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Five Cubans Held in the US Expose Washington ?s Hypocrisy, Says American Lawyer

Havana, Jan 18/ 2006 (AIN) The Cuban Five were not prosecuted because they violated US law, but rather, because their work exposed those who were violating US law, said American defense lawyer and civil rights activist Leonard Weinglass.

In an article published January 13, the US lawyer points out that the Cuban Five exposed the hypocrisy the US ? War on Terrorism? when they infiltrated a southern Florida terrorist network that authorities allow to exist.

The article was first appeared in Le Monde Diplmatique, and then on several websites including www.counterpunch.org and www.antiterroristas.cu.

In the article Weinglass notes that Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labañino, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez were arrested in Miami , Florida , in September of 1998 under 26 charges of violating the US federal law.

The Cuban Five had traveled to the US from Havana with the express purpose of infiltrating armed mercenary organizations made up by members of the Cuban exile community in Florida . These same groups have been perpetrating violent terrorist acts against Cuba for more than 40 years, all the while tolerated and even protected by successive US administrations, reads the article.

The mission of the Cuban Five was not to uncover US military secrets, as was charged, but to monitor terrorist activities organized by the anti-Cuba groups in order to halt their plans, explains Weinglass.

The lawyer agues that Cuba has suffered significant human and material losses as a result of US aggressions. The article also exposes Washington a double standards in its protection of notorious terrorists of the likes of Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, in contrast to their treatment of the five Cuban men.

Both Bosch and Carriles, self-confessed terrorists, were the key figures in the masterminding of the 1976 midair bombing of a Cuban passenger plane that killed all 73 people aboard.

In December 2001, the Cuban Five were condemned to long and unfair sentences, even though 24 of the 26 charges against them were minor, technical offenses. After sentencing, the five Cubans were separated into different maximum-security prisons, some of the worst in the US , says the lawyer.

The Cuban Five won an appeal of their sentences at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals of Atlanta . After a thorough review of the case, a three-judge panel reversed the convictions on the ground that the five men did not receive a fair trial in Miami .

The decision of the Atlanta Court came after a ruling from the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions that concluded that the convictions and sentences were arbitrary. The UN urged the US to put an end to the situation.

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