[News] Former FBI Chief Confesses to Irregularities in Case of Cuban Five

[News at freedomarchives.org]

<http://www.antiterroristas.cu/index.php?tpl=noticia/anew&noticiaid=1973&not
iciafecha=2005-03-15>

Former FBI Chief Confesses to Irregularities in Case of Cuban Five

Jean Guy Allard - Granma Internacional March 15, 2005

Nearly seven years after a farce of a trial, seven years
after a long succession of cruel and degrading treatment,
seven years after encouraging a campaign of disinformation
in the press, a former Miami FBI bureau chief has admitted
that the five Cubans imprisoned in the United States for
defending their country against terrorism were not given
access to some intelligence information relating to their
case. The confession was made on the airwaves of the
right-wing Miami station, Radio Martí, in a dialogue with
none other than Cuban-American terrorist leaders Luis
Zuñiga Rey and Horacio García.

Confiding in this remarkable way was Héctor Pesquera, head
of South Florida FBI bureau and the man primarily
responsible for the arrest of the Cuban Five. The comment
was made in the third of a series of five interviews filmed
by Tele Martí for a program called “There Had to be
Silence”. Although the TV station’s only viewers are its
own producers, the program sound was diffused over Radio
Martí last January 15 at 8pm.

The incredible declaration by the man who obsessively
pursued the Cubans and viciously attached the “spy” epithet
to them, was made in answer to the following question by
Zúñiga:

“Do you believe that at some moment the security of the
United States was in danger or that they had access to some
intelligence information that could be valuable to the
enemies of the United States?”

And Pequera answered:

“No. For example, in the case of (Antonio) Guerrero a
retrospective study of the information was made that he had
taken, but the investigation was unable to determine if he
had such intelligence information.”

It was clear ­ as the rest of the interview demonstrates ­
that Pesquera was speaking in an atmosphere of complete
confidence. Aside from Zúñiga - an old acquaintance of the
FBI - the former bureau chief was also in the presence of
Horacio García who he had identified in another Miami
television interview as a friend and FBI informer. In fact,
García was among the organizers of a celebration that took
place in Miami after the condemning of the Five ­ a
celebration Pesquera attended.

For years García was with Roberto Martin Pérez, Alberto
Hernández and Feliciano Foyo, one of the capos of the
paramilitary committee of the Cuban American National
Foundation (CANF) begun by Luis Zúñiga Rey and the
international terrorist Luis Posada Carilles who was
publicly designated as his main source of financial and
logistical support. García abandoned the CANF to join the
current “hard core” of Zúñiga Rey, some days before
September 11.

Zúñiga, on the other hand, was actually designated by US
President Bush as a member of the U.S. delegation to the
annual meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission! This, in
spite of the fact that according to a report by UN Special
Rapporteur Enrique Bernales Ballesteros that he was an
extremist directly involved in a terrorist campaign carried
out in Cuba in 1997 by mercenaries hired by Luis Posada
Carilles.

The series of interviews contains several other interesting
declarations by Pesquera who Zúñiga servilely refers to as
“the FBI bureau chief” although he left that position in
December of 2003.

Last January 22 - again in the same series diffused by the
badly named Radio Martí along with García and Zúñiga -
Pesquera made another confession that allows one to
ascertain how he had arrived from Puerto Rico with
instructions to proceed at all cost against the group of
Cubans who had infiltrated terrorist organizations in
Miami:

“I arrived here in May, 1998. They informed me of what was
going on. We then began to stress that this investigation
into the effects of intelligence should no longer remain as
is, but should change direction and become a criminal
investigation.”

And then, the creator of the case against the Cuban Five
reveals:

“I had many problems convincing the Justice Department of
this.”

This statement once again confirms what Pesquera had
declared some days before going into retirement in an
interview granted to Miami Herald reporter Larry Lebowitz
in 2003. He said that he was obliged to “persuade" U.S.
Attorney General, Janet Reno to arrest the Cuban patriots.
“Others in the Justice Department didn't want to touch
this”, he recalled, adding, “Everything was on the line (of
demarcation).”

We should remember that on October27, 1997, the U.S. Coast
Guard captured off Puerto Rico an arsenal of weapons along
with several suspects aboard a yacht named “Esperanza”. All
were linked, in one way or another, to the CANF in Miami.
In spite of the spontaneous confession of one of the crew
that the yacht was bound for the Venezuelan island of
Margarita to murder the Cuban president attending an
international forum there, Pesquera’s investigation made
sure that all those inculpated were freed. Again, Pesquera
attended the resulting celebration organized by the CANF.

On September 12, 1998, barely four months after their
arrival in Miami, Pesquera sent his agents to arrest the
Cuban “spies” as he was to label them in his first contact
with the press on the subject. The operation against people
that didn’t have the slightest criminal record was worthy
of Hollywood. The suspects were thrown to the floor by men
armed to the teeth, then taken to the Miami FBI
headquarters where they were isolated in punishment cells,
intensely interrogated for two days during which they were
neither allowed to wash nor to shave, and then
photographed. It was those pictures depicting supposedly
hardened criminal faces that were used by a hysterical
press that had been bought and paid for by the Miami
right-wing.

Violating every prison norm and international agreements
against torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,
Pesquera and his FBI accomplices kept the Cubans locked up
in solitary confinement this way for a full 17 months.

René González, Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón
Labañino and Fernando González continue to be incarcerated
today, for purely malicious reasons, in five different
prisons spread out over the immense U.S. territory
forbidden or severely restricted to have contact with their
families.

Finally, it is always worth remembering that while he was
persecuting these Cuban patriots who were fighting against
terrorism, Pesquera had no knowledge of the fact that 15 of
the 19 real terrorists who carried out the September 11
attacks against the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, were
training only a few kilometers from his office.

<http://www.antiterroristas.cu/index.php?tpl=noticia/anew&noticiaid=1973&not
iciafecha=2005-03-15>

The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20050317/c5583120/attachment.htm>