Garnele is mal wieder ganz schön langsam

Court overturns Cubans' spying convictions

By Jane Sutton
MIAMI (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday overturned the convictions of five accused Cuban spies and said pervasive prejudice against the government of President Fidel Castro had prevented them from getting a fair trial in Miami.

The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ordered new trials for the "Cuban five" convicted in 2001 on conspiracy and espionage charges.

Three were serving life in prison and the others 15- and 19-year terms, sentences that a United Nations human rights body condemned last month as arbitrary and unduly harsh.

The appeals court in Atlanta acknowledged in its ruling that reversing the convictions would be unpopular and offensive to many U.S. citizens.

"However the court is equally mindful that those same citizens cherish and support the freedoms they enjoy in this country that are unavailable to residents of Cuba," the court said. "One of our most sacred freedoms is the right to be tried fairly in a noncoercive atmosphere."

The five men were part of a ring that infiltrated U.S. military bases and Cuban exile groups and fed information to Havana, the Cuban government has acknowledged.

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One defendant, ringleader Gerardo Hernandez, was convicted of conspiring to commit murder in a 1996 incident in which Cuban MiGs shot down two small planes flown by Cuban exiles over the Florida Straits. Four men died.

Hernandez admitted feeding information about the exile group to Havana but had no role in ordering the shootdown.

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Defense attorneys argued that pervasive prejudice against Castro and the Cuban government and publicity surrounding the charges made it impossible to hold a fair trial in Miami. The area is home to more than 700,000 people of Cuban descent, including thousands with relatives murdered, tortured or held as political prisoners in Cuba, they argued.

The trial began eight months after federal agents removed shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez from his Miami relatives, a saga that flooded Miami with "waves of public passion" about the relationship between Cuba and the United States, the appeals judges said. The boy was returned to his father, who took him home to Cuba.

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The appellate judges noted in their ruling that there had been concerns for the safety of potential jurors, and fears of reprisals and community unrest if there was an acquittal.

The jury that convicted the men did not include any Cuban Americans. But 16 of the 160 members of the jury pool knew the victims of the shootdown or knew trial witnesses who had flown with them. Nearly all expressed negative views of Cuba and the only three who said they had mixed views were dismissed.