Interview: Alarcon On "Five Heroes"

Cuban Parliament President Highly Critical Of U.S. Handling Of Case

(CBS)  Almost nine years after their arrest on charges of spying on the U.S., five Cubans are awaiting an appeals court ruling. Portia Siegelbaum spoke with Cuban parliament president Ricardo Alarcon about the case.

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Cuban parliament president Ricardo Alarcon says the handling to date of the case of the five men known on the island as the "Five Heroes" means one thing: “That the U.S. is not yet in the position to fight anti-Cuban terrorism and that’s a real threat to our life and the safety of the Cuban people.”

He insists that the Five’s only crime was to infiltrate anti-Castro exile groups to try to stop violence against the island and that the prosecutors failed to prove anything else.

Yet, he says, while the five men are serving long prison terms in the United States, “terrorists” such as Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles, indicted for blowing up a civilian airliner in mid-flight, walk free in Miami. The cases, he says, are “absolutely inseparable” and that among other groups the Five had been monitoring was one linked to Posada.

“Cuba has had for almost half a century a need to protect ourselves. We didn’t attack anybody, we didn’t use violence, we didn’t use war, we just used what is referred to now in America as human intelligence. Well these five are real heroes because they sacrificed their lives, they run many risks, imagine to be inside those criminal groups without being a criminal, you are risking everyday to be discovered by them and getting killed. It wouldn’t be the first case in Miami.

“Perhaps the most flagrant example of misconduct was that the trial of the Five had to take place in Miami. In your country practically everyday some defendant gets change of venue in order to preserve his right to a fair and balanced hearing. The government insisted on having that trial in Miami,” stressed Alarcon.

He notes that the discussion on venue coincided with the Elian Gonzalez custody saga, which only concluded when the federal government sent special troops in to rescue the boy because the Miami police and the Miami mayor had refused the U.S. attorney general’s order to turn the boy over to his father for return to Cuba. All the proceedings, according to him, were poisoned by that atmosphere.

Worse yet, according to Alarcon, is the excessive sentencing of the five men including a guilty ruling on a charge that the prosecution confessed it could not prove. That charge, against Gerardo Hernandez, was of alleged conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree in the downing of the Brothers to the Rescue plane.

“In May 2001, when the court was going to recess, when they were approaching the end of the process…the U.S. [prosecutor] tried to change that charge saying that they couldn’t prove that charge and they wanted to modify it…. The judge said, ‘its too late, we have spent 7 months discussing that, now it's up to the jury to decide if they agree with you or not.’ Then they [the government prosecutor] appealed to the 11th Circuit in Atlanta [where the defense is currently appealing]…The attorney general acknowledged he could not prove his accusation and asked for it to be modified,” says Alarcon.

The jury, says Alarcon, knew of the U.S. government prosecutor’s efforts to drop the charge of conspiracy to commit murder for lack of proof. It nevertheless found Hernandez guilty of it and sentenced him to an additional life term.

“Only in Miami can such a thing happen. Only under the atmosphere of fear and pressure,” says Alarcon, who has been the Cuban government official heading up the efforts to get the sentences reversed.

The defense’s current appeal is not the first time the Atlanta court is hearing about the case and Alarcon finds that encouraging. “We should be really very optimistic.”

The recent sentencing in two similar cases also give him hope.

“The United States of America vs. Khalid Abdel-Latif Dumeisi, an Arab, an Iraqi. This man was found guilty of being an agent from the Saddam Hussein Regime and not being registered as such at the Department of Justice. Being an unregistered agent is the only violation the Five really committed. But this guy was arrested in Chicago when the U.S. was at war with the Saddam Hussein regime. Sentence of Mr. Dumeisi, 46 months in jail-- 3 years and 10 months. And the prosecutor in this case and the court determined that this man was not spying on the U.S. because he was only spying on the anti-Saddam groups of exiles in Chicago…The Five have been sentenced to four life terms plus 75 years and their only clear crime was the same as Mr. Dumeisi.

“This other example is from last month. The Federal Court in New Jersey, the United States of America vs Leonardo Aragoncillo. A Philippine person, an official of the FBI. This guy was an official, an analyst I think, of the FBI. He was found guilty of espionage. Real espionage, substantive espionage, according to his indictment. The FBI found that he had transmitted to a foreign government 736 secret documents, from the White House, State Department and the Pentagon. Found guilty with material proof of espionage, sentence 10 years of incarceration.

“The Five are entering their tenth year of incarceration for having committed the same crime as the Saddam Hussein agent and without having been accused of stealing a single piece of paper, a single piece of information,” Alarcon points out.

The defense team is hoping that the Atlanta Court of Appeals will take two decisions: one, to drop the charge of conspiracy to commit murder and two to change the life sentences given to three of the men for conspiracy to commit espionage-- not for actually spying.

“Atlanta has the possibility to dismiss everything … [the Five’s] only crime was to try prevent death and violence, to prevent terrorist acts at a time when the U.S. is involved in a so-called war on terrorism,” concluded Alarcon.

[cassiesays]

I''ve never quite understood the Brothers to the Rescue cover story -- how would it help boats in the straits to have a plane fly over them? TV interviews with BTTR leader Basulto and related commentary some weeks before the shootdown claimed the BTTR flights were testing Cuban air defenses and their successes at dropping leaflets on Havana proved that an air attack on Cuba could be made with impunity.

Among other objections to U.S. charges, official investigators noted that it was not at all clear that these aircraft qualified as "civilian."

At any rate, the notion that the Cuban air defenses really couldn''t detect their incursions unless someone phoned them from Miami is utterly silly.

Has anyone looked into the post-trial fortunes of the jurors? All living on the Costa del Sol now or anything?

[latam2]

please excuse the repeat postings. a message said the publish button had been disabled temporarily, and i kept trying it periodically, seeing no change. later i exited and tried again and saw that it had been published.

[latam2]

In the related video you report that the five defendants told the Cubans that "the planes were coming." Not so.

They had been flying for days, promising that they would keep it up. The Cubans had made it clear publicly (and privately, to the US govt) that they would act if the planes came again. I knew this just from reading the news, and like everyone else I had never even heard of the five at that time.

The night before the shoot-down, the White House official for Cuba, Richard Nuccio, was at an open reception at a DC club for a visiting cultural group from Cuba. I was there also. He mentioned then, openly, that the planes would be flying the next day. The US govt--and many others--knew this ahead of time. I thought immediately "they must be stopped--they will be shot down." The govt was unable to stop the flights.

To convict the five on the grounds that the planes'' flights were some sort of secret they gave the Cuban govt is ridiculous.

[latam2]

In the related video you report that the five defendants told the Cubans that "the planes were coming." Not so.

They had been flying for days, promising that they would keep it up. The Cubans had made it clear publicly (and privately, to the US govt) that they would act if the planes came again. I knew this just from reading the news, and like everyone else I had never even heard of the five at that time.

The night before the shoot-down, the White House official for Cuba, Richard Nuccio, was at an open reception at a DC club for a visiting cultural group from Cuba. I was there also. He mentioned then, openly, that the planes would be flying the next day. The US govt--and many others--knew this ahead of time. I thought immediately "they must be stopped--they will be shot down." The govt was unable to stop the flights.

To convict the five on the grounds that the planes'' flights were some sort of secret they gave the Cuban govt is ridiculous.

[latam2]

In the related video you report that the five defendants told the Cubans that "the planes were coming." Not so.

They had been flying for days, promising that they would keep it up. The Cubans had made it clear publicly (and privately, to the US govt) that they would act if the planes came again. I knew this just from reading the news, and like everyone else I had never even heard of the five at that time.

The night before the shoot-down, the White House official for Cuba, Richard Nuccio, was at an open reception at a DC club for a visiting cultural group from Cuba. I was there also. He mentioned then, openly, that the planes would be flying the next day. The US govt--and many others--knew this ahead of time. I thought immediately "they must be stopped--they will be shot down." The govt was unable to stop the flights.

To convict the five on the grounds that the planes'' flights were some sort of secret they gave the Cuban govt is ridiculous.

[latam2]

In the related video you report that the five defendants told the Cubans that "the planes were coming." Not so.

They had been flying for days, promising that they would keep it up. The Cubans had made it clear publicly (and privately, to the US govt) that they would act if the planes came again. I knew this just from reading the news, and like everyone else I had never even heard of the five at that time.

The night before the shoot-down, the White House official for Cuba, Richard Nuccio, was at an open reception at a DC club for a visiting cultural group from Cuba. I was there also. He mentioned then, openly, that the planes would be flying the next day. The US govt--and many others--knew this ahead of time. I thought immediately "they must be stopped--they will be shot down." The govt was unable to stop the flights.

To convict the five on the grounds that the planes'' flights were some sort of secret they gave the Cuban govt is ridiculous.

[latam2]

In the related video you report that the five defendants told the Cubans that "the planes were coming." Not so.

They had been flying for days, promising that they would keep it up. The Cubans had made it clear publicly (and privately, to the US govt) that they would act if the planes came again. I knew this just from reading the news, and like everyone else I had never even heard of the five at that time.

The night before the shoot-down, the White House official for Cuba, Richard Nuccio, was at an open reception at a DC club for a visiting cultural group from Cuba. I was there also. He mentioned then, openly, that the planes would be flying the next day. The US govt--and many others--knew this ahead of time. I thought immediately "they must be stopped--they will be shot down." The govt was unable to stop the flights.

To convict the five on the grounds that the planes'' flights were some sort of secret they gave the Cuban govt is ridiculous.

[latam2]

In the related video you report that the five defendants told the Cubans that "the planes were coming." Not so.

They had been flying for days, promising that they would keep it up. The Cubans had made it clear publicly (and privately, to the US govt) that they would act if the planes came again. I knew this just from reading the news, and like everyone else I had never even heard of the five at that time.

The night before the shoot-down, the White House official for Cuba, Richard Nuccio, was at an open reception at a DC club for a visiting cultural group from Cuba. I was there also. He mentioned then, openly, that the planes would be flying the next day. The US govt--and many others--knew this ahead of time. I thought immediately "they must be stopped--they will be shot down."

To convict the five on the grounds that the planes'' flights were some sort of secret they gave the Cuban govt is ridiculous.

[latam2]

In the related video you report that the five defendants told the Cubans that "the planes were coming." Not so.

They had been flying for days, promising that they would keep it up. The Cubans had made it clear publicly (and privately, to the US govt) that they would act if the planes came again. I knew this just from reading the news, and like everyone else I had never even heard of the five at that time.

The night before the shoot-down, the White House official for Cuba, Richard Nuccio, was at an open reception at a DC club for a visiting cultural group from Cuba. I was there also. He mentioned then, openly, that the planes would be flying the next day. The US govt--and many others--knew this ahead of time. I thought immediately "they must be stopped--they will be shot down."

To convict the five on the grounds that the planes'' flights were some sort of secret they gave the Cuban govt is ridiculous.

[uscsca]

Given we live in a country where our ''news'' on complex issues is usually pre-digested and spoon-fed in small sound bites this story is welcome.

It gives voice to an offical of a demonized nation: the only place on earth forbidden by US law for US residents to experience for themselves, and have the opportunity to form their own ''unbiased'' opinions.

There are at LEAST ''two-sides'' to every story. We rarely hear the Cuban (rather than the ''Miami'') perspective of issues where we actually should have principled universal concerns.

The release of Luis Posada, who publically boasted of his role in bombing a civilain airplane should be a case of PROFOUND interest to the US public, who are asked to believe in the sincerity of the US ''war'' on terror, in our continued support of occupations our militay are engaged in.

That the US has a different rule of law for ''homegrown'' terrorists, makes our global war on terrorism an obvious sham. The release of Posada justifies Cuba''s concerns of US-based(and funded) terrorism against their population.

The Cuban Five deserve a FAIR trial, and if that were to happen sans domestic political manipulations, the findings of the original three person appeals court would not have been challenged, and our nation would begin to regain its credibility in a world that well knows something we as citizens are either in denial or uninformed about: that as a nation, we don''t feel obligated to practice the high ideals and values what we preach.

[latam2]

In the related video you report that the five defendants told the Cubans that "the planes were coming." Not so.

They had been flying for days, promising that they would keep it up. The Cubans had made it clear publicly (and privately, to the US govt) that they would act if the planes came again. I knew this just from reading the news, and like everyone else I had never even heard of the five at that time.

The night before the shoot-down, the White House official for Cuba, Richard Nuccio, was at an open reception at a DC club for a visiting cultural group from Cuba. I was there also. He mentioned then, openly, that the planes would be flying the next day. The US govt--and many others--knew this ahead of time. I thought immediately "they must be stopped--they will be shot down."

To convict the five on the grounds that the planes'' flights were some sort of secret they gave the Cuban govt is ridiculous.

[miguel475]

Thanks for this article. it was about time we heard from official Cuban sources. It is amazing to me how our media, starting with CBS, are always willing to cite US government and other sources regarding Cuba, but, unlike other countries, never seek official Cuban responses to those issues. I hope this starts a responsible trend in this direction. I am an informed citizen and want to have the opportunity to hear all sources and make up my own mind about what''s going on in the world.

[walterlx]

Thanks for posting this interview. Given the terrible shape our relations are with Cuba, it''s a pleasant surprise to find a straight-forward interview with a top Cuban official who gets to give his opinion directly.

My father and his parents came to the US after living in Cuba. If people from the US can go to China and Vietnam, and even to Iran and North Korea, why can''t we all just have the right to go and see Cuba for ourselves?

Again, thanks for this interview.


Walter Lippmann
Los Angeles, California