Vol. 71/No. 39      October 22, 2007

The Cuban Five—Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández, Ramon Labañino, Fernando González, and René González—have been imprisoned in the United States since 1998. They were convicted in 2001 of “conspiracy to commit espionage,” “conspiracy to act as unregistered foreign agents,” and, in Hernández’s case, “conspiracy to commit murder.” They were in south Florida gathering information on counterrevolutionary Cuban American groups with a history of carrying out violent attacks on Cuba with Washington’s complicity.

“The resolution demanding their immediate release adopted unanimously by delegates registers that news is getting out about this injustice,” said Angela Sambrano, president of the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities. “The denial of visas to their wives so that they can visit them in prison is inhumane.”

The NLC also adopted a resolution demanding the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela. “He is the original airline terrorist in the Americas, responsible for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airline and the murder of its 73 passengers, yet he walks the streets of Miami a free man thanks to the U.S. government,” said Antonio Gonzalez, president of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project and the William C. Velásquez Institute. The conference resolution was adopted on the 31st anniversary of this bombing.

More than 85 people attended a conference workshop on the Cuban Five featuring Leonard Weinglass, one of the lead attorneys in the case; José Pertierra, the attorney representing the Venezuelan government in the extradition of Posada Carriles; Reverend Lucius Walker, executive director of Pastors for Peace; Delvis Fernández, executive director of the Cuban American Alliance Education Fund; and Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild.

“The problem is not the ‘crazy’ Cubans in Miami, but the U.S. government who uses them as props for its policies,” said Pertierra. “The U.S. government is responsible for the Bay of Pigs invasion, Operation Mongoose, and numerous attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.” Operation Mongoose was a U.S. program of sabotage and assassination directed against the Cuban Revolution in the early 1960s.

Michael Ortega, a member of the Young Socialists, pointed to protests demanding justice for the Jena Six as an opportunity to broaden support for the Cuban Five. The International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five distributed literature to many who were learning about the case for the first time.
 
 
Related articles:
Atlanta campus meeting wins support for Cuban 5
N.Y. event celebrates legacy of Che Guevara
Int’l conference on Cuban 5 to be held in Toronto in November
Join campaign to free Cuban 5  
 
 
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