(Transcript from World News Radio)
If the United States would trade Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo for a captured soldier, would it swap prisoners from Cuba itself for an imprisoned aid worker?
Ron Sutton takes a look.
(Click on audio tab to listen to this item)
When the United States released five Taliban detainees in May in exchange for a U-S soldier captured in Afghanistan, the questions began.
Could the last three of five imprisoned Cubans be released in a swap for Alan Gross, a subcontractor for the U-S Agency for International Development imprisoned in Cuba?
The answer has been silence from the US government, but, in Cuba, a longstanding campaign to free all of the so-called Cuban Five has been reinvigorated -- and come to Australia.
Aili Labanino Cardoso, daughter of Ramon Labanino, one of the Five, is touring the country in an attempt to drum up support.
(Spanish, then translated:) "The aim is to bring to attention, to let people know, the story of my father and the others who are known as the five national heroes of Cuba."
As she tours Australia, family and friends of the others are touring other lands, trying similarly to spread their story.
It is a story so well-known in Cuba that schoolchildren grow up knowing the five by, simply, their first names -- Gerardo, Rene, Ramon, Fernando, Antonio.
They were Cuban intelligence officers arrested by the United States in 1998 on conspiracy to commit espionage and related charges.
Cuba maintains they went to Miami to detect and prevent what it called terrorist attacks from the exile community that wanted to oust Fidel Castro's government.
The United States maintained they were a dangerous spy cell, then charged the leader, Gerardo Hernandez, with conspiracy to commit murder.
He had infiltrated the anti-Castro Brothers to the Rescue, who had dropped anti-government leaflets on Havana.
In 1996, Cuban fighters shot two of its planes out of the sky, killing all four men aboard.
At the University of Sydney's United States Studies Centre, history lecturer Thomas Adams, who recently visited Cuba, says it is a tale of much wider political intrigue.
"Their continual detention cannot be divorced whatsoever from the politics of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in South Florida, in particular. And, in particular, the amount of political power they wield, both within the Florida Congressional delegations, both at the House and Senate level, but also, in particular, in regards to kind of the importance of Florida in the American Electoral College and the desire on the part of both Republicans and Democrats to really court that vote."
The five Cubans were convicted and sentenced in 2001.
When talk of a swap for Alan Gross arose these 13 years later, the US State Department went only as far as to say they were different, that the Cubans faced due process.
But critics argue holding the jury trials in Miami always left that process in question, and Dr Adams agrees.
"As I think one of the dissenting judges in one of the appeals put it, you can't find an impartial jury in Miami. I mean, what they should have done -- and I think, to me, the big legal sticking point -- is you move the trial to Kansas, right? Or to Minnesota, or to Washington or to California, to a place that doesn't have those very, very specific politics of anti-Castro. It's a huge issue for the Cuban exile community, but that politics, because it's become so ingrained in South Florida life, I think it's really probably kind of transferred into other people as well. Then, furthermore, the fact that these are all conspiracy charges, that these guys didn't actually do anything, also speaks to, frankly, the kind of bias of the justice system in this regard."
It is a point Aili Labanino Cardoso argues -- that Rene and Fernando Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernandez and her father Ramon did not actually do anything.
The Gonzalezes have served their time now, but Gerardo Hernandez is serving a double life sentence.
Meanwhile, in Cuba, Alan Gross is serving 15 years for bringing satellite-communications equipment into the country -- allegedly to help foster a "Cuban Spring" uprising.
Speaking in SBS's Sydney studios alongside Cuba's ambassador, Ms Cardoso says Cuba wants to talk about them on equal terms.
(Spanish, then translated:) "In the case of Gross, the Cuban courts had proof that Alan Gross was bringing things to Cuba to damage the security of Cuba. And on top of that, he received money directly from the US government to do that. Whereas, in the case of the Cuban Five, to prevent deaths in Cuba, they infiltrated themselves into the terrorist groups in Florida to try and prevent further deaths. They weren't paid by the state to do that. They didn't use any force or arms to do that. It was just that they loved their country. They did it voluntarily and to protect their country." (Spanish ...)
Share
