The
June 8 conviction of a small group of Cuban spies in south Florida holds ominous
news on the US-Cuba front. The South Florida US Attorney Guy Lewis hinted that
he might indict Fidel Castro by stating that the conviction of spymaster Gerardo
Hernández on charges of collaborating with the murder of four members of
Brothers to the Rescue proved "beyond any doubt there was a conspiracy to commit
murder that had been approved of and ordered by the highest levels of the Cuban
government.”
As
has become customary in the Miami area, the US Attorney often follows the
bidding of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), the stronghold of the
anti-Castro lobby. CANF President Francisco Hernandez elaborated on the US
Attorney’s remark. "The evidence presented at this trial makes it clear that
responsibility for the premeditated murder of four young men in the Brothers to
the Rescue shoot down does not stop with the conviction of Gerardo Hernandez.
The next step," said Hernandez, "is to indict those further up the chain of
command who initiated this crime, including Fidel and Raul Castro. We call upon
the Attorney General to take the necessary steps to bring all the guilty parties
to justice."
The
contradiction in CANF’s position lies in its own links to violence and
specifically assassination attempts against Castro. Under George Bush I, CANF
successfully backed the return to the United States from Venezuela of Orlando
Bosch, a kind of Timothy McVeigh of the right wing exile community. Bosch
boasted of his role in the October 1976 sabotage of a Cuban commercial airliner
over Barbados. 73 people died. Luis Posada Carriles, another long time terrorist
also liunked to the Barbados plane job told the New York Times that in 1997 CANF
had financed his campaign to bomb tourist sites in Cuba. One of his bombs killed
an Italian tourist. In November 2000, Panamanian police arrested Posada and
three other CANF-linked exiles when they found explosives in their rented car —
with their fingerprints on the dangerous material. The following year three CANF
leaders had bought sniper rifles and had consorted with other exiles to shoot
Castro on an island near Venezuela where the Cu! ! ban leader was to attend a
Latin American summit meeting. Indeed, Cuban intelligence sent spies to the
Miami area precisely to infiltrate violence-prone anti-Castro groupings who had
attempted to assassinate the Cuban leader and commit other violent acts to
disrupt Cuba’s economy. The prosecutor even admitted that the agents never
obtained classified information, but the defense argued that the point is that
they were never instructed to get U.S. secrets. The court-appointed attorneys
for the Cuban agents argued that in light of decades of terrorist actions
carried out against Cuba from US soil and the FBI’s less than enthusiastic
persecution of the anti-Castro terrorists, Havana had sent in the spies to
infiltrate extremist exile groups out of self defense, to stop future violent
actions in Cuba.
The
defense chose a 12-member non-Cuban jury with no close Cuban relatives or
friends to remove social pressure from the verdict in the largest Cuban
community off the communist island. But the intimidation exercised in that area
by a group of violent Cuban exiles does not exactly make for a fair trial
climate. South Florida juries have become notorious for their consistency in
deciding against the Castro government.
After
six months of trial, the jury deliberated for four days before declaring the
five Cuban agents guilty of violating US espionage laws and Hernandez of
collaborating in the February 24, 1996 shoot down by Cuban MIGs of two civilian
planes flown by Brothers to the Rescue, an extreme anti-Castro group. The two
pilots and two passengers all died. Cuba argued that the MIGs fired over Cuban
airspace after Cuba’s air control had ordered the pilots not to enter its air
space. Washington countered that the planes were in international air space when
the missiles hit their targets. At the trial, the spies’ lawyers presented
testimony to show that the Cuban government had warned US authorities over a
period of almost two years during which the Brothers had continually over-flown
Cuba, including missions when they dropped leaflets.
In
January 1996, Cuba told the State Department that future over-flights would
result in dire consequences. Indeed, US officials had taken steps — but not
sufficient ones — to stop the Brothers from flying future missions. As to the
issue of where the shoot downs occurred, a former air force colonel working with
the National Security Agency in 1996 testified that contrary to what the White
House had declared, the NSA had tracked the Brothers planes and the MIGSs and
found them to "well within Cuban air space." The Cuban spies admitted they had
infiltrated the Brothers and that the spymaster had warned the infiltrator not
to fly in the period when the fatal shoot down occurred. The prosecution argued
that such advise meant aiding and abetting a cold blooded murder. The defense
final argument included the fact that high US officials knew about the impending
flights several days before the fatal incident and took no measures to stop it.
US officials had even told people about the flights. To show the violent nature
of the Brothers to the Rescue, the defense also called Jose Basulto, head of
Brother to the Rescue. Basulto testified that he was a pacifist,a follower of
Ghandi and Martin Luther King — except when it came to actions against Cuba,
where violence was absolutely necessary. Other exiles testified as to their
absolute commitment to violence as a means to destroy Castro. The defense argued
that such testimony showed that the Cuban government had every reason to fear
extremist groups in South Florida, since the FBI did done little to stop the
terrorists from launching their hits against the island, Cuba’s decision to
infiltrate violence-prone groups derived from the island’s security needs, not
from a desire to commit espionage. Few feigned surprise when the south Florida
found all five defendants guilty of operating as foreign agents without
notifying the U.S. government and conspiring to do so. Three were convicted of
espionage conspiracy for efforts to penetrate U.S. military bases even though
Gerardo Hernandez, the leader of the spy group, faces life sentences on the
conspiracy counts. Ramon Labanino and Antonio Guerrero, who supposedly studied
U.S. military bases, also face life sentences on espionage conspiracy. Fernando
Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez face up to 10 years in prison on charges of failing
to register as foreign agents and conspiracy. Five others indicted as ring
members pleaded guilty in exchange for their cooperation and reduced sentences.
Four accused spies fled to Cuba. Thanks to the guilty verdict on the murder
count, the right wing exiles believe they have a new legal basis with which to
push the Justice Department to charge Fidel with murder in the case of the shot
down airplanes.
Having failed to assassinate Fidel or destroy Cuba’s economy, and after last
year’s humiliating loss when Attorney General Janet Reno sent Elian Gonzalez
home to his father in Cuba, the Foundation — without abandoning its beloved
violence — has turned its tactical guns to prosecuting Fidel.
For
Castro, who has observed ten US presidents try to get rid of him, the new legal
challenge might bring forth an interesting legal response — in light of the
hundreds of assassination attempts initiated against him by agents of the US
government or by individuals operating on US territory. Someone might remind the
righteous members of CANF of the old throwing bricks while living in glass
houses proverb.