“Nelson Mandela’s trial has been properly conducted” (and completely open to the international media) “The judge, Mr Justice Quartus de Wet, has been scrupulously fair.” (Anthony Sampson, The London Observer, March 1964)
“Foreign journalists were excluded from Friday’s Supreme Court appeal hearing (for Alan Gross, as they were banned from his original trial), which lasted nearly 1-1/2 hours and was held in a building within view of Revolution Palace where Cuban President (emphasis by intransigent poster) Raul Castro’s offices are located.”
But wait! Wasn’t Apartheid South Africa’s regime so much more horrible than Cuba’s that the entire world embargoed it and finished it off?–that every Democratic legislator and half of Republican legislators voted for sanctions against it without batting an eye?–that her famous political prisoners (a tiny, tiny fraction of Castro’s numbers) were awarded every award known to the history of international award-awarding?
Sure seems I recall it that way?
Well, here’s a report on Nelson Mandela’s trial from his authorized biographer, the London Observer’s Anthony Sampson who was perfectly free along with the entire international media to attend and report on Mandela’s trial: “The trial has been properly conducted. The judge, Mr Justice Quartus de Wet, has been scrupulously fair.”
Fortunately the Reuters story continues:
In Washington, Cuban-born Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Florida Republican who chairs the House Foreign Relations Committee, said no one should expect Cuba’s Supreme Court to judiciously consider Gross’s appeal.
“The ultimate arbiters of power who will decide his fate are the Castro brothers. In Cuba there exists no independent judiciary,” Ros-Lehtinen said. “Sadly, Mr. Gross is being used as a pawn by the Castro dictatorship. The outcome in this case has been carefully calibrated by the ruling clique to teach a stern lesson to others who dare circumvent the Castro censors,” she said.
Unreal