From: "Political Prisoner News" <ppnews@freedomarchives.org>
Date: Sat, October 17, 2009
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban
adan
Antonio Guerrero Sentenced to 21 Years and 10 Months
Declaration of the US Movement in Solidarity with
the Cuban Five to the rest of the International
Movement for the Freedom of the Cuban Five
THE following organizations have issued this
declaration: The National Committee to Free the
Cuban Five; the International Committee for the
Freedom of the Cuban Five; and the organizations
of the Cuban Immigration in Miami that together
comprise the Alianza Martiana (Marti Alliance):
the Antonio Maceo Brigade, the Alianza Martiana
as an individual organization, the Alliance of
Workers of the Cuban Community (ATC), the José
Martí Association, and political parties of the
United States who are part of the Cuban Five solidarity movement.
With our declaration we reaffirm our unwavering
commitment to maintain and strengthen our efforts
to demand the immediate freedom of our five
brothers: Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino,
Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René
González, as they are innocent of the charges
that the U.S. government has convicted them of.
Today, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2009, in Miami's United
States Federal District Court for the Southern
District of Florida, a hearing was held to reduce
the sentence of one of our five brothers, Antonio
Guerrero. It is one of three re-sentencing
hearings ordered by the full panel of the 11th
Circuit Court of Appeals in September 2008. The
U.S. Federal District Court has not yet set the
date or dates of the other two re-sentencing
hearings of our brothers Ramón Labañino and Fernando González.
In September 2008 the 11th Circuit Court of
Appeals vacated the trial court's previous life
sentence imposed on Antonio Guerrero and Ramon
Labañino, and the 19-year sentence imposed on
Fernando González in December 2001. The Five were convicted in June 2001.
Today the Court imposed a prison sentence of 21
years and 10 months on Antonio Guerrero for his
unjust conviction of conspiracy to commit espionage.
Independently of the court process and the
decisions that are issued by the court, we
maintain our steadfast demand for the immediate freedom of the Cuban Five.
The judicial case prosecuted against our five
brothers has nothing to do with justice. This is,
and always has been, a political case.
Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in
1959, every administration of the U.S. government
has maintained a policy of permanent aggression
against the Cuban people. A fundamental part of
this policy of aggression has been the use of
violence against the Cuban people. For decades
the U.S. administrations have been directly or
indirectly involved -- through terrorist
organizations of the Cuban-American extreme right
wing in the United States -- in countless
terrorist attacks against the Cuban people,
causing the deaths of 3,478 Cuban men, women and
children, and injuring 2,099 Cubans. The peace,
security and well-being of the Cuban people have been tragically affected.
In the interest of defending its people -- as any
other responsible government would do -- the
government of Cuba assigned to the Five the task
of infiltrating the terrorist organizations of
the Cuban-American extreme right wing. Everyone
in this city knows full well that the terrorist
organizations have carried out campaigns of death
and terror against the Cuban people for decades.
Stopping terrorism was the mission of the Cuban Five.
Instead of arresting the terrorists and
prosecuting them for their crimes, the U.S.
government, a participant in these nefarious
campaigns of death and terror, arrested the Five
11 years ago this past September. Since then it
has kept them arbitrarily imprisoned.
It is for these reasons that today in Miami we
reaffirm and make known to our Five brothers, to
their families and all our sisters and brothers
in the U.S. and the international movement to
Free the Five, as well as the Cuban people, our
unalterable decision to continue and strengthen
our struggle for their immediate freedom.
Miami, October 13, 2009
The New York Times: Judge Reduces Sentence for One of Cuban Five
By Ian Urbina
10/14/2009
A federal judge in Miami approved a lighter
sentence Tuesday for one of five Cubans convicted
in 2001 of spying on anti-Castro Cuban exiles.
The case of the men, commonly known as the Cuban
Five, has strained relations between the United
States and Cuba for more than a decade.
An appeals court last year threw out sentences
for three of them, finding the punishment too
harsh because the government had never proved
that they had traded in "top secret" intelligence.
In the late 1990s, the men infiltrated
Cuban-American exile organizations that opposed
the Castro government, including some of the more
activist groups like Brothers to the Rescue,
which regularly made unauthorized flights over Cuba to drop leaflets.
In Cuba, the five are considered political
prisoners, and the Cuban government has lobbied
for their release, arguing that they were not
spying on the United States so much as trying to
ferret out right-wing anti-Castro terrorists determined to hurt Cuba.
On Tuesday, Judge Joan A. Lenard of Federal
District Court replaced the life sentence for one
of the men, Antonio Guerrero, with a sentence of
262 months, or almost 22 years, which means he
will be out of prison in about seven years,
counting time served since his 1998 arrest and
time off for good behavior. Prosecutors and Mr.
Guerrero's lawyers had asked for the sentence to be reduced to 240 months.
"It was odd," said Leonard Weinglass, Mr.
Guerrero's lawyer. "You have a man who was on a
military base but who didn't take a single
classified document and no one testified that he
injured U.S. national security, but the judge
still rejects the prosecutors' request to lighten the sentence."
Mr. Guerrero, a United States citizen, was
convicted of spying for Cuba while working at the
Naval Air Station in Key West.
In May 2005, the Working Group on Arbitrary
Detentions of the United Nations Commission on
Human Rights ruled that the men's trial fell
below international standards for due process and
that the United States should either retry or release them.
All five men were arrested in 1998 and convicted
of acting as unregistered foreign agents and
conspiracy to commit crimes against the United States.
A sentencing hearing for two of the others has been postponed.
Robert A. Pastor, a professor of international
relations at American University, said the case
still raised concerns. "Holding a trial for five
Cuban intelligence agents in Miami is about as
fair as a trial for an Israeli intelligence agent
in Tehran," said Dr. Pastor, who was President
Jimmy Carter's national security adviser for
Latin America. "You'd need a lot more than a good
lawyer to be taken seriously."
New Sentence for Cuban Antiterrorist Jailed in the USA
A US judge today resentenced Antonio Guerrero,
one of the five Cuban antiterrorist unjustly
incarcerated in the United States, to 21 years
plus 10 month in jail, two more years than what
was agreed by the defense and the prosecution
teams at the re-sentencing hearing.
Judge Joan Lenard didn't pay heed to the
suggestion by the government and attorneys about
a reduction to 20 years of the previous life
sentence plus 10 years given to Antonio Guerrero,
Alicia Jrapko, member of the International
Committee for the Freedom of the Five, told Prensa Latina news agency.
Jrapko, who attended this Tuesday the
re-sentencing hearing, held in Miami, explained
that the government acknowledged that the Cuban
Five case caused diverse reactions all over the
world, where many voices demand their release.
Guerrero's hearing precedes those of Fernando
Gonzalez and Ramón Labañino, which were postponed
after the judge issued an order in response to a request by the defense.
The three antiterrorists were scheduled for
re-sentencing after the 11th Circuit of
Atlanta's Court of Appeals overturned the
previous sentences for having considered them
wrong and resulting from a murky trial.
Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labañino and Fernando
Gonzalez, along Gerardo Hernandez and René
Gonzalez, have been serving sentences that range
from 15 years to double life term, for reporting
to their country on terrorist actions planned by
ultra-right and anti-Cuba groups based in the US
state of Florida. Those sentences were also
imposed by Judge Lenard in 2001. (ACN)
International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5
<http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1102769242089&s=130&e=0019cTqoj2nG-VOrHN-J8KoPd8PSwDBMJpdTkiQhzVsIjID83h0n3AVaJsk1gcRDtLG6dLn7XPHcaSLRNI4w4_I8DXVowfolg17dHTKverc5O2QMFXpKQ9w0Q==>www.thecuban5.org
International Committee for the Freedom of the
Cuban 5 | P.O. Box 22455 | Oakland | CA | 94609
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org Questions and comments may be sent to
claude@freedomarchives.org
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