The Miami Herald
Posted at 10:02 a.m. EST Monday, December 10, 2001
EU: no way to boost Cuba ties unless Havana improves rights record
By Robert Wielaard . Associated Press Writer.
BRUSSELS, Belgium -- (AP) -- The European Union said Monday it cannot
intensify relations with Cuba unless Havana makes significant improvements in
human rights record.
The EU foreign ministers issued a statement at their monthly meeting, saying
the human rights situation in Cuba "is still seriously wanting as regards
the recognition and application of civil and political freedoms.''
It criticized Cuba for refusing "to contemplate reforms leading to a
political system based on those values.''
The statement came a week after an EU delegation held talks in Havana to
discuss relations between Cuba and the 15-nation EU.
The EU said the visit showed there was no room yet for closer ties, despite
minor improvements, including greater religious freedom, fewer political
prisoners and the recent decision by the Cuban parliament approving the
country's accession to all U.N. anti-terrorism conventions.
At last week's talks in Havana, the two sides simply agreed to reopen a
broad political dialogue and said they would "exchange relative
information'' about human rights issues.
Relations have been tenuous since several EU countries joined a U.N. vote
condemning Cuba's human rights record last year.
That led a Cuban delegation to cancel a visit to Europe and stay away from
joining the EU's multi-billion-euro (dollar) aid-and-trade pact with scores of
developing countries.
Within the EU, notably in Britain, there is a strong view that any
significant improvement in relations with Cuba would only upset the United
States as it tries to keep together a global alliance in its war on terrorism,
officials said.
In the past, the Europeans and the Americans have clashed over how to best
deal with Fidel Castro's communist regime.
Last week's EU mission to Havana was downgraded. It was led by a senior
Belgian diplomat, rather than Louis Michel, the foreign minister of Belgium,
which currently holds the EU presidency.
Convicted spy: I am a patriot
Cuban agent faces possible life term
By Gail Epstein Nieves. gepstein@herald.com. Published
Sunday, December 9, 2001
To convicted Cuban spy master Gerardo Hernández, secretly snooping on
the United States put him in the same ranks as the men and women of the U.S.
military who attempted to "neutralize the plans'' of Osama bin Laden's
terrorist organization before the Sept. 11 attacks.
"I am sure that the sons and daughters of this country who carry out
this mission are considered patriots,'' Hernández wrote in a defiant
letter to his probation officer.
But in court Tuesday, when Hernández will be sentenced, federal
prosecutors will paint a far more condemning portrait -- that of a man who was a
party to murder and espionage, a man who they say should spend the rest of his
life behind bars, not be hailed as a hero.
Central to their position: Hernández's role in the Cuban shoot-down
of two Brothers to the Rescue planes over the Straits of Florida on Feb. 24,
1996.
"Four lives were unlawfully extinguished due to the conspiracy the
defendant joined, and the value of those lives must be affirmed in the sanction
applied to him . . . the prescribed life sentence,'' lead prosecutor Caroline
Heck Miller wrote in court filings.
Of five Cuban spies who were convicted in June after a six-month trial, Hernández
will be the first sentenced. The others are scheduled to learn their fates in
the coming days and weeks.
Like Hernández, spies Ramón Labañino and Antonio
Guerrero were convicted of espionage conspiracy and face life in prison.
Fernando González and René González (not related) were
convicted of lesser charges and face maximum penalties of 10 years.
POLICY SHIFT
In an unusual move, relatives of four of the men obtained U.S. visas and
traveled to Miami on Friday to attend the sentencings. The father and daughter
of the fifth agent, whose mother is deceased, are still waiting for visas to
make the trip.
The relatives could be allowed to address U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard
and ask for leniency -- just as kin of the four slain Brothers fliers are
expected to ask for the maximum sentence. The defendants also are expected to
speak.
The attendance of Cubans from the island represents a shift for the Cuban
government, which cited security concerns when it refused to allow all but one
key Cuban witness to testify in person at the heavily guarded trial.
The island relatives' presence also reflects the political importance that
Cuba places on the fate of the five spies, who, through billboards, marches and
nightly round-table discussions on state-controlled television, became the
biggest cause célbre since Cuban raft survivor Elián González
was plucked from the sea in 1999.
"I hope that they do not commit that error,'' of sentencing some of the
men to life sentences, said Cuban leader Fidel Castro during a five-hour speech
early Saturday.
So many spectators are expected for Hernández's sentencing that
Lenard has moved the proceeding from her regular courtroom to the district's
stately Central Courtroom, which seats about 200 people. It's always been tapped
for major trials, including those of former Panamanian strongman Gen. Manuel
Noriega, former U.S. Judge Alcee Hastings and Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez. Heavy
security is expected again.
Hernández and the other men were among 14 people originally arrested
in September 1998 as members of the La Red Avispa, the Wasp Network, the biggest
Cuban spy ring known to have been dismantled in the United States.
Trial evidence showed that ring members, some using fake identities, tried
to infiltrate U.S. military installations and Cuban exile groups in an effort to
feed military and political information back to Havana and discredit the
Cuban-exile community.
The spies disputed the charges. While they acknowledged they were Cuban
intelligence agents, they claimed they were sent to South Florida to protect
Cuba from a U.S. attack and from "extremist'' Cuban exiles believed to be
responsible for hotel bombings in Havana.
But most of the trial focused on the Brothers shoot-down, which claimed the
lives of Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña, Armando Alejandre and Pablo
Morales.
Shortwave radio transmissions between the spies and their handlers in Havana
showed that in the days leading to the fatal air attack, Cuba was preparing for
a violent confrontation with Brothers' planes and even warned its Miami-based
agents not to fly on the Brothers' planes.
Prosecutors argued that the messages showed Hernández, a career agent
for Cuba's Directorate of Intelligence, had prior knowledge of the attacks.
In recently videotaped interviews from Hernández's family home in
Vedado, an upscale neighborhood of Havana, his family and friends praised him as
a bright, considerate, quick-witted man who always made them proud.
"When at the beginning they talked about the possibility of
premeditated crime, I knew that Gerardo was incapable of doing such a thing,
because he always tried to do good and to keep all of us as one,''
brother-in-law Pedro Pablo Pérez said on the tape, which Hernández's
defense lawyer, Paul McKenna, gave the judge.
"Now we are even prouder because he is showing us that we have to
follow his example and continue fighting in the same trench,'' said another
brother-in-law, Juan Carlos Castro.
During the trial, McKenna blamed the shoot-down on Brothers' co-founder José
Basulto, calling Basulto's repeated incursions into Cuban airspace "provocations.''
McKenna is using that same reasoning in seeking a reduced sentence for Hernández,
who faces two life sentences for murder conspiracy and espionage conspiracy.
In court filings, McKenna invokes parallels between the Sept. 11 terror
attacks and Brothers to the Rescue search-and-rescue flights, posing this
rhetorical question:
"Who could argue, after the fatal attacks by civilian aircraft against
the World Trade Center in New York as well as the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.,
that unarmed civilian aircraft pose no threat?''
Basulto, whose plane was the only one not shot down during the mission, does
argue, calling McKenna's comparison "senseless.''
"The day that the shoot-down took place we were more than 12 miles away
from the shoreline of Cuba in international airspace. What threat to
buildings?'' he said. "We communicated with them and told them where we
were at all times.''
NO 'GRAVE DANGER'
Defense attorneys also are attacking the espionage conspiracy convictions,
saying their clients should not get life because the spies never had any intent
to get information which could have caused "exceptionally grave danger'' to
U.S. national security and because they were so far from completing the
espionage.
The spies never obtained any classified documents, prosecutors have
acknowledged -- but they say that was not for a lack of trying.
"Mr. Labañino caused no harm at all,'' particularly when
compared to other spies in the past, so should not be subject to life, wrote
defense lawyer William Norris.
Joaquín Méndez, who represents Fernando González, and
the other defense lawyers also are seeking "downward departures'' from
their clients' sentences as credit for the approximate year they spent in
solitary confinement in the special housing unit of the Federal Detention Center
in Miami.
It was from that detention center that Hernández wrote his
unapologetic letter to the probation office, dated Aug. 13, 2001, stating that "only
in Miami,'' where "fear and prejudice accumulated for more than 40 years,''
could guilty verdicts have been returned in his case.
"But the reality is that here, in Miami,'' Heck Miller responded in her
filing, "before a jury with no Cuban Americans on it, just as he wished,
the defendant received an eminently fair trial and now justice must be served.''
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