilty to passing information about U.S. policy
towards Iran to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC),
the foremost pro-Israel lobbying organization in the U.S, while he was
working for the Defense
Department. During investigations was, it was proved that classified
information was passed to an Israeli diplomat. On January 20, 2006,
Franklin was sentenced to 151 months (almost 13 years) in prison and
fined $10,000.
Gerardo Hernández Nordelo (Manuel Viramontes)
NO. 58739-004
USP VICTORVILLE
PO BOX 5400
13777 Air Expressway Road
Adelanto, CA 92394
Born in the City of Havana on June 4, 1965. Graduated in
1989 on International Political Relations in the Higher Institute of
International Relations
of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
From 1989 to 1990 he participated as internationalist
combatant in the war of liberation of Angola and against apartheid.
Gerardo is a caricaturist and he has published his
drawings in the Cuban press media and displayed them in exhibitions in
various galleries. A book containing his works was published in Cuba.
Gerardo was unfairly sentenced to two life terms plus 15
years. The government of the United States prohibits his wife to visit
him.
Charges: General Conspiracy, Conspiracy to commit
espionage, Conspiracy to commit murder, False Identity and Conspiracy
to act as a non-registered foreign agent
Ramón Labañino Salazar (Luis Medina)
No.
58734-004
USP MCCREARY
PO Box 3000
Pine Knot, KY 42635
Born in the City of Havana on June 9, 1963. Graduated
with a summa cum laude on Economy in the University of Havana in 1986.
Ramón has three daughters of 18, 12 and 8 years
of age.
He was unfairly sentenced to life imprisonment plus
18 years.
Charges: General Conspiracy, Conspiracy to commit espionage,
False Identity and Conspiracy to act as a non- registered foreign agent
Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez
No. 58741-004
USP
FLORENCE
PO BOX 7500
5880 State HWY 67
South Florence, CO 81226
Born in the city of Miami on October 16, 1958. Graduated
as airfield construction engineer from the Technical University of
Kiev, in the former Soviet Union. The expansion
of the Santiago de Cuba International Airport was the most important
work in which he was involved.
Antonio is a poet. He has published three books of
poems, "From my Altitude," "Confidential Poems," and "Poems for
Antonio Maceo." Several of his poems have been put to music. He has two
sons of 20 and 13 years of age.
He was unfairly sentenced to life imprisonment plus 10
years.
Charges: General Conspiracy, Conspiracy to commit
espionage and Conspiracy to act as a non- registered foreign agent
René González Sehwerert
No. 58738-004
FCI
MARIANNA
PO Box 7007
Marianna, FL 32447-7007
Born in Chicago, U.S., on August 13, 1956. He is a pilot
and flight instructor. René has two daughters of 21 and 7 years
of age.
From 1977 to 1979 he participated as internationalist
combatant in the war of liberation of Angola and against apartheid.
René was unfairly sentenced to 15 years of
imprisonment. The government of the United States prohibits his wife
and his little daughter to visit him.
Charges: General Conspiracy and Conspiracy to act as a
non-registered foreign agent
Fernando González Llort (Ruben Campa)
No.
58733-004
FCI TERRE HAUTE
PO BOX 33
TERRE HAUTE, IN 47808
Born in the City of Havana on August 18, 1963. Graduated
with a summa cum laude on
International Political Relations in the
Higher Institute of International Relations of
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1987.
From 1987 to 1989 he participated as internationalist
combatant in the war of liberation of Angola and against apartheid.
Fernando was unfairly sentenced to 19 years of
imprisonment.
Charges: General Conspiracy, False Identity and
Conspiracy to act as a non-registered foreign agent.
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