Cuban spy convictions overturned on appeal

MIAMI - A United States appeals court has overturned the convictions of five accused Cuban spies and said pervasive prejudice against the Government of President Fidel Castro had prevented them from getting a fair trial in Miami.

The US 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ordered new trials for the "Cuban five", convicted in 2001 on conspiracy and espionage charges.

Three were serving life in prison and the others 15- and 19-year terms, sentences that a United Nations human rights body condemned last month as arbitrary and unduly harsh.

The appeals court in Atlanta acknowledged in its ruling that reversing the convictions would be unpopular and offensive to many US citizens.

"However the court is equally mindful that those same citizens cherish and support the freedoms they enjoy in this country that are unavailable to residents of Cuba," the court said. "One of our most sacred freedoms is the right to be tried fairly in a non-coercive atmosphere."

The five men were part of a ring that infiltrated US military bases and Cuban exile groups and fed information to Havana, the Cuban Government has acknowledged.

The defendants and Havana's Communist authorities said the men were not spying on the US but on extremist exile groups in Florida, which Havana accuses of financing a wave of bomb blasts in Cuba in 1997.

Ringleader Gerardo Hernandez was convicted of conspiring to commit murder in a 1996 incident in which Cuban MiGs shot down two small planes flown by Cuban exiles over the Florida Straits. Four men died. Hernandez admitted feeding information about the exile group to Havana but had no role in ordering the shootdown.

Defence lawyers argued that prejudice against Castro and the Cuban Government made it impossible to hold a fair trial in Miami. The area is home to more than 700,000 people of Cuban descent. The jury did not include any Cuban Americans. But 16 of the 160 members of the jury pool knew the plane victims or knew trial witnesses.

- REUTERS