On this day, Dec. 12, in 2001, Gerardo Hernandez was sentenced in Miami to life in prison for being the leader of a Cuban spy ring. Hernandez and four other Cuban intelligence officers infiltrated the anti-Castro Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue and got jobs on U.S. military bases.
The Cuban Five, as they became known, were found guilty of conspiring to spy on the United States. Hernandez, the leader, was also convicted of supplying information to the Cuban government that led to the death of the four Cuban-Americans whose planes who were shot down by Cuban jet fighters in 1996.
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The Brothers to the Rescue planes were used to drop pro-democracy leaflets onto the communist island and helped rescue migrants in the ocean.
– Scott McCabe
