The US supreme court today turned down the case of the so-called Cuban Five, who were jailed for espionage in Miami nearly 10 years ago. The five, who infiltrated rightwing exile groups hostile to the Cuban government, were seeking a retrial on the grounds that they did not receive a fair trial.
In 2005, the five won an argument in a lower court for a retrial outside Florida – the centre for anti-Castro feeling in the US – but that decision was reversed on appeal and the case went all the way to the supreme court.
Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, and René González were arrested in Miami in 1998 and accused of acting as agents for a foreign government. They claimed that they were monitoring rightwing exile groups responsible for acts of terrorism against Cuba.
The Cuban government claims that more than 3,000 people have died as a result of various exiles' plots, from the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and the bombing of a Cuban plane in 1976, in which 73 people were killed, to more recent attacks such as the explosions in Havana hotels and clubs in 1997 aimed at the holiday industry. Such plots have usually been hatched in Miami and it was groups based there that the five, two of them US-born, infiltrated in the 90s.
A trial was held in Miami in 2001, despite legal objections that they would be unable to get a fair hearing there because anti-Castro sentiment was so rife. The five were convicted and sentenced to terms varying from 15 years (René González) to double life plus 15 years (Hernández).
The five are a cause celebre in Cuba, where their faces adorn billboards and where mass demonstrations are held in their name. The case has received little coverage in the US, although the five received support from such figures as Harry Belafonte, Desmond Tutu, Danny Glover, Wole Soyinka and José Saramago.
The case was mentioned in the Cuban parliament last week by the speaker and former ambassador to the UN, Ricardo Alarcón, and the supreme court's decision is likely to be seen in Cuba as a sign of how relations between the two countries have improved – or not – since Barack Obama was elected president.
The San Francisco-based Free the Five campaign said the men acted "in order to prevent terrorist attacks on their country of Cuba. Their actions were never directed at the US government and they never harmed anyone … They infiltrated the terrorist organisations in Miami to inform Cuba of imminent attacks."
The Obama administration has already announced an easing of restrictions for Americans travelling to the island and has indicated that it is seeking better relations with Cuba. Earlier this month, the Organisation of American States lifted Cuba's suspension to bring Havana back into Latin America's diplomatic fold, despite opposition from the US.