Extract from a talk entitled 'A unitary world and threats to world peace', given by Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada, Chairman of the National Assembly of the People's Power, at the Second Hemispheric Meeting Against the FTAA, in the Havana International Conference Centre

26 November 2002.

They are here, the mothers, wives and other relatives; they are here because this issue belongs here, because the only way to understand the campaign launched by the Cubans to free those comrades, with the solid support of many people in your countries, is to see their plight as directly related to the issue we are addressing here. Because in defending our independence and democracy we are also exposing the truth, breaking down barriers of disinformation erected by the media that control, or try to control, the way people think, or whether they think at all. This is one of the fundamentals of this neo-liberal, globalized world. The case of our five comrades is about the fight against terrorism, directly and exclusively.
If it is hard to convey the truth to the world, if we have so many difficulties in making the facts known, it is because those facts demonstrate the hypocrisy and falsity of the public stance of the present US authorities towards terrorism. Those facts demonstrate the opposite, they demonstrate that that country tolerates, condones and encourages terrorism against Cuba and against other peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Let me briefly mention the key events in this case, so you can appreciate that I have not in any way exaggerated.
Several long months preceded the hearings of the Miami court where the so-called judgement was passed on these comrades. The first debate, the first motion that was brought by the defence, was concerned with not holding the trial there, with transferring it to any other American city. They even proposed the nearest, Fort Lauderdale, which is barely a half-hour from Dade County. The motion was denied; it was vigorously opposed by the South Florida Attorney General's Office - in other words, the government - and the judge found in favour of the government's view: the trial had to be held in Miami.
There were other proceedings before the trial started which are highly revealing. These were the various motions that the same South Florida Attorney General's Office submitted in attempting to influence or regulate the trial.
The first motion: submitted in writing, in an official document, asked that there should be no mention of terrorism during the trial; that examining evidence or discussing matters related to terrorist activities be banned from the courtroom. The mighty champion of the struggle against terrorism asks a court, in writing, to treat the subject as taboo, as one nobody can be allowed to mention.
Second motion: that no-one connected with or belonging to any of the terrorist groups in Miami should be called to appear at the trial. When these motions were not granted in their entirety, they went on insisting.
When certain of such people were called to testify, the government brought in another motion, that the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution be applied to any member of such groups who appeared before the court.
The Fifth Amendment is presumably one of the civil rights, one of the guarantees, one of the basic freedoms of US citizens - the right of anyone not to incriminate himself, not to make a statement against himself. But the government wanted to turn this right into an obligation: "You must not testify, because if you testify you will say something that compromises the government, that demonstrates that the government is supporting terrorism".
And finally, during the trial itself - because while many of these criminals naturally "took the Fifth", refused to testify, a few decided to say things (which were in any case pretty normal for Miami), possibly enjoying the publicity, the scandal, the furore in the local media - all these people were threatened with the Fifth Amendment, turning a right, a constitutional principle, on its head and converting it into a weapon brandished by the prosecution against certain witnesses, who were told "If you don't take the Fifth, I can have you prosecuted" - which they didn't, of course.
It was dictated that the trial be held in a city dominated by a terrorist mafia; conditions were created for preventing discussion of terrorism or testimony by terrorists; the recalcitrant among the terrorists were threatened with prosecution if they failed to fall in with the government's wishes. On top of all that, they applied the Classified Information Protection Act (CIPA) to all the documentation relating to the trial, and even manipulated this legislation.
What did that mean? It meant that the evidence, real or alleged, absolutely all the documentation confiscated from the five defendants, all that relating to the trial, was classified as secret. And that has resulted in the fact that even today - today, November 2002! - the defence attorneys are still demanding what they have been asking for since before the start of the trial, for the most elementary of rights - the right of access to the alleged evidence on which the whole trial was based.
Recently, those who read the international press will have come across the story of Zacharias Mousaou. Who is Zacharias Mousaou? A foreigner resident in the United States who is unique: he is the only person on earth accused of having participated in the events of 11th September. He is accused of actual, direct participation. He was not, of course, aboard either of the planes that attacked the Twin Towers in Washington, nor in the one that crashed in Pennsylvania, for the simple reason that they happened to have arrested him a few days before. That's what the prosecution says; that is the charge against him.
Check out the New York Times website and other sources and you will discover that this prisoner has two cells: the one he is being held in and also an adjacent cell equipped with his computer, VCR, television and his files. The prison authorities provided these extra facilities, a sort of library-annexe to his cell, to accommodate all the documentation relating to his case, delivered by the FBI to help him prepare his defence.
They even say their generosity got out of hand and they included 47 secret documents about the Al-Qaeda organization, which should not have been sent. I don't know whether or not that's true. Neither have I anything against giving Mr. Mousaou every facility for preparing his defence. This is a principle of US law and a universal right; the accused must be provided with whatever conditions are needed to ensure an adequate defence.
But who can tell me how it is that the only detainee in the United States accused of involvement in the most horrendous crime against the American people, can get such facilities, while the five US defence lawyers representing our comrades are still requesting access to the documentation used to accuse their clients; that still now, at the appeal stage, when they need it for a new hearing by the appeal court, it is still being debated whether these US lawyers should get access to the documentation the FBI calls evidence?
No-one is asking for a computer; no-one is asking for an extra cell for our comrades; no-one is asking that they be given a television, video cassette player etc.; no-one is saying they should be provided with extra documentation; no-one is requesting they receive secret FBI documents. What is being asked for is that they be given their documents, the documents confiscated from them in their homes, which have been selectively manipulated by the prosecution - manipulation that includes preventing the defendants and their attorneys from availing themselves of the documentation as a whole, which would have enabled them to explain matters, to present each of the facts in its real context.
Our comrades are being subjected to conditions of imprisonment which in themselves would have justified declaring their trial null and void. During 17 months, they were held in solitary confinement, isolated from the rest of the prison population and from each other. Apart from the cruelty of such treatment, of their mistreatment, it was part of a plan to deny them an adequate defence: "You can't see the evidence, you can't talk to each other, I'm making it as difficult as possible for you to see your lawyer and, what's more, I'm going to keep you in inhuman conditions of imprisonment"; and that wasn't all.
Among the fellow countrywomen who are with us today are the wives of two of those comrades: one was arrested, detained, imprisoned for three months and then deported to Cuba, and since then has not been able to talk directly to her husband. Neither has their daughter, now just over four years old, who was four months old when she last saw her father - saw him, moreover, in chains, handcuffed, surrounded by FBI agents and prison guards. Since then, Washington has refused a visa to enable Olga Salanueva and their daughter Ivette to be with René González again. And Adriana Pérez is here, wife of Gerardo Hernández who was sentenced to two life terms of imprisonment plus 15 years. Adriana has not seen Gerardo for - I assume, all these last years - about five years. They gave her a visa and she got as far as the airport in Houston, Texas. There they denied her entry and held her for 11 hours, during which they interrogated her - without any right to do so - and then deported her to Mexico; she was not allowed to talk to her husband.
Then there are the others, who have now been waiting over four months for a response from the US authorities to their applications for visas to enable a basic human right of the prisoner and his family to be exercised - the right to visit.
I'm sure you have heard of Johnny Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban. This young man was captured in Afghanistan wearing a Taliban army uniform and carrying a rifle and two grenades; the prosecution says he admitted being a Taliban soldier. Since he is a US citizen, he wasn't sent to the base of Guantanamo, but was transferred to the United States. There he was subjected to a trial that ended with a deal between the defence and the prosecution and got a moderate sentence - 18 years imprisonment, I think. However, the judge ruled that he serve his term as close as possible to San Francisco, to be near his family, so they can visit, so they can maintain normal communication with young Johnny Walker.
I have no quarrel with that either. I don't think anyone would object to this person, whatever he may have done, having easier contact with his mother and father, with his family. So why do our fellow countrywomen not get the same privilege, if their sons or husbands were not armed, carried no grenades, no rifle, threatened no American lives, did no harm whatever nor threatened harm to any US citizen? Isn't there something wrong here - a certain ambivalence between the courtesy, generosity and fair way they are treating people accused of the worst terrorist crimes in the United States, and the vindictiveness, the cruelty, the barbarism of the way they treat these Cuban families, whose sons have never been accused of terrorism or anything like it? On the contrary, they were accused of exactly the opposite, of combating terrorism right there where it enjoys the steady support of important, powerful sponsors.
The defendants were isolated, they were denied basic rights and opportunities of defence, the alleged evidence was concealed and manipulated and a trial venue that could only result in a travesty of justice was imposed. But that wasn't all: some seven months into their detention, a second indictment was brought in. This charge, on top of the totally false original accusations of espionage against our five comrades, added against one of them the very serious charge of complicity in first-degree murder, that is, premeditated homicide. Lacking a shred of evidence, the prosecution and the Miami terrorist groups embarked on a public conspiracy, via the Miami press: before filing the indictment, there was open discussion in the Miami media and the prosecution was told: "Accuse them of murder as well, make the charges more serious; say, too, that it was first-degree murder". And the Miami authorities obliged.
But what happened, comrades? The defence was handled by five public defenders appointed by the court, not engaged by either the Cuban government or the defendants (who had no opportunity whatever to do so): lawyers to whom the task happened to fall. Nonetheless, these people did an exemplary professional job, succeeding in putting terrorists and terrorism in the dock, and demonstrated the negligent, conniving attitude of the government towards Miami-based terrorist activities against Cuba. In this way, they showed the justice of Cuba's exercising its inalienable right to defend itself by the most peaceful and civilized means - those of seeking out the information needed to prevent such attacks.
The prosecution were entirely unable to present evidence that espionage had been carried out or that murder had been committed. This was the first time in US history that someone was sentenced for alleged espionage without the submission of a single document, a single exhibit, something classified as secret which the defendant had illicitly obtained or tried to obtain, or the existence of such evidence being alleged.
There have been other cases that became causes célèbres, against people charged with spying, but always there has been evidence - a document they acquired or attempted to obtain. On this occasion, there was absolutely nothing of this sort. There was, however, a succession of retired senior officers of the US military who appeared in the witness-box - generals and admirals, colonels and yet more generals - one after another, hand on the bible as the swore to tell the truth. To the question: "Have you seen anything in the documents you've examined that indicates that they obtained any secret information?", the answer is a simple "No". To the next question: "Have you seen anything to indicate that they tried to obtain any secret information?" - "No". The third question: "Have you seen anything to indicate that they were organizing themselves so as to be in a position to seek secret information?". Guess the answer: "No".
As to the more serious, terrible charge - that of murder - something happened that is without precedent in US history. Don't take my word for it: the Attorney General himself describes it as "an unprecedented step". Towards the end of the trial, before the jury retired to consider its verdict, the South Florida Attorney General's Office did something - I repeat - unprecedented: they asked the Appeal Court in Atlanta to change the indictments, to amend the judge's instructions to the jury based on the charges. I'm going to read this out, because I want to quote the phrase used by the government.

According to Page 21 of this urgent motion:
"In the light of the evidence presented at this trial, this constitutes an insurmountable obstacle for the United States in this case and will probably result in the failure of this indictment, since it presents the prosecution with an insurmountable barrier".
The prosecution, in this mafia-ridden, terrorist, anti-Cuban Miami environment, rushes in with a charge of first-degree murder against Gerardo Hernández and then says - given the evidence - that it can't prove it. And who submitted the evidence? Wasn't it the prosecution? Holding this alleged evidence was insufficient grounds for an accusation of murder? In the end, they had to accept that the couldn't make the indictment stick. But then something unheard of happened, something unforeseen, something the prosecution wasn't expecting: the jury retired and came back with a unanimous verdict, without asking questions, without expressing doubts, and pronounced all the defendants guilty of all the charges originally laid against them.
I omitted to mention that the Appeal Court had denied that motion by the government; in other words, it did not agree to reduce the charge. So at the end of the trial the government says it can't prove first-degree murder and asks that the charge be reduced to accessory to - rather than premeditated - murder. The court having denied this motion, the jury then apparently regarded as proved beyond any doubt something for which no evidence had been presented, which the defence had consistently refuted and which the government acknowledged in writing could not be proved; despite all this, here we have a jury that comes back without the slightest doubt, without asking questions, and finds Gerardo guilty of murder in the first degree, a decision in conflict with the view of everyone else, including the prosecution.
This, of course, has to do with the initial discussion, the venue for this farce, the corrupt, mafia-dominated setting of Miami, which rules out any chance of a fair or impartial trial of any case relating to Cuba and its revolution.
Evidence of the involvement of terrorism is apparent not only at the start of the trial, and earlier, but also at its closing.
I'm going to read from pages 45 and 46 of the trial record for 14 December 2001 and the sentencing of René González.
René González was not accused of murder, or even of espionage. He was simply accused of being an agent of the Cuban government who had not registered as such with the US authorities; he was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment. Since he was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment, they assume he'll be set free at the end of that term and they will think that, as he was born in the United States and has US citizenship by birth, they won't be able to deport him (legally, at any rate). The response of the US government to this terrifying risk was to ask the court in writing not only to impose the maximum 15-year sentence, but also to do something that would "incapacitate" him, to stop him, once he was freed, from resuming his former activity, namely combating terrorism.
I'm going to read out from page 45 of the court record for 14 December 2001, the stipulation added by the judge to the 15-year prison sentence. She says:
"As a further special condition of his supervised release, the accused is prohibited" - once he regains his freedom, of course - "from associating himself with or visiting specific places known to harbour or be the haunts of individuals or groups such as terrorists, members of organizations which advocate violence or figures of organized crime". On 14 December 2000, three months after the atrocity committed against the people of New York, at a time when the whole of America was up arms, filled with a sense of outrage, with fury towards terrorism, the very government that purports to take the lead in the war on terrorism, and one of its courts, talks about there being terrorist individuals and groups, whose whereabouts or haunts are known; but nobody is sent to arrest them, nobody has gone to these places to arrest those terrorists. They did something worse: they punished a man and took measures to ensure that that man, in 15 years' time, will be unable to take any action against "individuals or groups such as terrorists" by going to the places known to "harbour or be the haunts" of these.
You might think the judge fouled up, that this was a slip of the tongue. Not at all: two weeks later she came to the sentencing of the other American-born comrade who consequently also has US citizenship by birth - Antonio Guerrero.
Even though Tony was sentenced to life imprisonment, the government is worried: maybe for some reason he'll get out of jail before he dies. "Hell, this guy's an American, we can't deport him and he'll try something again against our terrorist buddies", and they make the same request: "Neutralize him, Your Honor, in case he gets out some day". And she adds the same condition; I'm not going to read it out again because it's identical to the one she slapped on René.
Comrades,
The trial of the five consecrates US terrorism against Cuba, but also against Latin America. That's why it's so important to campaign for their release.
Shortly after the trial, Orlando Bosch, perpetrator of the 1976 attack on a Cubana de Aviación plane in flight, predictably issued various statements, gave press conferences, openly proclaiming his intention of maintaining terrorist activities against Cuba.

But there's more. A certain Rodolfo Frómeta, who appeared as a witness, had previously been arrested in possession, among other things, of Stinger missiles, used in Orlando Bosch's favourite sport - shooting down, blowing up, aircraft in flight - and was convicted. It was incredible. Just think: a man who had explosives, who had heavy weapons including one as lethal as that, was given a one-year sentence - but wait, the phrase is incomplete - a one-year sentence of house arrest. That was all.
Does it surprise anyone that a couple of months ago, Mr. Frómeta gave a press conference in Miami? It was covered by the local media in company with certain people based in Miami who have declared their opposition to the government of President Hugo Chavez. The purpose was to announce their plan to train Venezuelan and Cuban exiles not only to maintain hostilities against the Cuban revolution, but also to start a war on Chavez, when the time is right, when it becomes necessary or convenient to resort to terrorism. This was announced in public. Want to know where they're being trained? In the Everglades. Want to see them? Switch on the TV in Miami or open a local Miami newspaper.
In this announcement, incidentally, which was in the summer, before the Brazilian elections, the first thing this gentleman said was that for now, the targets are Cuba and Venezuela, but should Lula win in Brazil, that country would be added to the list.
Is terrorism or is it not part of the worst side of imperialist policy? And is it or is it not a threat to any of the Latin American peoples which achieves or fights for emancipation?
Comrades,
A few days ago, our compatriots' defence lawyers submitted this motion, a very simple document with substantial legal force - I understand they have circulated it to the comrades belonging to the National Jurists' Union. The motion asks for a re-trial at a new venue, in other words it goes back to square one, to the initial argument.
What are the grounds for this motion? The grounds are spelled out clearly, namely that the US government, specifically the South Florida Attorney General's Office, committed one of the most serious offences that any responsible authority can commit: the offense of prevarication. They deliberately lied, falsified facts and laws, in the original handling of the request by our compatriots for the trial to be switched to somewhere other than Miami.
When the defense of the five Cubans, who were accused of being agents of the Cuban revolution, and even of being involved in the alleged murder of people from Miami, when they were brought to trial and the defence naturally raised the issue of the accused's constitutional right not to be tried in a place where there is prejudice against him, but rather in one where he can expect an impartial hearing, when the defence advanced this argument, the government replied that Miami Dade was a large "urban centre", "politically extremely heterogeneous, not monolithic", with great diversity. In this large metropolis, of course, fair-minded people can be found, people with no bias against Cuba, the Cuban revolution etc.
But what happened in June of this year, six months after our comrades were sentenced? The same government of the same country, the same executive branch, i.e. the South Florida Attorney General's Office, the same South Florida Attorney General, Guy Lewis, who was the one who accused our comrades, who refused to switch the trial venue and who, still as South Florida Attorney General - because the man earned brownie points, was promoted and now is one of the closest aids, naturally, of John Ashcroft; he's now in the US Attorney General's Office - when it came to his own defence in a civil case, over a problem to do with discrimination in employment but which was indirectly related to Cuba, the same Guy Lewis claimed that an impartial, objective trial in that city involving something relating to Cuba, even tenuously, was "practically impossible".
He was evidently guilty of falsification: as one of the defence attorneys pointed out, according to this man it's as if Miami started out as a huge city and then in the space of a year it shrank into a tiny hamlet; the same Attorney General who described it as heterogeneous, enormous, diverse, now says its so limited, so shrunken, and full of such fierce prejudices against Cuba, that it's impossible to give me a fair trial there. He also falsified the legal doctrine, the legal precedent on which our comrades based their request for a change of venue. On that occasion the defence had used a case, famous in the United States, in that area, which established the doctrine: the case of Panplin vs. Mason. Panplin was a religious Afro-American who participated in the civil rights campaigns of the 1960s and was brought to trial as a result of an incident related to the campaign by black people for their equality, their freedom, their rights. He sought trial away from that Texas town, racist, full of prejudice against the Negro who regards himself as the white man's equal. His request was denied, but when he appealed to the same court that is handling the case of our five comrades, the court found that: the judge was wrong; basically because there in the American South - we're talking about 1968 - there were deep-rooted prejudices against Negroes who believed themselves the equals of whites, and consequently the accused would not get a fair trial there. So on appeal, Panplin got his change of venue.
When our defence uses the same argument, which is thoroughly justified given the prejudices, attitudes, activities, threats and pressures of the anti-Cuba mafia in Miami which make that city different from any other in America as regards matters relating to Cuba; when they use this argument, the government says "No. Miami is not a small town in the Southern United States, it a huge metropolis, highly heterogeneous". But now when it asks for a change of venue for its own case, it uses the same legal precedent based on the Panplin doctrine, saying that it's not possible there in that same city, to hold a balanced, impartial hearing of a case against the US government.
The prosecution clearly lied deliberately and thereby clearly violated the US Constitution and the other laws that impose the obligation not only to accuse but also to ensure legality, to ensure that that the laws and principles are observed. The South Florida Attorney General's Office and the US government it represents did all this - with success - to encourage terrorism; to encourage the sort of thing Mr. Fómenta is doing now, announcing his plans not only against Cuba but also against Venezuela, against Brazil. And I fear the list will get very long, because they will have to add the names of other countries where the people gain ground and progress.
Comrades:
I would like to end by expressing my certainty that this cause will continue to enjoy the solidarity, the understanding, the support, of all of us who believe in freedom and aspire to justice for our peoples.