Cuban fiv..four

The Cuban Five, also known as the Miami Five[1] (Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González) are five Cuban intelligence officers convicted in Miami of conspiracy to commit espionage, conspiracy to commit murder, acting as an agent of a foreign government, and other illegal activities in the United States. The Five were in the United States to observe and infiltrate the U.S. Southern Command and the Cuban-American groups Alpha 66, the F4 Commandos, the Cuban American National Foundation, and Brothers to the Rescue.[2][3] They were part of "La Red Avispa", or the Wasp Network,

At their trial, evidence was presented that the Five infiltrated the Miami-based Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue, obtained employment at the Key West Naval Air Station in order to send the Cuban government reports about the base, and had attempted to penetrate the Miami facility of U.S. Southern Command.[3] On February 24, 1996, two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft were shot down by Cuban military jets in international airspace while flying away from Cuban airspace, killing the four U.S. citizens aboard.[3] One of the Five, Gerardo Hernández, was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder for supplying information to the Cuban government which according to the prosecution led to the shootdown. The Court of Appeals has, however, reversed the conviction on the conspiracy to commit murder, since there is no evidence that Hernández knew the shootdown would occur in international airspace.[3]

For their part, Cuba acknowledged, after denying the fact for nearly three years, that the five men were intelligence agents, but says they were spying on Miami's Cuban exile community, not the U.S. government.[4] Cuba contends that the men were sent to South Florida in the wake of several terrorist bombings in Havana masterminded by anti-communist militant Luis Posada Carriles, a former Central Intelligence Agency operative.[4][5]

The Five appealed their convictions and the alleged lack of fairness in their trial has received substantial international criticism.[6] A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta overturned their convictions in 2005, citing the "prejudices" of Miami’s anti-Castro Cubans, but the full court later reversed the five's bid for a new trial and reinstated the original convictions.[4] In June 2009 the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case.[7] In Cuba, the Five are viewed as national heroes and portrayed as having sacrificed their liberty in the defense of their country.[8]

The "Cuban Five" were Cuban intelligence officers who were part of "La Red Avispa", or Wasp Network, which the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) dismantled with 10 arrests in 1998.[14] According to Gerardo Hernández, the leader of the cell, and as reported by Saul Landau in the political magazine CounterPunch, the network observed and infiltrated a number of Cuban-American groups: Alpha 66, the F4 Commandos, the Cuban American National Foundation, and Brothers to the Rescue.[2] The court found that they had infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based organization that flew small aircraft over the Florida straits in efforts to rescue rafters fleeing Cuba, and had on some flights intentionally violated Cuban airspace and dropped leaflets.[3] They obtained employment as laborers at the Key West Naval Air Station and sent the Cuban government detailed reports about the movement of aircraft and military personnel, and descriptions of the layout of the facility and its structures.[3] They also attempted to penetrate the Miami facility of Southern Command, which plans and oversees operations of all U.S. military forces throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.[3] On February 24, 1996, two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft were shot down by Cuban military jets in international airspace while flying away from Cuban airspace, killing four U.S. citizens aboard.[3] The U.S. government also accused the remaining four of lying about their identities and sending 2,000 pages of unclassified information obtained from U.S. military bases to Cuba. The network received clandestine communications from Cuba via the Atención numbers station.

U.S. government organizations, including the FBI, had been monitoring Cuban spy activities for over 30 years, but made only occasional arrests.[13] However, after the two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft were shot down by Cuban MiGs in February 1996 and four U.S. citizens were killed, on the basis of information sent to Cuba by an infiltrator of the group, the Clinton administration launched a crackdown.[13] According to U.S. attorney José Pertierra, who acts for the Venezuelan government in its attempts to extradite Luis Posada Carriles, the crackdown was aided by the cooperation of the Cuban authorities with the FBI in 1997. The Cubans provided 175 pages of documents to FBI agents investigating Posada Carriles's role in the 1997 bombings in Havana, but the FBI failed to use the evidence to follow up on Posada. Instead, they used it to uncover the spy network that included the Cuban Five.[15][16] According to FBI evidence at the trial, the FBI had been monitoring the communications of Hernández, whose information enabled the shootdown, for several years prior to that event.[17] He was not arrested until 1998.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Five