Cubans Jailed in U.S. as Spies Are Hailed at Home as Heroes

[Rose Siding]

HAVANA -- European tourists here send home postcards with stamps bearing the images of five faces, known simply as los muchachos (the young men) or los cinco (the five). The faces, usually surrounded by billowing Cuban flags, stare out, larger than life, from factory walls, apartment buildings, billboards.
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Since the Cuban Five were convicted, the reach of Havana's information-gathering machine -- described by a former CIA Cuba analyst, Brian Latell, as "among the four or five best anywhere in the world" -- has become even more apparent. In 2002, Ana Belen Montes, a senior analyst on Cuban affairs for the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, was convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for the Cubans; the year before, a high-ranking U.S. immigration official in Miami was convicted of disclosing classified information to Cuba. In January, a longtime professor at Florida International University and his wife, a mental health counselor at the college, pleaded not guilty to charges that they acted as spies for Castro.

But none of those cases has generated as much debate as that of the Cuban Five. There has been a groundswell of support for the five acknowledged agents among some American liberal groups and celebrities, including Alice Walker, author of "The Color Purple," actor Danny Glover and author Noam Chomsky. A San Francisco group maintains a Web site called "National Committee to Free the Cuban Five." The Detroit City Council even passed a resolution in March calling for their release, saying the agents were attempting to prevent terrorism against Cuba.

The calls for their release gained momentum last August when a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, overturned the convictions and ordered a new trial, because of a "perfect storm" of bias in the Cuban exile bastion of Miami. The decision is now being reviewed by the full court.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/02/AR2006060201780.html