Another of Five moved to medium security
Ramón Labañino, one of three members of the Cuban Five whose prison sentences were reduced last fall, has been moved from a maximum security prison in Kentucky to a medium security institution in Jesup, Georgia.
Ramón Labañino
Labañino, 46, had been serving a sentence of "life plus 18 years" following his 2001 conviction for espionage conspiracy. But last year the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the sentences for Labañino, Fernando Gonzales and Antonio Guerrero, ruling that their original punishments were too harsh.
Labañino's sentence was reduced to 30 years. That, coupled with his "exemplary" conduct during his 12 years in prison, apparently won him his transfer.
Guerrero, whose original sentence of life plus 10 year was dropped to 21 years and 10 months, was transferred to a medium security prison in Florence, CO, earlier this spring.
There is no word yet on whether Fernando Gonzalez, whose 19-year sentence was reduced by a year, will also be transferred.
Copyright 2010 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
Venezuela renews call for Posada extradition
On June 15, 2010—five years to the day after it first asked the United States government to extradite anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles to face charges in Venezuela in connection with the deadly bombing of a Cubana Airlines plane in 1976—Venezuela's National Assembly renewed its demand this week.
The Cuban-born Posada, who returned to the United States in 2005, is the alleged mastermind of both the Cubana Airlines bombing, which killed 73 people, and also a wave of bombings at Havana hotels in 1997 that killed an Italian-Canadian tourist.
The United States has refused to extradite Posada—claiming he would face torture in Venezuela.
Hugo Chavez
"The gringo government accuses us of anything and everything," Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, told his followers in a Twitter message this week, "but today marks five years since the extradition request of the grand terrorist Posada Carriles, to which they haven't even responded."
The Americans have charged Posada—but not for his involvement in either the airliner plot or the bombing campaign. Instead, he has been accused of the lesser—but still telling—crime of lying to authorities about his involvement in the Havana bombing campaign when he entered the U.S. in 2005. His trial is now set for January 2011.
Copyright 2010 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
Hernandez’s lawyers file habeas corpus petition
Gerardo Hernandez
In a last-ditch, no-more-cards-to-play legal effort, lawyers for convicted Cuban Five spy Gerardo Hernandez this week (June 14, 2010) filed what is called a collateral appeal—or writ of habeus corpus—in Miami Federal Court claiming it has new evidence the court should have aware of before letting a jury decide the fate of the Five.
The evidence, uncovered by the National Committee to Free The Five through freedom of information requests, shows that a number of Hispanic journalists who wrote inflammatory stories about the Five were actually in the pay of the U.S. government at the time.
That's not the only grounds Hernandez's lawyers cite—in their documents, they also argue that the government concealed important evidence and they question the adequacy of the Five's defence team—but the new evidence is the key to any faint hope the defence has that it will prevail.
Meanwhile Hernandez continues to be held in a US prison in California where he had not been allowed a visit from his wife for 12 years.
You can read the full text of an interview with Leonard Weinglass, the lawyer for Hernandez, here.
Copyright 2010 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
Posada trial date set
The trial of Luis Posada Carriles will begin Jan. 11, 2011. Following a much-delayed scheduling hearing in El Paso, Texas, yesterday (June 2), U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone made it clear she does not want any more delays in the case.
Luis Posada Carriles
Although Posada is alleged to have been responsible for blowing up a Cubana Airlines flight in 1976, killing 73 people, and masterminding a Havana hotel bombing campaign that killed a tourist in 1997, he isn't on trail for either of those crimes.
The charges he faces in El Paso, in fact, are relatively minor immigration violations but the facts alleged in the charges are still politically signifcant.
Prosecutors claim Posada committed immigration fraud and perjury when he entered the United States in 2005 by denying his role in the 1997 bombing campaign.
Copyright 2010 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
U.S. made more than $70,000 in secret payments to journalists
Five American journalists who wrote inflammatory articles about the Cuban Five during their detention and trials received more than $70,000 in secret payments from the U.S. government between November 1999 to December 31, 2001.
Details of the payments, which were uncovered as the result of a freedom of information request, were revealed during a Washington press conference on Tuesday (June 2).
Free the Five's Gloria La Riva
Gloria La Riva, coordinator of the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, said the payments may have been illegal under American law. The Smith-Mundt Act bans the government from “propagandizing U.S. citizens… What makes the secret payments so egregious,” she added, “is that they were made by the same government that was prosecuting the five Cubans.”
The five Cubans—members of La Red Avispa, a group of intelligence agents Cuba says it sent to Florida to infiltrate Cuban exile groups in order to prevent terrorist attacks against it—were arrested in 1998. Convicted in 2001, all are currently serving lengthy terms in American prisons.
During the press conference, the Free the Five Committee—along with the Partnership for Civil Justice, the National Lawyers Guild and the ANSWER Coalition—demanded that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder “take action immediately to free the Cuban Five” based on this new evidence of “government and prosecutorial misconduct.” The Partnership has also published an open letter on its website, calling on Holder to free the five jailed Cubans immediately.
The journalists who received the payments—Pablo Alfonso and Wilfredo Cancio Isla of El Nuevo Herald, Ariel Remos and Helen Ferre from Diario Las Américas, and Enrique Encinosa, a commentator with Radio Mambí WAQI—all wrote for U.S.-based Hispanic media, whose audience included much of the potential jury pool for the trial of the five Cuban spies.
La Riva described their reporting as “extremely prejudicial” and “highly inflammatory.” Among the stories cited at the press conference: unsubstantiated allegations that Cuba was “’lending or selling its intelligence services’ to Islamic terrorist groups” and suggestions Cuba had used LSD and other hallucinogens to make its intelligence agents “more aggressive and sure of himself.”
That latter story, in fact, appeared just as the unsequestered jury were set to begin their deliberations in June 2001.
The Free the Five Committee says it’s continuing to press the government to release the details of its contracts with the journalists and is also demanding release of additional information about other secret payments it believes may have been made to these and other journalists around the time of the September 1998 arrest of the Cuban Five.
Copyright 2010 Sting of the Wasp: The Cuban Five Connection
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About
This is the site for Sting of the Wasp, collected research and other materials for an in-progress narrative nonfiction book about the Cuban Five by Stephen Kimber.
The Cuban Five were members of "La Red Avispa"—the Wasp Network—spies Havana dispatched to Florida in the early 1990s to infiltrate militant anti-Castro exile groups that Cuba believed were plotting terrorist attacks on its soil. The Cuban Five were arrested, tried, convicted and are all now serving long prison terms in the United States.
In the United States, they are virtually unknown. In Cuba, they are heroes.
That’s the short version of the story. The long version is… well, more complicated... Stay tuned.
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