On March 26, Leonard Weinglass, Antonio Guerrero’s lawyer filed a motion before the Atlanta Appeals Court explaining the obstacles placed in his way as a defense attorney to maintain contact with his client, who was in solitary confinement (the hole) since March 3, according to the web page http://www.antiterroristas.cu .

As a responsible lawyer, he is unable to present the appeal documents without first reviewing them with his client, Weinglass affirms, detailing Antonio’s harsh conditions, not imposed because he has committed an indiscipline or a crime (he has been a model prisoner and teacher in the penitentiary), but supposedly for reasons of national security.

In his motion, Weinglass likewise relates the terrible conditions of Gerardo Hernández, another of the five Cubans who was in isolation, whom he was able to visit in Lompoc, California, once again without any guarantees for his labors as a lawyer.

Weinglass states that he had visited Antonio Guerrero, incarcerated in Florence, Colorado, to introduce himself and generally familiarize himself with the case, and that in the following months, during which various motions were in litigation in the District Court — including one for a retrial — he was in correspondence with his client.

He was due to visit him again on March 19 to review the draft of the appeal being prepared, but on March 3 special administrative measures were imposed on Tony, who was taken from his cell and placed in segregation. Under those conditions he was denied access to his legal documents and correspondence, as well as the possibility of making or receiving phone calls or correspondence, including from his lawyer. After informing that both he and his associate were finally allowed to meet with Antonio Guerrero on the established date, Weinglass added that the prison authorities informed him that the legal visit would take place under the strictest measures. "Although we were with him for six hours," he says, "the objectives of the meeting could not be fulfilled after Mr. Guerrero’s 16-day isolation, separated from his notes on the trial and his correspondence. The main objective of the meeting was to review a 35-page letter, handwritten by my client, posing a series of questions and responses that, in part, were central to the appeal. Moreover, his living conditions, including the screams of mentally disturbed prisoners in the punishment block, had deprived him of proper sleep and rest during the two previous weeks, undermining his ability to concentrate on our work."

Up until the date of the motion on Wednesday, Tony was still in isolation and under special restrictions, according to Weinglass, who emphasized the impossibility of useful lawyer/client communication for close to one month.

The U.S. lawyer also referred to his appeal-related visit to Lompoc, California where Gerardo Hernández, charged together with Guerrero for conspiring to commit espionage, is incarcerated, and who had also been subjected since February 28, 2003 to special administrative measures, as was the case with the remainder of the five Cubans appealing their sentences.

(Granma) April 2, 2003