[Ppnews] The Cuban Five: a Cold War Case in a Post-Cold War World

[Political Prisoner News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/

July 10-12, 2009


President Obama, It's Up to You to Rectify This Injustice

The Cuban Five: a Cold War Case in a Post-Cold War World

By JOSÉ PERTIERRA

The day the Court sentenced him to life 
imprisonment plus 10 years, in maximum security, 
Tony explained to Judge Lenard why Cuba sent him to the United States.

“Allow me to explain my reasons, your Honor, in 
the clearest and most concise way:  Cuba, my 
little country, has been attacked, assaulted, and 
slandered, decade after decade by a cruel 
,inhuman and absurd policy.  A real terrorist 
war.  . . .  .   Where have such unceasing 
ruthless acts been hatched and financed?  For the 
most part, in the United States of America.”

Tony Guerrero was part of a team of agents that 
Cuba sent to Miami, tasked with infiltrating the 
Florida-based terrorist groups responsible for 
the murder of over 3,400 Cubans over four 
decades.  The team did not seek to infiltrate 
U.S. government agencies, nor did it obtain any 
classified documents. Their purpose was to gather 
evidence, so that the FBI would arrest the terrorists.

In June of 1998, the FBI secretly met with Cuban 
government officials in La Habana.  Without 
revealing how they had obtained the evidence, 
Cuban law enforcement officials shared with the 
FBI 175 pages of documents related to 31 
terrorist attacks and plans that took place 
between 1990 and 1998, as well as the money trail 
(through New Jersey and Miami) that paid for those attacks.

Cuba also turned over audiotapes of 14 comprising 
conversations involving the mastermind of the 
campaign of terror, Luis Posada Carriles, as well 
as 13 video and audiotapes of Posada´s 
accomplices, which provided the details of their 
crimes.  Thanks to Tony and his team in Miami, 
Cuba was able to provide the FBI with the names, 
addresses, telephone numbers, even the license plate numbers of the terrorists.

The FBI thanked Cuba for the evidence and 
promised to investigate.  Investigate they did, 
but the result was unexpected.   Rather than 
arrest the terrorists, the FBI used the evidence 
that Cuba gave them to arrest the Five.  Why?

The Miami terrorists were trained in the United 
States and were an important part of the covert 
war on Cuba during the Cold War.  For fifty 
years, the United States government has coddled 
and protected, rather than jailed and prosecuted, them.

Miami is their city-of-choice: a hotbed of 
hostility against Cuba.  It’s no coincidence that 
terrorists gravitate to that city.  Miami is 
where they are protected and feted, as if they 
were patriots and heroes. Only in Miami could the 
government win its case against the Five.

Gaining evidence to prosecute Posada Carriles and 
his terrorist network was the raison d´etre for 
the Cuba Five coming to the United States.  He is 
the mastermind of much of the terrorism.  After 
the fall of the socialist bloc, the Cuban economy 
went into a tailspin.  It turned to tourism for 
much-needed cash.  In an effort to scare tourists 
from going to Cuba, Miami Cubans unleashed a 
campaign of terror against the island.  They 
placed bombs in some of La Habana´s most famous 
hotels and restaurants: the Hotel Nacional, la 
Bodeguita del Medio, the Chateau Miramar, the 
Meliá Cohiba, the Tropicana and others.

On September 4, 1997, one of those bombs killed a 
young Italian by the name of Fabio Di Celmo at 
the Hotel Copacabana in La Habana.  A piece of 
shrapnel from the glass ashtray next to the 
explosive device severed his jugular.  Blood 
gushed from the left side of his neck, and he died within minutes.

A year later, Luis Posada Carriles admitted to 
the New York Times that he was the mastermind 
behind the bombs that had been exploding in La 
Habana.  “That Italian was in the wrong place at 
the wrong time, but I sleep like a baby,” he told 
New York Times reporter Anne Louise Bardach.

When he killed Fabio in cold blood, Posada was 
already a fugitive from justice with 73 counts of 
first-degree murder pending against him in 
Venezuela for the 1976 downing of a passenger 
plane that killed all 73 people aboard, including 
virtually all the members of the Cuban fencing 
team and a little nine-year-old Guyanese girl 
named Sabrina Paul.   Rather than extraditing him 
to Venezuela, the United States continues to 
protect him and ignore Venezuela’s request.

Fabiucho, as his family called him, was the 
youngest child of Giustino and Ora.  He was only 
22 years old when he was brutally murdered.  He 
loved to read and to play soccer.  He was madly 
in love: with Cuba and her people. I spoke to his 
90-year old father, Giustino, two months ago in 
Cuba.  Over drinks at a restaurant he opened in 
his son´s honor in the Vedado neighborhood of La 
Habana, Giustino recalled a letter he wrote to 
Tony six years ago: “Let the first rays of 
sunshine fall on the darkness of the monstrous injustice of your imprisonment.”

Giustino, these drawings by Antonio Guerrero are 
little rays of sunshine that fall on the darkness 
of this government’s indifference to the 
suffering of the Five.  It´s up to us to turn 
them into lightning bolts of action.  “Life is 
only life if there is courage”, said Tony in one 
of his most beloved poems.  Let us find the 
courage to take up the mantle of the struggle to 
free the Five from the “monstrous injustice” of their imprisonment.

Let us remember here tonight and let us repeat it 
without rest that Tony came to the United States 
to prevent crime, not to commit it.  Let us not 
forget that the U.S. government has turned 
justice upside-down.  And let us repeatedly 
remind the world that while the government of 
this country puts the real heroes in jail, it 
protects the criminals, allowing them to continue 
their reign of terror against Cuba.

On June 16, the Supreme Court turned down without 
comment a request to hear the appeal of the 
convictions of the Five.  The case is now 
squarely in the hands of the President of the United States.

With one stroke of the pen, the President can 
reduce their sentences to time served, so these 
brave men can go home to their families.  Article 
2 of the Constitution of the United States 
affords the President the power of Executive 
Clemency.  That power is unfettered.

No normalization of relations between the United 
States and Cuba is possible as long as the Five 
remain unjustly incarcerated and the terrorists 
live in freedom.  Let this country come to its 
senses:  the terrorists belong in jail, and the 
counterterrorists must be set free.

 From his prison cell in Colorado, Tony wrote 
that “tenderness runs pure and clear like a 
mountain stream, particularly when life is most 
painful.  Suffering is a shared experience.  We 
must know how to give without expecting anything 
in return”.  “Como el agua, pura y clara, Corre 
en su arroyo serena, ha de correr la ternura, 
Cuando aparece una Pena . . . No hay dolor que no 
sea tuyo.  No hay sufrir sin compartir.  Se ha de 
tener un orgullo, Saber dar sin recibir.”

President Obama, you were elected as a breath of 
fresh air, a Promethean President who looks to 
the future.  You say that you don’t like to look 
to the past.  But, Mr. President, you must 
understand that Posada and the other Miami Cubans 
were Washington’s instruments of terror against 
Cuba.  That’s why the FBI didn’t arrest them and instead arrested the Five.

It is now your responsibility to right these 
terrible wrongs.  A blockade premised on starving 
Cubans into submission and a campaign of terror 
to try and bring a proud people to their knees: 
that is the sordid past you have inherited from 
your predecessors in the White House.

Mr. President, you must begin to heal these open 
wounds. This is the most powerful nation in the 
history of civilization.  Rather than the most 
ruthless, Mr. President, ought not the United 
States be the most generous, the most humane?

President Obama, the Cold War is over.  For the 
sake of the victims of terrorism, for the sake of 
the suffering caused by almost fifty years of an 
illegal and immoral blockade, for the sake of 
your country, for the sake of the future, heal 
the wounds:  end the blockade against Cuba, 
extradite Posada, and free the Five.

José Pertierra is an attorney.  He represents the 
government of Venezuela in its request that the 
United States extradite Luis Posada 
Carriles.  His office is in Washington, DC.




Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
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