Miami prosecutors ask for reconsideration of Atlanta court ruling on the Cuban Five
Campaign News | Saturday, 1 October 2005
Appeal will prolong imprisonment
MIAMI (USA), September 28 - Federal prosecutors in Florida’s southern district have asked the full 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider the decision overturning the arbitrary and illegal trial of the five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters in 2001 in Miami.
According to an EFE dispatch, U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta presented a petition to the Atlanta court requesting that "all 12 justices" reconsider the case, after the August 9 ruling by a panel of three of that Court’s judges with broad support that is very difficult to refute.
The judges annulled the trial of Cubans Gerardo Hernández, René González, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrerro and Fernando González because they believed that the defendants did not have a "fair and impartial trial" in Miami, where the anti-Cuban ultra-right dominates the media and created an atmosphere contrary to justice, committed wholesale irregularities and violated basic procedures.
The prosecutor added, without explaining why, that the Appeals Court ruling "runs contrary" to Supreme Court decisions in similar cases and to the 11th Circuit Court.
The three-judge panel agreed with arguments presented by the defendants in which they affirmed that prejudice by the Miami ultra-right against the Cuban Revolution created a situation that prevented a fair and impartial trial and ordered, in an unprecedented 93-page decision, the revocation of the sentences against the Five and a retrial, but the Washington government, in its commitment to the Miami mafia, is persisting, with this new step, in its maneuvering to punish those who were fighting against the terrorism that was threatening Cuban and U.S. citizens.
This appeal once again prolongs the imprisonment of the Five heroes, whose release is being demanded worldwide by thousands and thousands of people who already know the truth.
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2005/septiembre/juev29/41fiscal5.html
