Press Coverage of Cuban Five Appeals Press Conference

Cuban spy claims innocence in shooting down planes that dropped pro-democracy leaflets in 1996

by Curt Anderson
Mar. 22, 2011
Reprinted from AP

MIAMI — In a new appeal, a convicted Cuban spy insists he is innocent of any role in shooting down exile planes that dropped pro-democracy leaflets in 1996 on the communist island and helped rescue migrants in the ocean.

“I came to Florida in service to my country, unarmed, to contribute to end violence against my people and therefore to save lives,” Gerardo Hernandez, 45, said in a sworn statement filed in Miami federal court. “That I would be charged with a conspiracy to murder was the furthest thing from my thinking and reality.”

Hernandez is one of the so-called Cuban Five, convicted in 2001 of spying in the U.S. He is also the only one serving a life sentence for a murder conspiracy conviction arising from the Brothers to the Rescue planes that were shot down by Cuban fighter jets, which killed four men.

Attorneys for Hernandez are asking U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard to throw out his conviction and sentence, based in part on his new claims filed Monday.

In the documents, Hernandez contends he was never told that he could have been tried separate from the others on the murder conspiracy charge. If he had, Hernandez said he would have testified in his own defense that he was innocent, something he did not do in the spy trial.

Attorney Richard Klugh said Hernandez could not testify in the spy trial because he would have had to admit on the stand that he was a Cuban agent and could not call his co-defendants as witnesses.

“He clearly had no involvement in the shootdown in 1996,” Klugh said. “Clearly there was a clamor for someone to take responsibility for it, but Gerardo Hernandez is not responsible.”

The Miami U.S. attorney’s office had no immediate comment.

Hernandez said in the affidavit he was unaware of any Cuban plan to shoot down the exile planes. Instead, he said he was involved in a plan labeled “Operation Venecia” to call international attention to their purported violations of Cuban sovereignty.

“The idea that Cuba would elaborate a plan to confront those planes on international waters was to me, and still is, absurd and irrational,” Hernandez said in the affidavit.

In one new wrinkle, Hernandez also said that he was replaced for several months by an agent known as “A-4” or “Miguel,” who took possession of a computer disk the spies used to decode messages from Havana. That’s significant because Hernandez said he did not have the disk when he supposedly sent a message warning that no Cuban agents should fly on the exile planes from Feb. 24-27 in 1996.

The Brothers to the Rescue planes were shot down Feb. 24.

His affidavit also contends U.S. prosecutors portrayed a commendation he received and a promotion as linked to the downing of the planes. In fact, Hernandez said, he was promoted from lieutenant to captain along with dozens of others strictly based on length of service.

Hernandez has lost several other appeals, while three of the Cuban Five had their sentences reduced in 2009 because they never obtained top secret U.S. information — despite efforts to do so — from military installations such as the Miami-based Southern Command and Key West’s Boca Chica Naval Air Station. The five are hailed as heroes in Cuba.

Convicted Cuban spy declares innocence

Gerardo Hernandez, a Castro agent convicted with four others in the Cuban Five spy trial, says he had no clue about his government’s planned shoot-down of exile planes in 1996 that killed four Miami men

by Jay Weaver
Mar. 22, 2011
Reprinted from Miami Herald

Gerardo Hernandez, the only defendant convicted of a murder conspiracy in the Cuban government’s shoot-down of Miami exile planes over the Florida Straits, says in a new sworn statement that he had no role whatsoever in the alleged plot and that his life sentence should be thrown out.

Hernandez, 45, filed the affidavit in Miami federal court in a bid for a new trial after losing appeals all the way to the Supreme Court that challenged his conspiracy conviction in the killing of four Miami men flying in two Brothers to the Rescue planes in 1996.

“Prior to the events of February 24, 1996, and up to the present time, I knew and know nothing about any alleged plan to shoot down aircraft of the Brothers to the Rescue,” wrote Hernandez, who was also convicted in 2001of being an unregistered Cuban agent and an espionage conspiracy.

“None of the actions that I did take in advance of February 24, 1996, were intended to be part of any such alleged plan, nor was I aware that any of my actions would contribute to any such alleged plan, if it existed,” Hernandez wrote in the affidavit, which supports his habeas corpus petition filed last year in Miami.

Hernandez and other members of the so-called Cuban Five were convicted for their roles in an intelligence network sent from Havana to spy on South Florida’s exile community and military installations. Their stated mission: to thwart violent campaigns by exile militants to topple Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

They infiltrated the exile group Brothers to the Rescue, which regularly flew missions to search for Cuban rafters and to drop political leaflets over Havana. They also tried to penetrate the Southern Command in Miami and the Boca Chica Naval Air Station in Key West.

In the habeas petition, Hernandez argued that his original attorney, Paul McKenna, provided “ineffective assistance” — a factor required to win a new trial — because he focused too much on a defense that the shoot-down happened lawfully within Cuba territory, not over international waters, as federal prosecutors maintained and the jury found.

As a result, McKenna failed to challenge the murder conspiracy charge more forcefully, according to the petition. McKenna has declined to comment.

In his affidavit, Hernandez said his lawyer should have sought to sever his murder conspiracy case from the other four Cuban defendants standing trial with him..

“Had I known that, I would have insisted on exercising my right to testify in my defense in the conspiracy to murder trial to show how wrong the proseuction’s interpretations of its evidence were, and provide the jury with the truth,” he wrote in the affidavit, filed by appellate attorney, Richard Klugh.

“He had no involvement in the shoot-down of 1996,” Klugh said an press conference phone call Tuesday.

But the 12-person federal jury concluded that Hernandez, a leader among the Cuban Five spies, communicated with his Cuban intelligence handlers about two fellow agents who had infiltrated and flown with the Brothers to the Rescue. The jurors found that Cuban officials transmitted encrypted radio messages, warning Hernandez that the other agents should not fly on any Brothers’ missions between Feb. 24 and Feb. 27, 1996.

The two agents — Rene Gonzalez and Juan Pablo Roque — were instructed to use code phrases during radio communications with Cuban air traffic control if they could not avoid flying with the Brothers on those dates.

Gonzalez was convicted of being a Castro agent as part of the Cuban Five. Roque returned to Cuba just before the February 1996 shoot-down and reappeared a couple of days later speaking on TV from Cuba about his mission in Miami.

The Cuban Five five have gained heroic status in their country and international support around the globe. Their faces are plastered on billboards and posters throughout Cuba. But Hernandez, who led La Red Avispa, or the Wasp Network, in Miami, was the only agent convicted in connection with the shoot-down — and the only one serving a life sentence. The others were convicted of being unregistered Cuban agents or of espionage charges.