Cuba to appeal spy case to U.S. Supreme Court
HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba said on Thursday it will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court part of a lower court decision against five Cuban agents who have been imprisoned nearly 10 years on espionage charges.
Cuban Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon said lawyers would ask the nation's highest court to reverse a decision upholding sentences against two of the men, one sent to prison for 15 years and the other for life.
"We're going to appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, to the World Court, to the interplanetary court ... to fight against this infamy," he said in a news conference.
Alarcon, point man for Cuba's U.S. policy, said the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Georgia, had denied Cuba's most recent attempt to have the convictions overturned.
The sentences for the other three agents were earlier found to be excessive and sent back to a lower court for review, which the Cubans will not appeal.
The men, known in Cuba as the "Five Heroes," were sent to the United States to infiltrate exile groups opposed to the Cuban government, then led by Fidel Castro.
In 1998, they were arrested and accused of being unregistered agents of the Cuban government, and in one case of conspiring to murder members of the exile group, Brothers to the Rescue.
In February 1996, Cuban fighter jets shot down two private planes belonging to the Brothers to the Rescue that were flying near Cuba. Four men in the planes were killed.
The five defendants, tried together in Miami, received sentences ranging from 15 years to life in prison.
Cuba has argued that the men were agents trying to stop "terrorist" attacks and that they did not receive a fair trial in Miami, center of the exile community that fled after Castro took power in a 1959 revolution.
Alarcon said demonstrations would be held in Cuba and around the world, including the United States, on September 12, which he said would mark the 10th anniversary of the men's time in prison.
(Editing by Jane Sutton and Xavier Briand)
