CANADIAN JOURNALIST TO SPEAK ON “THE CUBAN 5" ON NOV. 14

Award winning author and Canadian journalism professor Stephen Kimber will speak on his new book “What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five,” 

The case of the Cuban 5 is the only U.S. proceeding which both Amnesty International and the United Nations have found to be unfair, yet it is almost unknown within the U.S. Prof. Kimber’s book recounts the story of the five Cuban anti-terrorism agents who attempted to monitor violent extremists in the Miami exile community to prevent further attacks being planned in what the FBI had called “the terrorist capital of the U.S.” The Cuban Five were arrested in 1998 based on a series of “conspiracy” charges, and then tried and convicted in Miami in a trial that a unanimous U.S. Court of Appeals once held was the result of a “perfect storm” of bias against anyone linked to the Cuban government and prosecutorial misconduct. After the Five were held in solitary confinement for 17 months, they were given maximum sentences in 2001, including four life terms. The terrorists these five men tried to stop, remain free to this day.

The facts of this case challenge the public understanding of our proclaimed post-9/11 “zero tolerance” policy toward countries harboring terrorists, and raise troubling questions: why were these men who tried to prevent terrorist attacksagainst Cuba arrested, tried in Miami, and given unprecedented sentences where no classified information was involved? And why does the U.S. government continue to protect and harbor known terrorists?

Stephen Kimber is a professor of journalism at the University of King’s College in Halifax and an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He specializes in writing non-fiction that reads like a novel, as he has done in his latest book on the case of the Cuban Five.