letter of september to Obama

(…) Several U.S. Army generals, appearing as witnesses, had nevertheless testified to the absence of espionage in this case, a fact that the Pentagon later confirmed. “Conspiring to spy” as the principal charge was chosen purposely, as this permitted the judge to limit access to the case file for the defense lawyers and also permitted the accusation to not be required to produce material proofs; the element of intentionality was sufficient for constituting the crime.

On the base of these elements, in 2005, a group of experts on arbitrary detention from the UN, had called for a revision of the trial and the liberation of the Cuban Five, which brought about, in the same year, a panel of three judges from the Appeals Court of the 11th Circuit Court of Atlanta that annulated the sentences and ordered a new trial in a place neutral this time, a decision that rests on American judicial precedents themselves concerning a change of where the trial takes place. But this did not take into count the furious reaction of Alberto Gonzalez, George Bush’s famous Attorney General, who demanded that this decision be revised by a new panel of 12 judges. In 2006, these judges annulated the precedent panel’s decision and confirmed the Miami court’s initial decision.

(…) After several sudden new judicial developments, the Cuban Five’s lawyers brought the case before the United States Supreme Court in 2009, resting their arguments on several “Amicus Curiae” coming from numerous countries all over the world, among which the French Association of Jurists “Droit Solidarité”. Ten Nobel Peace Prize laureates were also mobilized. The rejection, without motivation, by the Supreme Court, of the demand for the reconsideration of the case was criticized by an Amnesty International report that brought out the fact that the United States justice system does not apply the same criteria for the five Cubans as it does in other cases, notably concerning the change of place where the trial takes place, and also the lack of equal terms between the defense and the prosecution.

With the different violations of defense rights for the Cuban Five evoked earlier, the United States justice system gives a bad image of itself to the rest of the world, that of a justice system manipulated at will by Mafia-ring politics and by an executive power always ready to punish Cubans that are loyal to independence and to the political and social systems of their country.

Let us take note that the United States justice system has kept locked up in prison for 12 years now these five Cubans who came to Miami to fight against terrorist attacks being prepared against their country whereas this same justice system refuses to this day to pursue, to incarcerate and to extradite Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch*. (...) Does not this incoherent comportment on the part of the United States concerning the anti-terrorist struggle involve it, from a legal point of view, in their international responsibility towards Resolution 1373 of the United Nations Security Council (voted on September 28th 2001 after the attacks on September 11th)?