Cinco Héroes Cubanos – ¡Exigimos su Libertad!

El 29 de agosto de 2007 el caso de los Cinco estuvo por 12 minutos en el Programa de información de la cadena CNN “The Situation Room”, que conduce el periodista Wolf Blitzer. Durante el programa el corresponsal de CNN en la Habana habló sobre la repurcusión del caso en Cuba y Blitzer entrevistó al abogado Leonard Weinglass, quien explicó que la razón por la que los Cinco estaban en estados unidos era monitorear las actividades de los grupos terroristas anticubanos en la Florida.

A continuación la transcripción del programa en inglés.

CNN TRANSCRIPTS

THE SITUATION ROOM

Aired August 29, 2007 – 19:00 ET

RUSH TRANSCRIPT.

SEGMENT ON THE CUBAN FIVE

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR

I’m Wolf Blitzer. You’re in THE SITUATION ROOM.

BLITZER: In our look around the world, right now depending on who’s talking, there are either brave patriots who wanted to defend their country against terrorism or they’re shady figures determined to inflict damage on the United States, five Cuban men in prison here in the United States, some serving life sentences. Some people are calling them the “Cuban Five”. Their country holds them up as icons.

CNN’s Morgan Neill explains from Havana — Morgan.

MORGAN NEILL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, federal appeals judges in Atlanta are going over spy cases barely made the back pages of the paper. Here in Cuba the smallest details of the case are front-page news.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NEILL (voice-over): In Cuba they’re known on a first-name basis, Gerardo, Ramon, Antonio, Fernando, and Rene.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

NEILL: They’re called the Cinco Heros (ph), the five heroes, and they’re the center of a long running government-sponsored campaign.

(SOUNDS)

NEILL: Their case doesn’t provoke the passions of the Elian Gonzalez saga the Cuban boy at the center of an emotional cross-border custody battle in 2000, but even school kids on the island know the case of the Cinco inside and out.

(MUSIC)

NEILL: Eight years ago the five men were arrested in Miami on spying charges. All were convicted of acting as unregistered foreign agents and conspiracy to commit crimes against the United States. Three were also found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

NEILL: Cuba says the men weren’t spying on the U.S. government, but on what Cuba calls terrorist organizations run by exiles out of Miami.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

NEILL: The president of Cuba’s national assembly says they’re heroes, in his words, whose only fault was to fight against terrorism. Cuba said it was impossible for them to get a fair trial in Miami, three of the five received life sentences, the other two, 15 and 19 years, now they await a new ruling on whether the evidence in their case supports their convictions.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

NEILL: We met with Olga Salanueva whose husband Rene Gonzalez is serving a 15-year sentence. She was deported from the United States two years after his arrest and has been denied a visa ever since.

OLGA SALANUEVA, WIFE OF CUBAN INMATE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

NEILL: The last time I saw Rene was the day I was detained, she says, August 16, 2000. It’s been seven years since I saw him.

(MUSIC)

NEILL: When we arrived, Olga is at a reunion of her husband’s flight school classmates.

(SOUNDS)

NEILL: Then her phone rings. It’s her husband calling from prison.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

NEILL: She passes the phone so we can talk.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

NEILL: From the start it was a political show, Rene tells me. We were simply defending our country. To this point, the courts have not agreed.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NEILL: Now these men have been behind bars for some nine years, but they’re definitely not forgotten here in Cuba. In fact they’re so well known, billboards here read simply, they will return and everyone knows who “they” are — Wolf.

BLITZER: Morgan Neill our reporter in Havana with some background on this story. Joining us now two guests, Leonard Weinglass is an attorney representing the so-called “Cuban Five” and Orlando Gutierrez is co-founder of the Cuban democratic director and he’s joining us from Miami. Mr. Weinglass, these men were all convicting of conspiracy to commit espionage. Why should the U.S. government go easy on them?

LEONARD WEINGLASS, ATTORNEY FOR “THE CUBANS”: Because they never were able to prove that there was a conspiracy to commit espionage. This was one of the longest trials in the United States at the time it occurred and the evidence fell short. These were men who came here to monitor the activities of groups in southern Florida who were leading attacks against their country in Cuba.

BLITZER: If they were never approved they’re convicted, they’re all serving lengthy jail sentences. Why are they serving jail sentences if they weren’t convicted, if the evidence didn’t prove it, at least before those courts?

WEINGLASS: The first federal appeals court that heard their case in August of 2005 concluded they never received a fair trial. That decision was set aside, but now in 2007 we are arguing for the first time, six years after their conviction, that the evidence failed to prove a conspiracy to commit espionage.

Wolf this, is the first case in our history where not a single page of classified document was introduced into evidence. The government conceded they didn’t have it. Admirals testified. Generals testified for the defense, not for the prosecution. Even the presidential adviser, Ricardo Nuncio, the adviser to President Clinton testified on behalf of the defense. There has never been an espionage case like this one.

BLITZER: All right. Let’s get the other side of the story from Orlando Gutierrez. Why do you think Mr. Weinglass is wrong?

ORLANDO GUTIERREZ, CUBAN DEMOCRATIC DIRECTOR: Mr. Weinglass is wrong because these men were not just convicted of espionage. They were also convicted of participating in the murder of U.S. citizens who were shot down of an unarmed aircraft over international wars. The purpose of the network was to infiltrate the United States. They infiltrated U.S. military insulations in Boca Chica and their purpose was to supply information on U.S. military installations to provide information on U.S. national security and also to spy upon and even attack in the case of the murdered members of the rescue to kill U.S. citizens who were somehow involved the promotion of human rights in Cuba. The fact is these men came to the U.S. at the behest of the longest dictatorship in Latin America to prevent non-violent, peaceful democratic change from taking place in Cuba.

BLITZER: All right. Mr. Weinglass, those are serious charges. Do you want to respond?

WEINGLASS: The attempt to change the government of Cuba could hardly be called non-violent. Over 3,000 people have died in 40 years. Tens of millions of dollars in damage was done. An Italian tourist was killed in a lobby and as for the charge of murder, that also is unprecedented. After 25 incursions over Cuban airspace by a group called Brothers to the Rescue, Cuba finally did what any country would do. It defended its airspace and it shot down two of the aircraft. Unfortunately, killing four people and that led to a charge against one, not the five, but against one of the conspiracy to commit murder. That charge the government conceded at the end of trial it failed to prove.

BLITZER: Mr. Gutierrez?
/>GUTIERREZ: The fact is that the movement for democracy in Cuba inside and outside the island is imminently nonviolent. Organizations like brothers to the rescue, publicly embraced nonviolent struggle based upon the principles of Gandhi and Martin Luther King and the fact is that the government of Cuba has incarcerated thousands of Cubans over 48 years simply for their beliefs and has executed thousands of Cubans, more than 10,000 Cubans have been executed by this regime which is a totalitarian state which controls all of the media and an extensive secret police network that spies on Cubans on a daily basis.

The fact is that these men came to the U.S. to penetrate the community, everybody from the chamber of commerce to humanitarians like Brothers to the Rescue and the Cuban democratic directorate with the purpose of perpetuating Castro’s hold on power. During that time the dissident movement in Cuba, in spite of harassment and persecution brought a coalition to bring about peaceful change in Cuba. Castro needed to crush that movement and to top stop the exile movement from supporting them.

BLITZER: Mr. Weinglass, the argument is made that these five individuals were officers, were agents, represents of the Cuban intelligence community. They came to the United States in effect, under false pretenses. The U.S. government found out about them one way or another and arrested them and now they’re serving a jail sentences.

The argument is made if the CIA set five individuals under false pretenses to Cuba and were caught, engaged in espionage or conspiracy to commit espionage. The Cuban government or any other government would arrest them as well. What’s wrong, if anything, you think with that argument?

WEINGLASS: There were five Cuban men who came to the United States after groups from southern Florida had attacked Cuba. The airport was bombed. Hotels were bombed. An Italian tourist was killed. Busses were bombed. The Cuban government protested each and every one of those attacks. It was only when the United States failed to respond that five unarmed men came here without explosive, without weaponry, harmed no one, to monitor the activities of the groups that were attacking their country. That is recognized under international law as a legitimate response and even under American law, under the doctrine of necessity, having exhausted all efforts to peacefully resolve what was going on in Cuba, the Cuban government acted to protect its own people.

BLITZER: Let me get back to the question. If the Cuban government picked up five CIA officers who were clandestinely operating for whatever purpose in Cuba, you would expect them to arrest them as well, wouldn’t you?

WEINGLASS: If there are CIA officers operating in over 80 countries around the world. They’re trying to stop terrorist attacks against American targets. The international community has no complaint with that. But these were groups from southern Florida that were involved in terrorism. That was found in footnotes in the 93- page opinion of the federal appeals court. Three federal judges found that to be true and called these groups terrorists. So it’s a far different scenario than the one that you’re painting.

BLITZER: All right. Let me let Mr. Gutierrez respond to that. And the argument is made that these Cubans came to protect Cuba by trying to infiltrate, trying to observe what was happening in the exile, elements of the exile community in south Florida, Mr. Gutierrez. Similar to what CIA officer dos if they go to Pakistan, for example, or Afghanistan and are clandestinely looking for terrorists, Osama Bin Laden or others. That’s the argument that the Cuban government has made. Mr. Weinglass has made that argument. I wonder if you want to respond to that argument.

GUTIERREZ: Well, first of all, CIA officers are defending a democracy. These men are defending a 48-year-old dictatorship which has killed and continues to kill people for their beliefs.

Number two, these men did not infiltrate terrorist groups. They infiltrated public human rights organizations based in Florida who were supporting dissidents in Cuba. Let’s repeat that. These men were infiltrating organizations that were legitimate, public and engaged in human rights work and their purpose as found in the papers that were declassified during the trial, based on the communications that were intercepted by the FBI was that the purpose of these men was to infiltrate these groups that were linked to nonviolence struggle inside Cuba. And not only that, as part of their work in the United States, these men were infiltrating U.S. military installations. They were supposed to spy on members of the U.S. Congress. They were instructed by their control agent in Havana to find drop points along the Florida coast so that arms and explosives could be brought into the United States from Cuba. These men were working against the security of the United States.

BLITZER: We’re out of time but let me just let you just respond very quickly, Mr. Weinglass to that point. In addition to spying on Cuban exile groups in Miami and the south Florida area were they also spying on U.S. military installations in the area?

WEINGLASS: The charges in this case accused Antonio Guerrero, my client, of being on a navy training base, Boca Chica in southern Florida. He was there for five years and sent back 395 reports which the FBI did have. Not a single one of those reports dealt with classified, secret information. And so that’s why we’re asking a federal appeals court to set this aside.

BLITZER: When do you think we’ll get that decision?

WEINGLASS: It should be probably by around the end of the year, but it’s very difficult to say.

BLITZER: All right. Mr. Weinglass, we have to leave it there. Leonard Weinglass representing these Cuban five and Orlando Gutierrez, with a very different perspective, the co-founder and the Cuban director. Let me thank both of you for coming in.

WEINGLASS: Thanks, Wolf