The Cuban Five Pending Supreme Court Case - Come hear about it!!!

Gloria La Riva. As coordinator of the National Committee to Free the Cuban

Five, Ms. La Riva has spoken

extensively on the case as well as the worldwide campaign to win their freedom. She

has spoken on the Five at

forums in the United States, Europe, Brazil, India, Japan, Bolivia, Venezuela,

Argentina, Canada and Cuba.

Co-Sponsors: International Law Society, ACLU, La Raza of Loyola, NLG

Food: Of Course!!!!

What: Gloria La Riva will be speaking about the recent developments in the Cuban

Five’s pending Supreme Court

Case, as well as the history or their legal struggle.

The Cuban Five’s mission:

The Cuban Five are five Cuban men imprisoned in the United States since 1998. Their

story begins in the early

1990s, when each one entered Miami from Cuba. They came to infiltrate extremist

rightwing Cuban-American

organizations to prevent those groups from carrying out terrorist attacks on Cuba.

After Cuban dictator

Batista was overthrown in 1959, thousands of reactionaries left Cuba for Miami.

Using the most violent of

these exiles, the U.S. government launched a program of terrorism to try to

destabilize and overthrow the

Cuban government, a policy that continues today. Since 1959, 3,478 Cubans have died

from terrorist attacks.

Despite the Cuban Five’s mission to monitor and stop the terrorists’ attacks, the

FBI arrested them on Sept.

12, 1998 in Miami. They were charged with failure to register as foreign agents and

conspiracy to commit

espionage, among other charges. But the Five never committed espionage nor planned

to, nor was the U.S.

government their target. The object of their monitoring was the Miami terrorists.

“The Five were not prosecuted because they violated American law, but because their

work exposed those who

were.” Leonard Weinglass, appellate attorney

The Five’s seven-month trial took place in Miami in an atmosphere of deep anti-Cuba

prejudice. The climate of

bias in that city assured the Five’s convictions. The judge repeatedly refused to

grant a change of venue,

even to Ft. Lauderdale, 25 miles away. Yet one year after prosecuting the Five in

Miami, the same U.S.

attorney’s office argued in another federal trial that Miami was not suitable for a

case linked with Cuba.

The world demands freedom for the Five

In May 2005, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions declared the Five’s

detention illegal and

arbitrary, and their sentences a violation of the International Convention on

Civilian and Political Rights.

In August 2005, the Five won a sweeping victory:

A federal appeals court overturned their convictions and ordered a new trial,

declaring that a “Perfect

Storm” of Miami prejudice and the prosecution’s misconduct denied the Five a fair

trial. But the Bush

administration appealed the decision and a year later, their convictions were

upheld. In January 2009,

defense counsel filed a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking a

hearing on the Five’s case.