‘Cuban Five' Update: Another Member, Fernando Gonzalez, Released From US Prison To Cuba

The Associated Press reports that 50-year-old Fernando González became the second member of the “Cuban Five” -- five Cubans who were convicted in 2001 of conspiracy by a Miami court -- to be released from prison after completing his sentence on Thursday. US officials said González had been immediately turned over to immigration officials to be deported to Havana, where as CNN notes, he will likely receive a hero’s welcome from the Cuban government, which makes regular reference to him and the other three as political prisoners. René González Llort, the first Cuban Five prisoner to be released, left jail in 2011 but remained on parole until spring 2013, when he returned to Cuba.

The AP notes that Cuba has lobbied for their release since they were arrested in 1998, saying that the agents -- part of the “Wasp Network” in South Florida -- had not plotted against the US and had only been monitoring members of militant groups in the Cuban-American community responsible for a number of terrorist attacks in Cuba, including one 1997 bombing of a Havana hotel which killed an Italian tourist. The prosecution in the case accused the five agents of attempting to infiltrate US military installations and US politicians opposed to the Cuban government.

One of the exile groups which the Wasp Network successfully infiltrated was Hermanos al Rescate (Brothers to the Rescue), which in 1991 began flying planes over Cuba to drop anti-Castro pamphlets and over the Straits of Florida to provide aid for balseros trying to make it to Florida. In 1996, four pilots with the group were killed when Cuban fighters jets shot them down as they crossed into Cuban airspace. Prosecutors in the Cuban Five case claimed that information gathered by the agents helped lead to the downing of the planes.