Listen to Miami 5 laywer on the BBC
Campaign News | Saturday, 19 January 2008
LEONARD Weinglass, lead attorney for the Miami 5, appeared on daytime radio in a broadcast heard by aproximately two million people across the UK.
The celebrated human rights activist was invited to speak on the Simon Mayo programme aired on Radio 5, on Thursday 17 January.
On the show Mr Weinglass called for the Miami 5's immediate release and added: "They came without arms, they committed no crime and no acts of violence or sabotage and their activities were of a strictly intelligence based nature."
Mr Weinglass had just completed a tour of the UK hosted by the Cuba Solidarity Campaign in order to mobilise support for the five Cubans, wrongly jailed in the US for trying to prevent terrorist organisations based in Miami from carrying out attacks against their homeland.
To listen to the interview go to:
http://www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk/weinglass1.mp3
Or read the full transcript below.
Transcript of interview with Leonard Weinglass on the Simon Mayo show, 17 January 2008, BBC Radio Five.
SM:
Let’s speak to Leonard Weinglass. He’s an American lawyer, a leading lawyer in the US. Spending his career taking on what I guess you could call difficult political cases. He’s currently representing five Cuban citizens known as the Cuban Five. They are accused of espionage. They have become celebrities in Cuba and Florida. Leonard Weinglass - Good afternoon to you sir.
LW:
Yes. Good afternoon Simon.
SM:
Thank you for being patient. We might have an interrupted conversation as we bring our listeners the latest on the plane at Heathrow. But we continue as you have an interesting story to tell. Explain who these five men are whom you are representing.
LW:
Yes. These are five Cuban men who came to the United States in the 1990s after a series of attacks in Cuba on Cuban hotels and tourist infrastructure which were launched from southern Florida. The Cuban Government protested each of these attacks to the US. The US did nothing to stop it. So these five men came to these shores from Cuba in order to infiltrate and monitor the activities of the groups that had been attacking Cuba.
SM:
Who was it who was carrying out the attacks?
LW:
These are groups, militant groups, armed groups that exist in southern Florida. They are drawn mainly from the 650,000 member exile community. They have training camps on the weekends. They use sophisticated arms - AK47s - and they have been launching attacks on Cuba frequently over the last four decades. But in the 1990s, as Cuba attempted to establish the tourism industry, the frequency of the attacks increased in an effort to destroy that industry. Cuba tried its best to stop it but, when it did not receive the assistance of the US Government, which knows of these groups, knows of these camps, but did nothing to stop it, the Cubans then, in an effort of self-help sent these monitors to infiltrate these groups. They came without arms, they committed no acts of violence or sabotage in the US. Their activities were strictly of an intelligence nature.
SM:
So who are these five people and who employs them or employed them?
LW:
These are agents of the Cuban interior Department. Three of them had served with distinction in the Angola campaign which ended apartheid in South Africa, but they are not experts in armaments or anything of that nature. They are also not experts in American national security. That was not their mission at all. Their mission was solely to infiltrate these groups and to report back to Cuba.
SM:
And is that what they did? Can you give us an example of the kind of activity that they were involved with?
LW:
Yes, one was rather dramatic. Apparently these groups, these militant groups, these armed groups in southern Florida, had planned an attack in the Revolution Square in Havana in a point in time when President Castro would be addressing hundreds of thousands of people. Their plan was to arm an aircraft with explosives and a remote control device, and fly it into the crowd causing a great deal of loss of life, and that was intercepted by one of the Five and was reported back to Cuba. Incidentally, there has been a civil suit brought by the individual in Miami who was funding this project, and in his civil suit his lawyers contend that he paid for the helicopters and the remote control equipment and he had never been reimbursed by the Cuban-American National Foundation which exists in Miami.
SM:
They were tried and convicted of using false identification, espionage, conspiracy to commit murder. Can you explain the charges then, because you said they came over with peaceful intentions and no weapons?
LW:
Yes, that’s true. Actually, Simon, the two main charges were both conspiracy charges: conspiracy to commit espionage and conspiracy to commit murder. As you know in a conspiracy charge in the States, the Government need not prove that the actual crime occurred. In fact, the US Attorney prosecuting the case told the jury in his opening remarks they had no proof there was actual espionage. This is the first ever conspiracy charge of espionage where the Government did not have even a single page of classified information that was allegedly taken from the US.
The conspiracy to commit murder did not involve a murder in the US. What it involved was a shoot-down in 1996 of two aircraft belonging to these groups which attempted to fly over Cuba but were intercepted by the Cuban airforce and were shot down causing the loss of four lives. One of the Five, Gerardo, was charged with being in a conspiracy with the pilots who brought the planes down, but the Government produced no evidence that he had anything whatsoever to do with this incident. He merely was the Cuban agent who oversaw the infiltration of that group, and even the Government in its papers to the Appeal Court acknowledged that it had an insurmountable obstacle gaining a conviction because of lack of proof.
SM:
The State Department of course are very clear on this. They say that three of the Cuban Five were living in the States with false identities and fraudulent identity documents, and had explicit escape instructions provided by Cuba’s Directorate of intelligence, and back up false identities. The Jury rejected the Defence arguments and convicted the defendants on every charge lodged against them.
LW:
Yes, it’s true that the Jury did convict on all 26 charges, but that Jury was drawn from the Miami community, and the Miami community is home to over 650,000 exiles. It happens to be the one city in the US where the Five could not get a fair trial. No agent of the Cuban Government could possibly get a fair trial before that community. As a matter of fact, a three judge panel of the Federal Appeals Court, made up of three judges, with over 80 years judicial experience combined, wrote a 93 page opinion saying that they could not and did not receive a fair trial in Miami. None the less, in an extraordinary move, that decision was set aside by 12 judges who represent the full Court and that is why the case is continuing now on appeal, but really they never had a chance before a Miami Jury. 168 jurors were questioned by the Judge in order to find 12, and the 12 they found you could hardly say were fair. The Foreman of the Jury was a man who said under questioning that he believed the Cuban Government was a Communist dictatorship and he would be pleased the day it would be gone. That man was the lead juror in this case and the other 11 had similar opinions.
SM:
Is it fair to call them spies?
LW:
No, not at all because no national security information of the US was taken. That was not their mission. That was not their interest. Not a single classified document was in the case so even the Government said they could not prove espionage. All they could prove was “conspiracy” which was an agreement to commit espionage, which the Government claim might happen at some unspecified time in the future. This is a far cry from being a spy.
SM:
How long have they been incarcerated so far?
LW:
Coming up on 10 years. Three of them received life sentences, one received a double life sentence: one 19 years, one 17 years. But to answer a comment that you made, it is true that they were agents of the Cuban Government and they failed to register with the then Attorney General. That is a violation of law that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years. They should be released this year under that count.
Then several of them used false identification. That’s also a crime under the US code. However, they had a defence to both, even though they committed violations. Their defence would be one which is called “necessity of justification”, which is an admission of a violation of the law but an attempt to justify or excuse it on the grounds that they were here to avoid a greater harm, which is an acknowledged defence in the US. And the greater harm was the continuing attacks against their homeland where over 3,000 people have been killed incidentally in the 40 year history according to the Cubans’ count. And even an Italian tourist was killed just before they came while he sat in a hotel lobby reading a magazine. So these five people, trying to end a reign of terror, a reign of murder, a reign of extensive property damage, and they did technically violate in the false names and failure to register, but I believe that an American Jury outside the city of Miami, hearing the full story would have acquitted them on the ground of justification and necessity.
SM:
I’m just struck, Leonard, by a description from one liberal website - I mention its political affiliation because of its summing up of your career. It says writing about you, Leonard, it says you have represented communists, terrorists and cop killers. Is that an unfair assessment of the cases you have taken on over the years?
LW:
Yes, of course I think it is. I would prefer to say I have been privileged to represent people of political principle, dissidents, people who oppose war, people who oppose segregation, people who have dedicated their lives to fighting for a more just equitable country. But like most attorneys I have been called upon to defend people who are not so engaged, and who are unfortunate people who are part of the vast wave of people who have been imprisoned in the US for various social ills resulting from their early childhood or other ills that have befallen them in their life So I have had it both ways, yes, but I don’t think that would be a fair characterisation.
SM:
I thought I’d offer it to you for your assessment, and you have given it. You have been involved in colourful cases as you say over the years with representing the kidnappers of Patty Hearst and Jane Fonda who we spoke to on the programme the year before last. How do you decide to take a case? What are the issues and principles you are looking for?
LW:
Well, I have always been a single practitioner, a one man office. It limits the number of cases I can take, so I have to be pretty careful in committing my time. Every case comes at me, involves one thing or another, one part of the country or another or other parts of the world and so I have to fit it into a schedule that’s already crowded, but as I think I’ve mentioned before in an interview, the typical case comes at me with an introduction that goes something like this: “You’re the fifth Attorney I’ve talked to. No one will take my case. And I’ve always been pleased to fill that void.”
SM:
And why is it that there is no one else doing it? Why would you be the fifth or sixth or seventh?
LW:
Well, we have a situation in the US where I believe we have 700,000 attorneys which is way too many for any society, but we do have that larger number, 90% of the practising attorneys service the top 10% of the income level in the US, so the corporate level. That leaves 10% to service the remaining 90%. So it’s very difficult for a person who is of lesser means to be able to secure an attorney to represent them. That’s the reality of the situation here.
SM:
We were in New Hampshire last week looking at the Presidential elections in the first primary there. In your opinion and in your world does it make any difference who becomes President? Would any of them tackle the issues you are most passionate about?
LW:
Well, it does make a difference. The Bush administration is not the only administration that’s curtailed civil liberties in the US. The Clinton administration before them in 1994 and 1996 had already done that with various anti-terrorism measures they got through. But I will say this - Barack Obama is probably the only candidate in recent memory who has been involved at state level when he was a state legislator in amending and correcting and reforming the death penalty laws in the State of Illinois and that does get my attention.
SM:
I appreciate you talking to us today, thank you very much indeed and apologies for the curtailed nature of the conversation, I’m sure you understand, Leonard Weinglass, joining us from our New York studio.
