The Face of Impunity
By Ricardo Alarcón, president of the National Assembly of People's Power
• As they recognized during voir dire, the kidnapping of Elian González and its consequences for the community was very much in the minds of those chosen to be jurors at the trial of the Cuban Five a few months after the six-year-old boy was rescued by the federals.
Like everybody else they had followed the events related to Elian which saturated the news. The faces of the kidnappers, their promoters and supporters, as well as others involved in the scandal had become quite familiar to the jury members. The faces, and two features of the Elian drama: its unique nature and its direct connection with the trial of the five Cubans.
First, the perplexing behavior of every Miami public official, from its Federal Congress members, the mayor and the city commissioners, to firefighters and members of the police force, who openly refused to obey the law and did nothing to put an end to the most publicized case of child abuse ever to occur. And, secondly, but no less incredibly, that nothing happened to a group of individuals who had so clearly violated the law with the abduction of a child and the violence and disturbances that they created all over the city when he was rescued by the federal government. Nobody was prosecuted, arrested, or fined. No local authority was dismissed, replaced or asked to resign. The Elian case demonstrated how anti-Castro impunity reigns in Miami.
When the jurors first took their seats in the Court room to do their citizens’ duty they were probably taken by surprise. There, live, were the "Miami celebrities" that they were so used to seeing, day and night, on local TV. And they were together, sometimes smiling and embracing each other, like old pals. The kidnappers and the "law enforcement" guys hand and glove with the prosecutors (those valiant people who never showed up when a little boy was being molested in front of the media).
The jurors spent seven months in that room looking at, and being watched by the same people so familiar to them who now were on the witness stand, in the public area or at the news corner, the same people there frequently going to find in the parking lot, at the building entrance, in the corridors. Some of them now and then proudly displaying the attire used for their last military incursion to Cuba.
The jurors heard them explaining in detail their criminal exploits and saying time and again that they were not talking about the past. It was a strange parade of individuals to appear in a court of law, acknowledging their violent acts against Cuba planned, prepared and launched from their own neighborhood.
There, making speeches, demanding the worst punishment, slandering and threatening the defense lawyers.
The judge did what she could to try to preserve calm and dignity. She certainly ordered the jury, many times, not to consider certain inappropriate remarks but, in doing so, could not erase their prejudicial and fearsome effects from the jurors’ minds.
The consequences were obvious. The Court of Appeal panel’s decision stated it in clear terms: "The evidence at trial disclosed the clandestine activities not only of the defendants, but also of the various Cuba exile groups and their military camps that continue to operate in the Miami area. The perception that these groups could inflict harm on jurors who rendered a verdict unfavorable to their views was palpable". (Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeal, No. 01-17176, 03-11087)
But there was more. After hearing and seeing the abundant evidence of terrorist acts that the defendants had tried to avert, the government succeeded in defending the terrorists by having the Court inexplicably agree to remove from the jury the right to exonerate the Five on the basis of legal necessity, which was the foundation of their defense.
The heart of the matter, in this case, was the need for Cuba to protect its people from the criminal attempts of terrorists who enjoy total impunity in U.S. territory. The law in the United States is clear: if persons act to prevent a greater harm, even if they violate the law in the process, they will be excused from any criminality because society recognizes the necessity – even the benefit – of taking such action.
The United States, the only world superpower, has interpreted that universal principle to take war to distant lands in the name of fighting terrorism. But at the same time it refused to recognize it in the case of five unarmed, peaceful, non-violent persons who, on behalf of a small country, without causing harm to anybody, tried to avert the illegal acts of criminals who have found shelter and support in the United States.
The U.S. government, through the Miami prosecutors, went even further, to the last mile, to help those terrorists. They did it very openly, in writing and with passionate speeches that, curiously, were not considered newsworthy.
That was happening in 2001. While the Southern Florida prosecutors and the local FBI were so caught up in harshly punishing the Cuban Five and protecting "their" terrorists, the criminals preparing the 9/11 attack had been training, unmolested, in Miami for quite some time. They must have had a weighty reason for preferring that location. (Taken from Counterpunch) •
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