HAVANA, Cuba -- August 30 - Several Nobel laureates and leftist intellectuals called for the release of five Cuban agents awaiting a new trial in the United States in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales released Tuesday.
Desmond Tutu, Noam Chomsky and Rigoberta Menchú were among hundreds who signed the letter, which said "nothing justifies (the men's) incarceration" given a recent ruling to throw out their previous convictions. Earlier this month, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta nullified convictions and sentences from the men's trial in Miami, citing prejudicial publicity. Many Cuban immigrants opposed to Fidel Castro and his communist government live in the Miami area.
The men — Ramón Labañino, Gerardo Hernández, René González, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando González — were convicted in June 2001 of serving as unregistered agents of a foreign government. They remain imprisoned pending a new trial.
"This arbitrary situation which is extremely painful for them and their families cannot
be allowed to continue"," said the letter, also signed by American
personalities such as Alice Walker, Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte.
"We think this can have a very positive impact," Maria Eugenia Guerrero, Antonio
Guerrero's sister, said at a news conference Tuesday.
Three of the men were also convicted of espionage conspiracy for efforts to
penetrate U.S. military bases, and one was additionally found guilty of murder conspiracy in the deaths of four Miami-based pilots whose small, private planes
were shot down by a Cuban MiG in 1996.
The men all acknowledge being Cuban agents but said they were spying on "terrorist" exile groups opposed to Castro, not the U.S. government.
Three of the men had been serving life sentences, one was sentenced to 19 years
in prison and the other 15 years.