The jury of eight women and four men delivered its verdict midway into its second day of deliberations. Afterwards, one juror said prosecutors failed to prove their allegation: that the defendants conspired to kill Castro during a 1997 summit on Venezuela's Isla Margarita.
The decision elicited tears and defiance from the defendants, all of them anti-Castro activists, and cheers from their supporters at a crowded U.S. courthouse in San Juan. If convicted, the men could have faced life in prison.
Cleared of conspiracy charges were Jose Antonio Llamas, a director of the influential Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation; Angel Manuel Alfonso; Angel Hernandez Rojo; Francisco Secundino Cordova and Jose Rodriguez Sosa.
The defendants fled Cuba after Castro's 1959 revolution to become businessmen in the United States. They now live in Florida and New Jersey.
Although there have been many reported attempts on Castro's life – including some allegedly sponsored by the U.S. government – it was the first trial in the United States for an alleged plot against him.
Speaking outside the courtroom, where the tearful defendants hugged one another and sang the Cuban anthem, Llamas said he and the other men felt abandoned by the U.S. government.
"We feel we were betrayed in this trial the same way we were betrayed in the Bay of Pigs invasion," he said.
Three of the accused men were on a yacht stopped by the U.S. Coast Guard off Puerto Rico on Oct. 27, 1997. When the Coast Guard searched the yacht, they found sniper rifles, ammunition, night-vision goggles, radios and satellite navigation equipment.
During the trial, prosecutors called investigators to the stand to document how the men modified the boat for the long journey from Miami and had rented an apartment on Margarita Island.
But defense lawyers denied the men were trying to kill Castro. They said the men wanted to help members of Castro's entourage defect from the summit being held on the Venezuelan island. The defendants claimed they needed the weapons to protect themselves from possible aggression by Cuban agents.
One of the men on the boat, Angel Alfonso, allegedly confessed to Coast Guard officers that the men were planning to kill Castro. But defense lawyers said Alfonso made up the story because he was frustrated and believed the Coast Guard officers saw the men as gunrunners and common criminals.
During the trial, the defense repeatedly emphasized how the men had suffered as dissidents against Castro's communist government. Prosecutors urged the jury to ignore Castro's human rights record in considering the evidence. They argued that the men's actions, not Castro's, were on trial.
"We accept the jury's finding and we move on and we continue to attempt to enforce the law," prosecutor Scott Glick said afterwards.
Juror Amanda Collazo said panelists heeded prosecutors' pleas to stick to the evidence during deliberations – and concluded there wasn't enough of it.
"We never decided if they were going to kill Castro or not. We decided that the government did not have enough evidence. That was it. It was all a question of doubt," she said.
Others were originally charged in the plot as well. But charges against one defendant and Llamas' Florida company were dropped, and a defendant suffering from cancer was granted a separate trial at a later date.
© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press