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Vol. 71/No. 22      June 4, 2007

 
Protesters in Minnesota and Iceland demand:
‘Free Cuban 5! Extradite Posada Carriles!’
 
BY REBECCA WILLIAMSON  
MINNEAPOLIS, May 16—Thirty-five people held a picket line here at rush hour in front of the Federal Building to demand extradition of Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela, where he faces prosecution for his role in organizing the deadly 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner.

On May 8 a U.S. immigration judge decided to drop the immigration charges against the CIA-trained assassin, allowing him to walk free. Protesters also called for defense of Cuba and Venezuela against Washington’s hostile policies.

Sonia Aviles, 21, a student at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, joined the picket line with some friends who are mostly from El Salvador. “The U.S. is trying to defend him, and he was responsible for the attack that killed 73 people,” she said, referring to the 1976 bombing.

Jesse Steen, 33, a nursing assistant at Walker Methodist Hospital, said that the move by U.S. officials to charge him with immigration violations “is a charade. They never intended to prosecute him. The only way to serve the interest of justice of the people is to extradite him.”
 

*****

BY ÖGMUNDUR JÓNSSON
AND KARL SIGTRYGGSSON  
AKRANES, Iceland, April 30—A dozen people attended a meeting here today at the White House, a youth center in this small town just north of Reykjavík, to hear about the international campaign to demand freedom for the Cuban Five.

The five Cubans—Gerardo Hernández, René González, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, and Fernando González—were arrested by the FBI in 1998 and convicted three years later on frame-up charges, including “conspiracy to commit espionage.” They are serving sentences ranging from 15 years to a double life term. The Five were living in Florida and gathering information on right-wing Cuban-American groups that have a record of carrying out violent attacks on Cuba and operate with impunity in the United States.

The meeting, initiated by the Communist League, was built by young people in this area, including members of the youth of the Socialist Alliance.

ólöf Andra Proppé, speaking for the Communist League, said it is important to know who the Cuban Five are and what they are defending. Three of the Cuban Five also volunteered, along with hundreds of thousands of other Cubans, to fight alongside the Angolan army to smash the South African apartheid regime’s invasions of that country in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Today, from behind prison walls, the five Cubans continue to defend their country’s socialist revolution and to support struggles by working people worldwide.
 
 
Related articles:
‘Cuba’s socialist revolution ended anti-Chinese discrimination’
Students at Los Angeles college discuss book by Chinese Cuban generals with its editor
London protest demands freedom for Cuban Five  
 
 
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