René González Sehweret, Ramón Labañino Salazar, Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, Fernando González Llort and Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez are five young men who fight against terrorism and defend the human rights of the Cuban people.

The Government of the United States applies sustained, systematic and serious forms of torture and mistreatment to these five young men who were arbitrarily detained five years ago in that country; these practices are part of an embarrassing campaign aimed at crushing the physical and moral integrity of these five men who defend the human rights of the Cuban people. These brave young men, risking their own lives, alerted of and prevented the execution of numerous terrorist acts against Cuba, planned and organized by various groups that operate with impunity on US soil.

All of them are intellectuals. Not one of them committed a single violent act. The facts of which they are accused relate to the peaceful exercise of the right to legitimate defense invoked by the Cuban people before acts of terrorism. They acted in defense of the right to life, wellbeing and development of their people. They acted only out of respect for their conscience and principles and inspired by a profound love for their people. The one weapon each of them brandished was their own intelligence and sacrifice, convinced that the lives of men, women and children in Cuba depended on the information that they could gather to neutralize the terrorist actions of anti-Cuban groups stationed in the United States. Thousands of Cubans have been killed or mutilated in over 40 years as a result of the actions of these groups, whose training camps, recruiting and fundraising campaigns enjoy wide press coverage in cities such as Miami.

The crimes perpetrated by those terrorist groups against Cuba are recorded in de-classified official documents of the US government itself.

What follows is the description of a number of elements that express the crafty, politically manipulated nature of the trial brought against the five young anti-terrorist fighters and defenders of the human rights of their people.

- Miami: an utterly hostile city where justice is impossible.

The guarantee of an impartial jury was completely ignored in holding a farce of a trial against the Cuban Five in Miami, an utterly hostile and biased city. The fifth and sixth amendment of the US Constitution were grossly violated.

Miami is a US city where terrorist groups have set off bombs and violently attacked people who have attended concerts by Cuban bands, and where, in defiance of rulings handed down by competent courts, Elián González was kept hostage.

- Violation of the principle of due process

Penalties for serious crimes were applied without a single piece of concrete and precise evidence, in violation of the principle stating that the prosecution must prove the alleged crimes beyond all reasonable doubt.

The defense met with constant restrictions as regards its right to freely review and examine the documentation presented as evidence by the prosecution, as this was classified under the CIPA (Classified Information Procedures Act). Its declassification was carried out in an arbitrary fashion, many a time preventing defense lawyers from accessing the information sufficiently in advance to adequately evaluate the facts; at the same time, a number of requests by the defense, calling for the inclusion as evidence of documents that proved relevant in the elucidation of the facts, were not granted.

The prosecution was allowed to manipulate witnesses at all times and a press campaign aimed at intimidating the latter was mobilized, preventing facts and information that constituted evidence favorable to the defendant from being exposed before the jury and the court.

- Cruel forms of imprisonment aimed at seriously hindering the work of the defense, which have brought the Cuban Five and their relatives torture and suffering qualifying as flagrant violations of their human rights.

In violation of the UN’s Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, article seven of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and even the 8th Amendment of the United States’ Constitution, following their arrest, the Cuban Five were kept in solitary confinement in punishment cells, having committed no breach of discipline; the first confinement lasted 17 months, the second 48 days.

The past month of April of 2003, the Cuban five were subjected, once again, to the horrors of “The Hole”. On this occasion, the objective pursued by US government authorities was that of hindering the preparation of the appeal documents that were submitted at the Eleventh Circuit of Atlanta’s Court of Appeals and the request for a just and unbiased trial in a place other than Miami.

- Mistreatment and psychological and emotional torture perpetrated against the relatives of the Cuban five young men.

Having repeatedly been denied visas by US authorities, Adriana Pérez and Olga Salanueva have not been able to visit their respective spouses, Gerardo Hernández and René González, since the time of their arrests five years ago. The decision also affects little Ivette, René’s daughter, who does not know her father, as she was four months old at the time of his arrest.

Aiming to denounce the flagrant human rights violations of which the Cuban five and their relatives are victims, Olga and Adriana met with the High Commissioner for Human Rights Bertrand Ramcharan, the chairperson of the Working Group on Arbitraty Detention Louis Joinet and the Special Rapporteur on Torture Theo C. van Boven, during the 59th session of the Committee on Human Rights held in Geneva.

In violation of the obligations and duties for Consular Relations established in the Vienna Convention, the Department of State has continued to hinder Cuban consular officers in their duty and right to offer consular assistance to the Cuban Five. Everything seems to indicate that 2004 will bring heightened pressures and more obstacles in this regard. (See: Declaration of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba, January 14, 2004).

- Defenders of their people’s human rights: yes. Spies: no.

In an unprecedented move, the Cuban five were convicted for alleged acts of espionage against the United States, without any evidence or testimonies having been presented to substantiate the claim that any damage or violation was brought to the national security of the United States or to the interests of its people. There were witnesses who specifically denied the charges that the Cuban five had carried out acts of espionage, ex-CIA agent General Clapper among them, who was present at the trial as an expert witness for the prosecution; ex high officials of the US Armed Forces, such as Generals Wilhelm and Atkeson, Admiral Carroll and Coronel Buckner, were also present.

- They didn’t commit any acts of violence or cause any harm to people or their property

Convicting Gerardo Hernández for premeditated murder, having presented no evidence, witnesses or even circumstantial evidence that testifies against him or links him to any crime of this nature, is alarmingly scandalous. Without evidence or witnesses, he was attributed responsibility for the events of February 24, 1996, the day on which Cuban authorities downed two aircraft that repeatedly invaded its national territory.

In trying the actions executed by the Republic of Cuba in legitimate defense of its territory that day, the court violated the Act of State Doctrine that has been clearly and repeatedly recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States. In trying the actions of the Cuban State, the court in Miami violated international as well as American law, and in attributing these acts to Gerardo Hernández, who was not representing that State, who carried out no functions within the Cuban Air Force, nor had any participation in any of the events that took place that day, the court grossly violated the basic precepts of penal law.

- US government’s withholding of evidence and proof of terrorist actions against the Cuban people during the trial of the Cuban Five.

The US government presented several motions to exclude from the proceedings any consideration of the activities of counterrevolutionary terrorist groups in Miami, which motivated the actions of the Cuban Five.

With this objective, the prosecution prepared and presented a motion to have renowned terrorists appeal to the fifth amendment of the US constitution, keeping those individuals from testifying and making declarations with respect to the terrorist acts they have perpetrated against the Cuban people, key elements in constructing an argument explaining the motivations of the Cuban Five.

- Irregularities in the selection of the jury

In no other jurisdiction would the defendants have found themselves forced to use 9 out of their 15 peremptory vetoes just to eliminate, as members of the jury, people linked to anti-Cuba groups that operate in the south of Florida.

The prosecution rejected six candidates to the jury, for no other reason than the fact they were African Americans.

- Suspiciously uncommon behavior of the jury

Despite having heard 74 witnesses (43 from the prosecution and 31 from the defense) in a period of nearly seven months, the Miami court jury deliberated for brief periods of time and gave many days notice of the exact date and time on which it would pronounce its verdict. It requested no clarification and expressed not a single doubt, despite the complexity inherent to its task: to decide on the basis of documentation dozens of thousands of pages long and on dozens of charges brought against five accused men.

- The politicized and irrationally disproportionate nature of the sentences

The judge did not accept any of the attenuating circumstances proven during the trail but she did accept the prosecution’s request to increase the seriousness of the charges. Gerardo was sentenced to two life imprisonments, plus 15 years; Ramón was sentenced to one life imprisonment, plus 18 years; Antonio was sentenced to one life imprisonment, plus 10 years; Fernardo was sentenced to 19 years in prison, and René to 15 years.

The Cuban Five are political prisoners who are denied this condition and are promiscuously imprisoned in a regular penal institution among common criminals, in violation of article 8 of the UN’s Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.

- The Cuban Five were put in five separate prisons, in five different States, in the remotest places of the American territory.

Within the United States, the Cuban Five find themselves a great distance away from the offices of their respective lawyers, making any contact with them, as well as with relatives and friends, extremely difficult. Efforts are directed at hindering the preparation of the appeal by the Cuban Five and their legal representatives.

- The true problem: terrorists with impunity

During their trial, the Cuban Five demonstrated that the only information they had sought in the United States was that relating to the monitoring of the Cuban American terrorist José Basulto and the organization that he created, named “Brothers to the Rescue”, and to the actions of other renowned terrorists of Cuban origin who carry out actions against Cuba from the United States with complete impunity, such as Orlando Bosch, responsible for blowing up a Cuban commercial plane in mid flight, where 73 people, including an entire junior fencing team, perished. Another terrorist whose actions against the Cuban people were monitored by the Cuban Five is Luis Posada Carriles, who is currently being tried in Panama, along with 3 other terrorists who are also of Cuban origin, for plotting to assassinate Cuba’s Head of State Fidel Castro; the plan was to be carried out by placing dozens of kilograms of C-4 explosives in the auditorium of the University of Panama that were to be detonated at the time the Cuban leader met with thousands of Panamanian students and teachers. Working with money supplied by the Cuban American National Foundation based in Miami, Posada Carriles orchestrated the terrorist bombing of Cuban hotels in 1997 which resulted in the death of an Italian tourist and the wounding of several other people.

- Judge Joan Lenard carried out several violations that contributed to depriving the defendants of their most basic rights and hindering the work of the defense.

Miami’s Federal Court Judge Joan Lenard begun by turning down the defense attorneys’ request to have access to the documentation that had been classified, which contained almost all of the alleged evidence used to accuse and convict the Cuban Five; she proceeded to turn down another motion presented by Mr. Weinglass, Antonio Guerrero’s defense attorney, which was backed by the remaining defense attorneys, calling for a re-trial in a place other than Miami.

For this motion, the defense presented new evidence taken from the Ramírez vs. Ashcroft case of 2002, which involved a fraudulent and ill-intentioned governmental motion. In the Ramírez vs. Ashcroft case, the prosecution ended up as the accused, and, on presenting itself for trial, the government claimed that, in Miami, no fair and unbiased trial was possible, as the crime was related to Cuba. How should we interpret that double standard? We are witnessing a case of corruption, the premeditated misconduct of a judicial authority.

In addition to this, the judge did not hesitate to sentence Gerardo in connection with the gravest charge - conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree -, a crime even the prosecution recognized it had not been able to prove .

- Regrettable and unusual reaction of Atlanta’s Court to the Report on the Five Cuban Prisoners in the United States (June of 2003).

The turning down – by the Court of Appeals for Atlanta’s Eleventh Circuit – of the report presented by jurist Erick Luna, renowned professor at the University of Utah, on behalf of the Cuban Society of Penal Sciences (an instrument commonly referred to as the “Friends of the Court report”), is something which almost never occurs within the US justice system, as said reports have the sole aim of giving the court a more panoramic view of the cases it tries.

The report offers abundant information on terrorist actions perpetrated against the Cuban people and other particularly interesting facts that would have permitted the defense to argue the principle of legitimate self-defense, the principle that governed the actions of the Cuban Five, which is recognized by the US justice system.

- A new trial: indispensable to right the injustice

The oral hearing for the process of appeal for the ruling handed down against the Cuban Five is scheduled for March 10, 2004. An oral hearing for an appeal is a common element of civil and penal proceedings in the United States, in which the defense exposes the reasons behind their request that the case be reconsidered, while the prosecution offers arguments to maintain the ruling.

The jury is to be made up of three judges, to be selected from the eleven that make the Supreme Court of Atlanta or from other courts in the district, whose names shall not be made public until February 24, 2004.

- Collaborative silence of the American media on the unjust trial

The case of the Cuban Five has all of the features of a news story of nationwide interest. Former generals and admirals testified, 72 witnesses participated, diplomatic notes and White House Memorandums were issued, and even an adviser for former President Clinton testified. Additionally, it was the longest trial held in the United States that year and, at the same time, the only trial that involved issues of American foreign policy. Despite all this, in obvious compliance with US government instructions, the unjust and illegal trial brought against the Cuban Five has not received even a minimum of attention from the numerous media in the United States, with the exception of those controlled by the Cuban American terrorist mob, which, of course, promoted the vengeful witch-hunt of the Cuban five anti-terrorist fighters.

- Support of the US legal community and international solidarity

Some of the most prestigious attorney and jurist associations in the United States and worldwide have added their voice to the struggle for the release of the Cuban Five. The National Jury Project, made up of renowned experts from the US jury system, has presented a plea to the trial court calling for a new hearing. In addition to this, the National Lawyer’s Guild, representing nearly 5 000 lawyers in the United States, has also presented a formal request to the court, calling for a re-trial in an unbiased setting. This request was backed by the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, a consultative body for the UN’s Economic and Social Council, with members from 90 different countries.

There are already 224 solidarity committees working on behalf of the Cuban five young anti-terrorist fighters unjustly imprisoned in the United States, in 79 different countries of the world. More fraternal voices are heard around the world and in the United States each day, part of an effort to right the injustice and have the Cuban Five return to their country and families.

The Cuban people reiterate their call for justice for and solidarity with these five defenders of their right to life, to free determination, to the highest levels of wellbeing and development, which have been violated and continue to be threatened by the actions of a group of Cuban American terrorists that act at the instance of or enjoying the impunity bequeathed them by the Government of the United States.