Cuba's "Miami Five" claim the US has jailed them for fighting terrorism

It would be almost impossible to travel in Cuba and be unaware of the "Five Heroes" or the "Miami Five." Their photos stare out from roadside billboards, stickers calling for their release adorn the dashboards of Havana taxis and their names are constantly evoked by the Cuban media. They are the current symbols of the half century of conflict between Cuba and the United States. The five, Fernando Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino and Rene Gonzalez were dispatched by the Cuban government in the early nineties. Their task was to infiltrate the anti-Castro Cuban exile groups in Miami, who were believed to be engaged in acts of sabotage against Cuba. They took on different jobs, some lowly, and joined the groups, passing themselves off as part of the disgruntled diaspora anxious to remove Castro. In 1998, they were discovered, arrested, accused of being unregistered agents of the Cuban government and charged with espionage, then convicted in 2001 and given sentences ranging from 15 years to life, which they are now serving in jails in five different states. The US authorities accused them of being spies and, in one case, of conspiring to murder members of the exile group Brothers to the Rescue, some of whose members had been in two planes shot down after illegally entering Cuba's airspace. The Cubans argued that they had not had any access to classified information and that their motive had been to prevent attacks on Cuba. One of their attorneys, Leonard Weinglass, the veteran US civil rights lawyer, said: "This is the first conspiracy to commit espionage trial in our history where not a single page of classified information was involved." In the continuing war of words between the US and Cuba, the five are cited as political prisoners in response to US claims of political prisoners in Cuba. Last year, a regional appeals court in Atlanta ruled that the men had not had a fair trial because the anti-Castro atmosphere in Miami made it impossible for the jury to reach an unbiased decision. That decision itself was appealed by the US federal authorities and not until there has been a decision on that will the men know if a retrial, probably outside Florida, will be granted. "Everyone knows about the trial of Michael Jackson but no one knows that eight years ago a man was condemned to two life sentences plus 15 years for fighting against terrorism," said Roberto Gonzalez, a lawyer and the brother of Rene Gonzalez, one of the five. "That is one of the main problems we are facing." Rene and Roberto were born in Chicago and the family moved back to Cuba after the revolution. Rene, a US citizen, studied aviation while Roberto studied law. Along with the other four, he agreed to go and try to penetrate Cuban exile groups that had been involved in sabotage or assassination plots against Cuba and Castro. "What they were doing was trying to stop terrorism, which the US says it is against," said Roberto. "They even passed on information to the FBI if they knew about plans for terrorism." He said that the US offered them a chance to remain there if they cooperated. "At the very beginning, they tried to buy them with money, with houses, with a new identity... They wanted to present Cuba as a menace to the US." Elizabeth, the wife of Ramon Labanino, said that the US's concentration on Cuba had meant that they had missed a real threat. "At the time that the FBI was trying to prosecute the five in Florida, the people who flew the planes into the twin towers on Sept. 11 were in flying schools there," she said. "They forgot to see what was really going on there at the time." She said that the decision to hold the trial in Miami meant that the verdict was a forgone conclusion. "Miami was the last place in the United States to have a fair trial for Cubans," she said. "The lawyers asked for a change of venue... It was a surprise when they reversed the decision. We believe that justice in the end will prevail but we don't know when." Meanwhile, the case of the Miami Five has taken on the same national significance in Cuba as did that of Elian Gonzalez, the boy shipwrecked off the Florida coast who became involved in a dispute between his Cuba-based father and the Miami-based relatives of his mother, who drowned during their attempt to reach the US. Elian is back in Cuba, but the fate of the five remains unclear.