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The
Untold Story of the Cuban Five (Part X)
By Ricardo Alarcón, president of the
National Assembly of People's Power
On March 6, 2009 twelve
separate amicus briefs were presented in support of
the Cuban Five’s petition for certiorari before the
Supreme Court, the largest number of amicus filings
ever to have urged Supreme Court to review a
criminal conviction.
Eight briefs were submitted by institutions or
persons based on the United States: National
Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers; Florida
Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Miami
Chapter; National Jury Project; National Lawyers
Guild and National Conference of Black Lawyers;
William C. Velazquez Institute and Mexican American
Political Association; Civil Rights Clinic at Howard
University School of Law; Center for International
Policy and Council on Hemispheric Affairs; and one
amicus brief submitted by Professors Nelson P.
Valdés, Guillermo Grenier, Félix Masud-Piloto, José
A. Cobas, Lourdes Arguelles, Rubén G. Rumbaut and
Louis Pérez, distinguished Cuban-American Scholars,
authors of some of the most important books about
the Cuban emigration to the US.
The support from around the world was really
impressive. It included:
An amicus presented by ten Nobel Laureates: José
Ramos-Horta (President of the Republic of East
Timor), Wole Soyinka, Adolfo Pérez Esqivel, Nadine
Gordimer, Rigoberta Menchú, José Saramago, Zhores
Alferov, Darío Fo, Günter Grass and Máiread Corrigan
Maguire.
Another brief was submitted by a record number of
legislators from every corner of the world,
including the entire Senate of Mexico and the
National Assembly of Panama, both having discussed
and unanimously decided to join. Also by Mary
Robinson, former President of Ireland and United
Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; dozens
of members of the European Parliament from every
political group, including three current vice-presidents
and two former Presidents and hundreds of lawmakers
from Brazil, Belgium, Chile, Germany, Ireland, Japan,
Mexico, Scotland and the United Kingdom.
This document added similar appeals by other Nobel
Laureates, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Harold
Pinter, and by the Latin-American Council of
Churches, the permanent Conference of Latin-American
and Caribbean political parties, the Latin-American
Parliament as well as other regional legislative
bodies and specific resolutions of support approved
by national parliaments from Namibia, Mali, Russia,
Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Peru, Ireland,
Switzerland and Belgium, among many others.
Two separate amicus came from a wide spectrum of
lawyers’ organizations and personalities: One was
submitted by the Ibero-American Federation of
Ombudsman, the Order of Attorneys of Brazil (membership
700 thousands), the Belgium bar associations, the
Berlin and other German bars, the International
Federation for Human Rights and a number of
religious, legal, human rights organizations, law
professors, and lawyers from Argentina, Chile,
Colombia, Ecuador, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Panama,
Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. Among the
personalities signing it were Federico Mayor
Zaragoza, former Director-General of UNESCO, and
Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia of Chile.
The other amicus was presented by the International
Association of Democratic Lawyers, the American
Association of Jurists, the Indian Association of
Lawyers, Droit Solidarité, the Haldane Society and
other legal organizations from Italy, Japan, the
Philippines, Portugal and Belgium.
A number of American lawyers volunteered in drafting
those papers (as required by law), consulting and
coordinating with the many individuals involved and
presenting the briefs on time and with due respect
to the technical and other parameters that the Court
has established. Every individual or institution
submitting an amicus brief had to identify himself/herself
with specific data, to sign it personally and pay a
filing fee. Pursuant to Rule 37.6 of the Court “no
counsel for a party has authored this brief, in
whole or in part.
No person or entity other than amici curiae, or its
counsel have made any monetary contribution to the
preparation or submission of this brief.” It was a
hell of a work for which many people deserve being
recognized. All the amicus briefs, along with a
complete list of the amici can be found on SCOTUS
blog (www.scotusblog.com)
and on
www.antiterroristas.cu.
We shall never know what the Justices or their
clerks thought, if anything, about those documents.
Nobody knows if they even glanced over them. The
amici didn’t get an answer or a single comment--not
even a clerk’s receipt note.
Nobody knows either how the Justices pronounced
themselves regarding the petition for certiorari. We
only learned that on June 14th the petition of the
Cuban Five was thrown out with the other petitions
the Court had decided not to hear.
A famous Mexican poet once defined US imperial
attitude with the melding of two words: arrogance
and ignorance. It appears that the Court, supremely,
epitomizes both.
Taken from
Counterpunch |
