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FreeThe5-Antonio

Interview with Leonard Weinglass, attorney for Antonio Guerrero

Interview with Leonard Weinglass, attorney for Antonio Guerrero

Nov. 22, 2006

New briefs have just been filed in the appeals of the convictions of the Cuban Five. What follows is an interview conducted by Gloria La Riva, Coordinator of the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, with Leonard Weinglass, the attorney for one of the Five, Antonio Guerrero.

Gloria La Riva (GLR): Can you please explain where the appeals stand at this point, giving us an update since the Aug. 9 decision that denied the Cuban Five a new trial?

Leonard Weinglass (LW): On Aug. 9, 2006 we received the opinion of the en banc court in Atlanta. By a vote of 10 to 2, that court affirmed the trial court judge who denied venue change. There was a 53-page strong dissent by the two judges who are part of the three-judge panel that originally ruled in our favor on venue.

But the case was remanded back to our original panel—which now consists of two judges—with the direction that the panel consider the remaining nine issues that we originally argued in our appeal. The third judge on the panel retired.

We then heard on Oct. 17 from that panel of two judges. They wanted additional supplemental briefs filed by both sides, with our brief being due first on Nov. 20. We just filed on the eve of the 20th, and the government has until Dec. 17 to respond.

There are three briefs which we filed, addressing all nine issues, but we highlighted four of the nine issues. Those four issues are:

That Count 3, or conspiracy to commit murder, was not proven and should be dismissed. Secondly, the conspiracy to commit espionage was not proven and in any event, the life sentences that were meted out on the basis of that conviction were excessive and outside the range on which the judge could sentence the three to life.

Thirdly we argued that the prosecutors’ procedure during the trial violated prosecutorial norms, was prosecutorial misconduct, and particularly true on their final argument to the jury. The prosecutors pleaded with the jury to find the five guilty because, to use their words, “They came to the United States to destroy the United States.” That was mentioned not just once, but three times. That would reverse, if the court so found, both conspiracy charges, conspiracy to commit espionage and conspiracy to commit murder.

Lastly and forthly, we argued at length the way the trial judge handled the CIPA issues—Classified Information Procedures Act. In this case there were no classified documents. But what happened is the government classified each and every one of the defendants’ own documents top secret and then argued that because of that, the provisions of the CIPA applied. We were denied access to some of our own documents.

We argued those four issues in the new supplemental briefs. Those issues again are: Conspiracy to commit murder should be discharged; secondly the conspiracy to espionage should be reversed for insufficiency of evidence; third, the sentencing on the espionage charges were grossly out of line with existing law; and forthly, the prosecution committed misconduct. Finally the application of the CIPA provisions was wrong in this case.

As things now stand, we are waiting until Dec. 20 when we will receive the answering brief of the government. At that point we will decide whether or not to ask for the opportunity to file a reply brief and we will do that if it is necessary.

We also suggested to the panel that we are willing to participate in the re-argument of any or all of the nine issues if the court so wished.

GLR: Would those be oral arguments?

LW: Yes, if the court so wished, and we are waiting to hear from the court on that.  If we don’t hear further and a reply brief is not necessary, we will then wait for a decision of the panel.  We can’t tell when it will be forthcoming. Our best estimate we have is sometime probably between February to May, in that time frame. We can’t be sure. You have to bear in mind that this is the same panel that took 16 months to decide the issue of venue. It is very hard to predict.

GLR: You explain that two judges are reviewing the issues. If there were a dispute between the two, what happens then?

LW: If the two cannot agree, then the chief judge of the 11th Circuit will appoint a third judge and that judge will then participate in the decision-making. You must have two judges in agreement in order to have a valid decision by the appellate court. If these two judges agree, that’s the end of it. If they don’t it will require a third judge.

GLR: What are the next immediate steps legally if there is not a satisfactory outcome, or a partial victory in the upcoming decision?

LW: We can appeal any issue that this panel rules against us. It would first be to an en banc court of the 11th circuit which we have already visited on the issue of venue. Then we would ask, directly by petition to the United States Supreme Court, for a review of those issues, as well as the venue issue, which we can also bring to the Supreme Court. That is, if we fail before the panel.

GLR: If you are not successful at this level, what options do the attorneys then have?

LW: All we have been talking about at this point in time, is what is called a direct appeal. That is a straight appeal up from the conviction. If we lose everywhere, including in the Supreme Court, we then have a right to start a collateral appeal. It would be an appeal by way of habeas corpus on constitutional grounds, not repeating issues already raised and decided, but based on new issues that have not been raised and are available to us.

GLR: The defense team has worked very diligently in the appeals. Do you have a message to people involved in the support movement in the United States and around the world?

LW: The efforts of the supporters are a great help, that is a lesson of history. It has happened in every major case, and it has even happened in this case. We are convinced that the victory we had, which was an unprecedented victory in August of 2005, was in response to the showing of support that happened domestically and internationally.

The court that overruled that 2005 decision is a court that has never ruled on behalf of any defendant in the last quarter century. We were up against an insurmountable obstacle in that court. But the support historically has mattered.

We have a long way to go, but the current context is very critical. The two judges we are before now and the issues that are being presented, give us at this moment probably our greatest opportunity to free the Five. This is a critical time and it is very essential that the support network be actively engaged in the case.

GLR: You have spoken in recent weeks about the Cuban Five to a number of different audiences, in the forum on September 23 in Washington, DC, during the Salim Lamrani book tour in New York City, at the William Mitchell College of Law on Oct. 16 in Minneapolis to hundreds of law students and professors, as well as the National Lawyers Guild national convention in Austin Texas. What has been the response of the people to your presentation on the Five, hearing about the case for the first time?

LW: I think there is a lot of shock and disbelief, first, that the people have not heard of this case, which was the longest trial in the United States at the time it occurred. It was a trial involving major issues of foreign policy, with the president’s advisor on Cuba testifying under oath, two retired generals and an admiral, plus high-ranking officials of the government of Cuba, who testified.

All of this, the matters of great substance and consequence, were never the subject of major news coverage. And that shocks people. But beyond that, it is the substance of what occurred, the history of Cuba and the United States, of terrorism launched from these shores against a country with whom we are at peace and a fellow member of the United Nations.

All of this is of great shock and disbelief to people who hear about it. I think it would be fair to say that it raises in people’s minds and their feelings, a revulsion against this history of what happened, and a great sense of sympathy for the five who are doing extraordinarily long sentences, for doing the heroic work for their country.

GLR: There were a number of media interviews with you this summer after the reversal of the Five’s victory. Did you get a sense of some of those reporters’ attitudes and feeling about this case, compared for example to the U.S. government’s treatment of the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles?

LW: First, it reminds me of the recently changed attitude of the media towards the Iraq war, where they are now writing a lot about, ‘Where were we when we had the opportunity to expose the lies that got us into this war? Why weren’t we more astute, more aggressive?’ The media’s reaction to the Posada Carriles and newer developments were, ‘Why didn’t we follow this case more closely when it happened?’ There is a lot of mea culpa, There is a lot of blaming themselves and feeling of unworthiness for not paying closer attention. There is a feeling that the Posada case has to be closely reported and implicated together with the case of the Five.

I am pleased to see that, not only with respect to the support network but the media itself, it is reporting the two cases—the Five anti-terrorists and the terrorists like Posada—together, in a single story, exposing the U.S. hypocrisy.

GLR: You recently visited Antonio Guerrero in Florence prison, Colorado. Have you visited the other brothers?  How are they?

LW: I visited Antonio in mid-October, who is as productive as ever. He has a new book coming out, on his poetry, calligraphy and artwork. It includes a portrait of Nelson Mandela, who autographed it and sent it back to Antonio, which I have a copy of.

I have also visited René González in Florida and I visited Gerardo Hernández in California, both of them with respect to the denial of the U.S. government to allow the wives to visit. I introduced them to a new lawyer who will be taking up the cases of Adriana Pérez and Olga Salanueva.

GLR: How are their spirits?

LW: All of them are very high energy, very inspirational to be with, very clear, optimistic, but realistic of what they face and why. These are men who have devoted their lives to fighting for a noble and a just cause and they reflect that in their spirit and attitude.

GLR: On behalf of everyone in the Cuban Five solidarity movement, we thank you Leonard, Richard Klugh and all the defense team for everything you are doing for the five Cuban heroes.

LW: Thank you.

(from the Newsletter of the National Committee to Free The Cuban Five)

Valuable Cause

by Antonio Guerrero

what will be of love and the eleven o'clock sun
and the sad dawn without valuable cause? -- Mario Benedetti

We will show that are a path
traversing shadows of our ancestors,
that we are a mountain and a star
with defined attributes.

We will show that we are invincible,
that always the sun will rise for the valient ones,
no matter they lie in wait, they lock us up,
they keep our skins from other skins.

We will show that in the difficult contests
of conscience and power and vice-versa
never will our firmness cacillate

because love is our masterpiece
and until death fills up with life,
when one has caluable cause

December 8, 1999

A White Rose from January: IV

by Antonio Guerrero

Behind a faraway star,
Above your horizon,
I will bring you my tomorrow
With the dew of the forest

Its brightness will be of gold,
Its beauty of ivory;
Decorous and full of light,
One should walk toward the future.

Long has to be the road
With a tenacious effort,
But beautiful, its destination,
Building the peace.

A BOOK FROM JAIL

By Fernando Rodriguez Sosa..................... (from www.Cubanow.net)

(URl:http://www.cubanow.net/global/loader.php?&secc=7&item=691&cont=show.php)

Cubanow.- "I have often imagined young Pablo Neruda in his room at the student boarding house of 513 Maruri Street, writing his poems, while in a dark and cold cell I wrote mine and made him my first confidant", Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez, unjustly incarcerated for seven years in the United States, wrote in the presentation of his book Confidential Poems.


And he added: "There is something very significant that we have in common: the mixture, in these poems, of the sweeping nature of the beloved motherland, an older woman and mother always present in my poetry".


Conceived as a tribute to the celebrated Chilean writer, Confidential Poems (Editorial Letras Cubanas, 112 pages), the second book of poems by Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez, was born out of love and for love. It consists of 32 texts, in which the author, from his remembrances and his hope, shows unique sensitivity. Poems that, with a simple discourse, pay homage to the purest of man’s feelings.


Years of imprisonment have not prevented Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez from attesting, in poems like these, his unshakeable conviction:



Love, in this quiet time,


of empty mornings and austere twilight,


you will be within reach of my eyes


with your skin that enters my hope.


Who would have believed such cruelty,


dispossessed of the sun, the sea, everything?


But, what dreams could be mine,


but those of the breath of your sap?


I always imagine that you are a song


and that you come up with your syllables of dawn


to the solitude of my silence,


then I become a simple verse


in order to force all the evil


to desist if they try to separate us.



Before this poetry notebook, Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez (Miami, USA, 1958) had presented his first poems in From This Height (2001). The son of Cuban parents, he returned to Cuba with his family when he was one month old to settle definitively in the island. Graduated as a civil engineer, in 1992 he settled in the United States, where six years later he was made a prisoner, tried, and unjustly sentenced, along with four other Cubans for defending the island’s sovereignty and peace in the world.


Love, poetry, liberation was the title of the text used by writer Angel Augier to launch Confidential Poems. "The warm lyric fervor, the anguish dyed with the tenderness love inspires, the anxiety to find in the beloved one the consolation and hope the soul needs –wrote the poet and researcher- is repeated in its generous and seductive variety, to structure a unique hymn made of many and diverse chapters".


Confidential Poems, with drawings by Jose Luis Fariñas, is a book that praises the most universal of human feelings. But, also, by singing to love, this poetry book becomes a beautiful plea for justice, peace, and dignity. Verses that Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez sings as an expression of truth and tenderness, of light and hope. Testimonies of the heart and of the mind.

October , 2005

I will return / Regresaré

I WILL RETURN

I will retum and say to life
I have come back to be your confidant.
From north to south I will deliver to the people
the part of.my love hidden within me.

I will sprinkle the immeasurable happiness
of one who knows to laugh unpretentiously.
From east to west I will raise my countenance
with goodness forever promised.

For where the wind has whipped, harsh and strong,
I will go looking for the leaves on the path.
I will unite their drearns of such fortune

they cannot fly away in a whirlwind.
I will sing my songs to destiny
and with my voice, make death tremble.

June24, 1999

 

REGRESARÉ

Regresaré y le diré a la vida
he vuelto para ser tu confidente.
De norte a sur le entregaré a la gente
la parte del amor en mí escondida.

Regaré la alegría desmedida
de quien sabe reír humildemente.
De este a oeste levantaré la frente
con la bondad de siempre prometida.

Por donde pasó eI viento, crudo y fuerte,
iré a buscar las hojas del camino
y agruparé sus sueños de tal suerte

que no puedan volar en torbellino.
Cantaré mis canciones al destino
y con mi voz haré temblar la muerte.

24 de junio de 1999

Extract from a letter received by Fr Geoff Bottoms

Dear Fr Geoff Bottoms,

Coincidentally in the month of November our "trial" started and now we have submitted to Atlanta's Court of Appeal the last documents of our appeal. Three years have passed from one event to the other. Now we should wait for the decision of that Court. There is not a date that limits their verdict.(...)

Defense Statement

Your Honor,
Allow me to say that I share everything that has been said in this courtroom by my four brothers in arms: Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labaniño, René González and Fernando González. They spoke with dignity and courage to the Court. (...)

Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez



Civil engineer in construction of aerodromes.

Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez was born in Miami on October 18, 1958, in the midst of a humble family that returned to Cuba in the first days of January, 1959, after the victory of the Cuban Revolution.

"Tony", as his friends call him, left prints of his firm and affable character in all the schools where he studied. His vegetarian habits and his liking for yoga won him the humorous nickname of "The Fakir" among his prison partners

After returning to Cuba with his parents in 1962, he began his school life. He received part of his junior high education and all of his senior high "Vladimir I. Lenin" Senior High School in Havana.

In 1974 he entered the Union of Communist Youths, and in 1983 he graduated finished with honors of the major of Engineering in Construction of Aerodromes in the formerly Soviet Union.

In all the places they remember him after the soccer ball, as a poet and as an excellent student. In 1989 he entered the Communist Party of Cuba.

While he worked in Cuban of Aviation, he got married with a Panamanian citizen and traveled to that country. There he had a son, but finally he got divorced and moved to Miami, where he worked and lived austerely. There he the American Margaret Bécquer, Maggy, with whom he got married in 1998. His mother’s name is Mirta Rodríguez Pérez.

THE MISSION

The case of Antonio Guerrero, as that of the other four Cubans detained and accused in Miami of attempting against the national security of the United States, among other charges.

Randy Alonso, member of the National Committee of the Union of Communist Youths of Cuba (UJC) asserted, before the delegates to the II Cuba-USA Encounter of Youths, that the five Cuban prisoners only had the mission of gathering information on the terrorist plans of the Anti-Cuban groups that operate in Florida.

He said that to understand the mission that they carried out in the American territory it was necessary to analyze the indifference of the different North American governments with regard to the accusations of criminal plans against the Island.

The attacks and terrorist actions against Cuba from 1959--year of the Victory of the Revolution – have caused the death to more than three thousand Cuban and lesions to a similar number , as well as material losses calculated in about 100 thousand million dollars.

Alonso who also hosts a television program on topics of interest of first order for the Cuban society, detailed the circumstances in which the five Cubans were arrested in September ,1998, and he denounced that this political and manipulated trial was rather against the Cuban Revolution.

In 1998-- the juvenile leader added-- it was said in the Pentagon that Cuba didn't constitute a threat for the United States. And even the antidrug czar (Barry) McCafrey assured that the Caribbean nation was not a point of drug traffic due to the government actions to combat that lash.

However-- Randy related-- two months later (July, 1998) after Cuba handed in to Washington tests of the terrorist activity organized by ultraright groups that reside in Miami, like the National Cuban-American Foundation , the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) responded with the arrest of the five Cubans.

Alonso stated that the Ministry of the Interior of Cuba gave abundant material on the counterrevolutionary activity organized and financed in that country, as well as audio recordings on similar plans, thanks partly to the work of these five arrested collaborators.

Only in the last decade, when the Island went through its worst economic crisis after the revolutionary victory of 1959, worsened by the blockade of Washington, they were able to prevent 170 actions terrorists, even attack plans against President Fidel Castro.

Alonso reiterated that the five Cubans detained in Miami, three of which were condemned to life imprisonment, gathered information about terrorism toward their country, but they never attempted against the American national security because they didn't have access to classified information.

"They worked and they lived like they could, they didn't receive a millionaire wage, nor had they access to strategic programs of that country."