[antiwar-van] AFP Publishes Article on Case of the Cuban 5!

[Tamara Hansen]

"Cuba Five" spies to appeal to US Supreme Court

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Attorneys for five Cubans sentenced in 2001 on espionage charges will file an appeal with the US Supreme Court on Thursday, a source close to the case told AFP.

The Supreme Court will not decide until June or July if it will accept the case of the "Cuban Five," and if it does it would likely not issue a ruling until December, the source said on Wednesday.

The appeal is based on the case having been tried in Miami, which the defense argues is a city with a large population of anti-communist Cuban exiles who were biased against the defendants.

The Cuban spies had argued that they were monitoring Florida-based anti-Castro groups to prevent terrorist attacks on Cuba, and that their work was not directed against the US government.

Three of the Cubans were sentenced to life in prison, one received 19 years behind bars and the other 15 years.

Several appeals have been filed since the Cubans were sentenced, resulting in mixed court rulings.

The Cuban government has admitted that the five were spies, but describes them as "heroes" fighting against anti-government "terrorists. "

In Havana, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said Wednesday that a December 18 offer by President Raul Castro to swap the five spies for jailed dissidents in Cuba is still in effect.

The US State Department at the time rejected the swap offer.

"The issue of political prisoners held against their will, merely for making peaceful protests, is independent of the case of the five spies tried and convicted under due process of the US judicial system," State Department Deputy Spokesman Robert Wood told AFP in December. 



      __________________________________________________________________
Get a sneak peak at messages with a handy reading pane with All new Yahoo! Mail: http://ca.promos.yahoo.com/newmail/overview2/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.resist.ca/pipermail/antiwar-van/attachments/20090129/5f144e83/attachment.html>