American Organization Files Lawsuit in Support of the Cuban Five

The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of
Columbia, is against the Broadcasting Board of Directors (BBG) because
it has “unlawfully failed to disclose specific US government-paid
contracts with journalists” who published materials that were negative
to Cuba and prejudicial to the case of the Cuban Five.
The legal complaint states: “The public is entitled to know to what
extent the US government covertly paid journalists who wrote stories
related to the case that were likely to reach and influence both the
jury pool and the seated jury while the US simultaneously carried out
these prosecutions.”
According to the complaint, the National Committee to Free the Cuban
Five, under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), submitted a request
on January 23, 2009, to the BBG seeking public disclosure of the BBG’s
funding of journalists including specifically identified contracts
between the BBG and these journalists. However, the government is
unlawfully refusing to produce these documents.
In 2006, a FOIA request filed by the Miami Herald newspaper
disclosed for the first time the information that key South Florida
journalists had been paid by the government before and during the trial
of the Cuban Five. The lawsuit seeks to further amplify this information
and to further expose the role of the government in what amounts to jury
tampering, biasing not only the jury pool but even the actual seated
jury in a trial in which the jury was not sequestered, and subjected
daily to a barrage of negative media coverage of the Five.
Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Rene Gonzalez, Ramon Labañino
and Fernando Gonzalez – internationally known as the Cuban 5 – were
arrested in 1998 and condemned to harsh sentences ranging from 15 years
to two life terms for monitoring anti-Cuba extremist groups in South
Florida that were planning and carrying out terrorist attacks against
the Caribbean nation.