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Hidden
Injustice Surrounding The Five
By István Ojeda Bello
The judicial system and the U.S. government reverse
their decisions again and again. The sole purpose is
to keep "their" terrorists on the
streets while persisting in
the arbitrary imprisonment of the Cuban
Five.
Terms like "change of venue", "fair trial" or "the
struggle against
terrorism" seem to make sense when they support the
political interests of the moment. That is the only
possible conclusion after observing what happened in
legal proceedings involving Jeffrey K. Skilling,
ENRON ex-chairman and ex- CIA agent
Luis Posada Carriles; compared with how they
have developed the various episodes of the Cuban
heroes trial.
The Supreme Court of the United States will review
the current
standards on the change of venue for a defendant
tried in a city where
there is a hostile and prejudiced background. The
determination is therefore relevant, not for having
remembered the existence of the Cuban Heroes, but
that the court accepted the appeal presented by
Jeffrey K. Skilling.
The ex-head of ENRON felt he did not have a fair
trial because it took place in Houston, Texas, the
same city where most of the 20 000 employees who
lost their jobs following the bankruptcy of the
Company lived.
The Supreme Court has a very flexible notion of what
it means to
assure a fair trial for defendants. They accept the
appeal of a
"prominent" former executive of a leading company,
who held key financial posts under several
administrations; but not for five Cubans whose only
crime was to ensure the safety of Cuba and the
United States.
Meanwhile the executive branch tries to look away
and not see the
tsunami coming. The White House has received 20,000
cards mailed
with a single claim for Obama to assert his
constitutional prerogatives
and drop the charges against the Five.
Silence is the only resource in Washington before a
manifest inability
to show a coherent policy for combating terrorism.
If prosecutors have
been extremely diligent in keeping the Five Cubans
imprisoned; it borders on the ridiculous
incompetence of the Justice Department to put behind
bars one of the worst murderers in recent history of
the continent.
Luis Posada Carriles keeps managing to squirm to end
his fraud trial. Posada now offers the grounds that
he lied to immigration officials because he was
"confused, wrong and suffered from a lack of
memory." He is saying in others the words that he
could "expose" the dirty laundry of the CIA in
violent actions against Cuba.
Washington quickly noted this and continues to do
everything possible to keep under lock and key the
secrets of the decades that Posada was the star CIA
agent attacking Cuba.
Curiously using the handy argument of the danger to
"national security" if those links came to light;
the same argued to keep The Five thousand documents
allegedly evidence of guilt away from the eyes of
the defence team.
As we say in good Cuban: the good guys are prisoners
and the bad guys drink martinis in their houses. |
