The Cuban Five, as they are known—Fernando González, René González, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández, and Ramón Labañino—have been locked up since their arrests in Florida in 1998. They are serving draconian sentences, ranging from 15 years to a double life term, after being convicted by a federal court in Miami in 2001 on charges that include “conspiracy to commit espionage” for the Cuban government and other trumped-up accusations. Hernández was also convicted of “conspiracy to commit murder” and given two consecutive life sentences.

“The five heroes risked their lives and, without weapons and nothing more than their hearts, obtained information about terrorist attacks against Cuba in order to defend their country’s sovereignty,” said featured speaker Magalys Llort, mother of Fernando González. She said the five had entered rightist Cuban-American groups with a record of violent attacks on Cuba, carried out from Florida with Washington’s complicity, and that the prosecutors produced no evidence to prove their charges of “spying against the United States.”

Llort noted that on August 9 a U.S. appeals court upheld the convictions of the five, overturning a ruling issued a year earlier by a three-judge panel of the same court. The panel had annulled the convictions and ordered a new trial on the basis that holding it in Miami had prejudiced the jurors. She said the appeal process will continue on other grounds.

“This is a political case,” Llort emphasized. “We don’t trust the U.S. courts. Only by expanding public support for the international campaign to free them will we be able to open the prison doors so they can return to their country and to those who love them.”

Other speakers included Francisco Sesto, Venezuela’s minister of culture; Ramón Medero, president of the National Book Institute, which organized the book fair; and Víctor Chirinos, a Venezuelan deputy to the Latin American parliament.

The forum was preceded by a showing of the film Mission Against Terror, a documentary by Bernie Dwyer and Roberto Ruiz that tells the story of the Cuban Five.

The event included the presentation of booklets of poems, essays, and drawings by the Cuban Five. These are being used for the campaign to free them and to demand that family members who have been denied U.S. visas be allowed to visit them.
 
 
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