Nobel Prize Winners Urge U.S. Supreme Court To Review Convictions of the "Cuban Five"

[Better Believe It]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 6, 2009
Center for Constitutional Rights


Outpouring of Support Worldwide Urging the U.S. Supreme Court to Review the Convictions of the “Cuban Five”

CONTACT: [e-mail]

In a previously unheard-of twelve separate briefs, an array of supporters worldwide –including ten Nobel Prize winners who have championed human rights (including East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta and Irish peacemaker Máiread Corrigan Maguire); the Mexican Senate; and Mary Robinson, the former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and former President of Ireland – today filed amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) briefs imploring the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Miami convictions of five Cuban government agents, the so-called “Cuban Five.” Those participants in the briefs were joined by hundreds of parliamentarians from the European Parliament and other parliaments around the world, including two former Presidents and three current Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament, as well as numerous U.S. and foreign bar associations and human rights organizations.

This is the largest number of amicus briefs ever to have urged the Supreme Court to review a criminal conviction. This extraordinary support for the Cuban Five’s case arises from widespread concern in the United States and around the world that their trial was conducted in an atmosphere tainted by prejudice against agents of the Cuban government and fear of retaliation, which amici say prevented the jury from fairly evaluating the charges against the Five. Among others, the United Nations Human Rights Commission has condemned the Miami trial of the Cuban agents, marking the first and only time in history that that body has condemned a U.S. judicial proceeding. Citing a “climate of bias and prejudice” in Miami, the Commission’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions concluded that the “trial did not take place in the climate of objectivity and impartiality that is required to conform to the standards of a fair trial.”

The amicus briefs filed today ask the Supreme Court to review the fairness of trying the Cuban agents to a Miami jury.

“The trial and conviction of the Cuban 5 is a national embarrassment,” explained Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represented the Nobelists in filing their amicus brief. “Our clients, ten Nobel Prize winners, acclaimed for their efforts to advance human rights, believe the trial was an international embarrassment as well. This was a trial that should have never occurred in Miami. There was no way a jury from that Miami, with its history of violence and intimidation against supporters of the Cuban government, could have reached a verdict free from retaliation by the anti-Castro community.”

Several of the amicus briefs filed by U.S. organizations also ask the Supreme Court to review the prosecution’s striking of African-Americans from the jury. The prosecutor used seven of its eleven “peremptory challenges” (where no explanation need be given to strike a juror) to strike prospective black jurors. The Court of Appeals ruled that no inquiry into the prosecutor’s motives was required because three other black jurors, a minority on the twelve-person jury, were seated. Amici maintain that this holding allows prosecutors to mask their manipulation of the racial make-up of a jury.

The U.S. government’s brief in opposition is presently due April 6. The Court is likely to
decide whether to grant review before its summer recess in June. The amicus brief is attached below.

Additional background on the case:

The United States indicted the five Cubans in Miami in 1998. The indictment focused on the charge that they were unregistered Cuban agents and had infiltrated various anti-Castro organizations in South Florida.

One of the Five, Gerardo Hernandez, was also charged with conspiracy to commit murder for providing information to Havana on flights in which the anti-Castro group Brothers to the Rescue (“BTTR”) would routinely invade Cuban airspace. On February 24, 1996, two BTTR planes were destroyed after both Cuban and American officials had repeatedly warned the Miami-based group to cease its illegal incursions into Cuban territory. Cuba maintains that it shot the planes down in its territory; the U.S. has maintained that the shootdown occurred a few miles into international airspace, after the planes entered and exited Cuban airspace.

The Cuban Five asked the trial judge to move the trial out of Miami to a new venue some thirty miles away, which is home to a massive Cuban-American exile community that, beyond its ordinary hostility towards the Castro regime, had been whipped into a frenzy of anti-Castro sentiment by the Elian Gonzalez debacle that took place just as the Cuban Five’s trial got underway. Judge Lenard rejected that request, and a Miami jury convicted Hernandez and the others of all charges. Judge Lenard imposed the maximum possible sentences on the Five, including life imprisonment for Hernandez.

On appeal, a three-judge panel of the federal Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed the convictions and ordered a new trial because, the court held, a “perfect storm” of community prejudice and pre-trial publicity, exacerbated by the federal prosecutor’s inflammatory statements to the jury, deprived Hernandez and the other Cubans of a fair trial. The entire Court of Appeals, however, vacated the panel’s decision, finding no error in the government trying the case to a Miami jury. It returned the case to a panel to evaluate the remaining issues in the appeal.

In another key ruling, two of the three judges on the panel refused to reverse the Miami jury’s conviction of Hernandez. Judge Kravitch dissented, finding a complete absence of any evidence that Hernandez knew there would be a shootdown, let alone an unlawful shootdown in international airspace.

Attached Files
09.03.06_Cuban5_Amicus.pdf
The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.

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[Mika]

1. Thanks for posting this.

:hi:

[Better Believe It]

2. Your welcome

So five Cubans are serving time in prison because they were fighting against domestic right-wing Cuban terrorists in Florida!

[Peace Patriot]

3. I've been trying to find out if there is a connection between the CIA "suitcase full of money" caper

out of Miami, which Asst. U.S. Attorney Thomas Mulvihill turned into an absurd, Bushwhackian case against several mob-connected Venezuelan businessmen on really thin charges of "failing to register" with the Bushwhack A.G. "as agents of a foreign government" (Venezuela).

A guy named Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson (Miami hotel owner, fancy apartment, two Jaguars in the driveway) got caught by airport customs in Argentina with a suitcase packed with $800,000 in U.S. currency. Guido had gotten himself invited as a guest on a private jet carrying Venezuelan national oil co. executives to Buenos Aires. The private jet, chartered out of Argentina, has known CIA drug trafficking connections.

After he was caught with the money, Guido (a dual U.S./Venez citizen) somehow talked his way back to Miami, where he became state's witness for Mulvihill, who then filed charges against the mob-connected businessmen, whom he claimed had had conversations with Guido in Miami urging Guido not to disclose who the money was for. Mulvihill claimed it was intended from Hugo Chavez to Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, for her campaign for president. Both are leftist politicians hated by the Bush Junta. Mulvihill thus charged these other men as unregistered "agents of a foreign government," although there was no evidence that they were (except Guido's word)--a real stretch of a charge. They were basically convicted of free speech. Two pled guilty to get lesser sentences. One maintained his innocence, but was convicted in a Miami court--Miami of course being a mob-run city where Hugo Chavez is hated as much as Fidel Castro is.

The Mulivill indictments occurred in Dec '08. Six years earlier, just before the 2002 Bushwhack-CIA coup/assassination attempt against Chavez, Guido told a friend, "Chavez won't last. He'll fall soon. We're going to topple him."

http://www.incakolanews.blogspot.com/2008/09/miami-suitcase-trial-and-will.html
http://www.hollow-hill.com/sabina/2008/01/remember_that_argentine_briefc.html

Inca Kola News reports that

"* Antonini is not some sort of hired bagman for the Chávez government, but in fact a multimillionaire hotel owner in Miami with a stable of very expensive cars to his name.

* Antonini is close friends with Carlos Andres Perez (aka CAP) the ex-Venezuelan president who hates Chávez and famously said he wants him to 'die like a dog'.

* Antonini hates Chávez as well, calls him "a disgrace" and predicted the coup d'etat in 2002 by saying just weeks before it took place that "Chávez won't last. He's going to fall soon. We're going to bring him down."

* And when he said 'We', he obviously meant it. This because when the other person put forward counter-arguments about Venezuelan army loyalty etc, Antonini Wilson said "Remember what I say. We're taking Chávez down. He's going to finish in jail."

So, this is the sort of character that the Bushwhack U.S. attorney and CIA were using to defame Chavez and Fernandez--an unreliable Chavez-hater--a shady self-seeker, reminiscent of Ahmed Chalibi (the WMDs in Iraq liar, knicknamed "Curveball").

My theory of the case is that Mulvihill is one of these Karl Rove/Bushwhack U.S. attorneys, answering to His Master's Voice in taking this ridiculous case to court, and grand-standing in headlines in the Miami Herald about how corrupt the leftists in South America are. I think Guido is a Bushwhack-CIA asset, and the whole thing was a set-up. As the V-P of Venezuela later commented, "If we had wanted to give Fernandez money, we would have taken it to Argentina in President Chavez's plane, three days later, with diplomatic immunity." Chavez visited Argentina three days after Guido was 'caught' with the money. (I think Guido intended to get caught.)

There are many odd things about this case--that the jet Guido got a seat on, as a guest (another thing he talked his way into), was a CIA drug plane; that Chavez would have anything to do with the fascist Miami mob (--not likely to hire someone like Guido); that there was no connection established between Guido, the other mob-connected businessmen and Chavez; and that it is not against the law in Argentina to accept foreign money for a political campaign--so the original action on which the whole thing was based wasn't even a crime (even if it really was money intended for Fernandez, which I think it just a bald-faced, Bushwhack lie).

The case has some similarities to the Cuban Five case, in that it involved the charge of being unregistered foreign agents, prejudiced juries and false prosecutions, by malevolent Bushwhack criminals (Bush, his A.G., and his bent U.S. attorneys)--people who not only tortured thousands of prisoners, slaughtered a million innocent people to get their oil and looted and destroyed the U.S. economy, but who also are harboring the mass murderer who bombed the Cubana passenger airliner, some years ago, and who have funded and organized coup and assassination plots against the leftist democratic governments of Venezuela and Bolivia, with additional plots against the leftist democratic governments of Ecuador and Argentina, and have been using USIAD, DEA and "war on drugs", and other budgets and personnel to support rightwing minority and violent fascist groups all over Latin America.

Both cases--this one, and the Cuban Five case--involve defaming leftist governments. In the Cuban Five case, they prosecuted the Cuban agents who were trying to prevent attacks on their country, like the Cubana airliner bombing. In the Guido case, they were using the anti-leftist Miami mafia--which I have no doubt have been involved in plots to harm leftist leaders and countries--to try to sully leaders who are champions of the poor.

The U.S. attorneys (those whom I have been able to identify as associated with these cases) are not the same, and I don't have detailed enough knowledge of either case to know if there are any common players, but both cases smell to high heaven, both were in Miami, and both involved harm to leftist countries. There could be a common "commander" behind them--in the CIA, for instance--or Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld, or other top Bushites. The Cuban Five case started under Clinton, so that points to the CIA. (The further twist to the Cuban Five case, that a 3-judge panel of the 11th Circuit reversed all the convictions, and then the full panel of the 11th Circuit then reversed their own fellow judges, is very smelly to me, and may point to Bushwhack interference with that appellate court.)

------

Here is a good basic information article about the "suitcase" caper, including its political aspects:

"Suitcase Scandal" is Another U.S. Foreign Policy Blunder
January 11th 2008, by Mark Weisbrot - AlterNet

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/3053

[starroute]

5. William Pryor and Karl Rove

No need to wonder about "Bushwhack interference." The lead judge was William Pryor (see my post below) -- who's been tight with Karl Rove since 1994, when he worked as a young attorney on behalf of a Rove client in a nasty Alabama recount battle that was ended by a questionable appeals court decision.

Pryor then became Alabama's attorney general and initiated the corruption investigations of Don Siegelman which eventually led to his conviction. It was also Pryor who shut down the possibility of a recount in the possibly-stolen 2002 Alabama election where Siegelman lost to Bob Riley. Pryor was then recess-appointed by Bush to the federal judgeship, since Congress was reluctant to confirm him.

Pryor is as dirty as they get, and I'm starting to believe that *any* politically-sensitive decision involving him is automatically suspect.

[Peace Patriot]

6. Ah! Thanks for the info! I have a pretty good smeller, no? nt

[starroute]

7. You do -- though it doesn't take much of a nose to pick up the Bush stink

It hangs around these cases like the smell of something three days dead.

We've all been preoccupied with the Bush-appointed US Attorneys, but I'm starting to wonder whether a number of the Bush judges are not merely conservative but corrupt as well.

[starroute]

4. It was that stinking Bush recess appointee William Pryor!

http://www.iacenter.org/cuba/cuban5_061408/

Jun 11, 2008

A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdicts of guilt against each of the five Cuban heroes on June 4. This was the second round of appeals for the Five, all of whom have been in prison for almost a decade for trying to prevent U.S.-backed terrorist organizations in Miami from engaging in violent attacks on Cuba.

In a 99-page opinion, the court held in its majority decision, written by Judge William Pryor, that the 1998 trial of the Five in Miami was lawful and fair, despite the lack of evidence in the prosecution’s case, the numerous flawed procedural and evidentiary rulings by the trial judge, and the shocking examples of gross prosecutorial misconduct referenced in the panel’s decision. . . .

Judge Pryor—who was appointed by the current Bush administration and failed to win Senate confirmation at first because of his reputation as a right-wing zealot with little regard for the Constitution—was the only judge on the panel who did not hear the Five’s original appeal. In his opinion, Pryor noted several examples of egregious prosecutorial misconduct in the presence of the jury during the original trial. For example, Pryor admitted that the prosecutor stated in his closing argument that the Five were “bent on destroying the United States” and that they were trying to execute what the prosecutor called “the final solution” against the anti-Cuba forces in Miami. Pryor determined that these and several other statements could have had only “minor” effect on the jury and that there was no cause for a new trial.