These are some of the humiliating conditions under which U.S. authorities are dividing up and transferring five Cuban revolutionaries--Gerardo Hernández, René González, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, and Fernando González--to prisons in five different states.

The Miami Five, as they have come to be known over the last year, were slapped with the harshest possible sentences by a U.S. federal court here in December. They had been convicted last summer on frame-up charges concocted by the FBI, including "conspiracy to commit espionage" for Havana.

With this inhuman treatment, Washington attempted, once again unsuccessfully, to bring the five to their knees. As Fernando González stated, "We will be able to withstand anything." An international campaign to demand freedom for these political prisoners is under way.

According to various press reports, the five were taken by plane January 29 to Atlanta. They were given breakfast at 9:00 a.m. and did not receive any other food or water until 11:00 p.m.

Devices called "black boxes" were attached to the handcuffs of Hernández, Labañino, and Guerrero, the three given life sentences. These reinforce the handcuffs' locks, electronically track allegedly dangerous prisoners over long distances, and are very uncomfortable and lacerate the skin.

When they arrived at the Atlanta penitentiary, they were photographed, fingerprinted, and placed in isolation cells. At that time, René González was separated from the others, who have not seen him since. Unlike the time they spent at the Miami Federal Detention Center, they had to go into the corridor to receive their food, and at that time Gerardo, Ramón, and Antonio were able to see each other. Occasionally they were able to see Fernando González, on a lower floor.

The five were not allowed to bathe for three days. On January 30, representatives of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, who have visited these political prisoners regularly, were unable to carry out their consular visit because they had not been notified of the transfer.

On February 4, Hernández and Labañino were transferred to a prison in El Reno, Oklahoma. From that time on they have not seen Guerrero or González. At the Atlanta airport they and two other prisoners--elderly U.S. citizens, one in a wheelchair and the other using a walker-- had to withstand cold temperatures while wearing only T-shirts, while their guards wore heavy coats and caps.

The spending money available to the five at the Miami penitentiary has been transferred to the prisons where they will be placed. As a result, they cannot make phone calls until the transfer is complete.  
 
Five different prisons
A spokesperson for the Miami Federal Detention Center confirmed with the French Press Agency that the five Cuban patriots had been sent temporarily to a maximum security prison in Atlanta, from where they would be transferred to their final destinations. He announced that Gerardo Hernández would be in the prison in Lompoc, California; Ramón Labañino would go to Beaumont, Texas; Antonio Guerrero to Florence, Colorado; René González to Loretto, Pennsylvania; and Fernando González to Minnesota.

As the Militant goes to press, the transfer to these locations had not been completed.

According to the February 8 Granma International, Rogelio Polanco, editor-in-chief of Juventud Rebelde, the news daily of the Union of Young Communists in Cuba, noted at a roundtable discussion on Cuban TV that "according to federal law, the choice of prison locations cannot be appealed. He added that the three who received life sentences would be housed in maximum-security prisons, which are run as quasi-military organizations. The prison in Florence, Colorado, for instance, is a federal correctional facility opened in January 1995 and designed for top-security prisoners."

The Granma article continued: "In a telephone conversation with Cuban TV journalist Miguel Angel Masjuan, Gerardo's lawyer Paul McKeena said that the legal team is working on an appeal and does not feel that the trial was fair."

In 1998 the FBI announced with much media hype that it had discovered a "Cuban spy network" in Florida. Those arrested were charged with trying to "infiltrate" the U.S. Southern Command, passing U.S. "military secrets" to Havana, and "infiltrating" and "disrupting" right-wing Cuban-American groups in Miami that seek to overthrow the revolutionary government of Cuba. A charge of "conspiracy to commit murder" was tacked on later against one of the five.

On June 8 a jury in a federal courtroom here handed down guilty verdicts against the five men on all 23 charges of "spying" for the government of Cuba. Gerardo Hernández was found guilty of the unprecedented charge of "conspiracy to commit murder" for allegedly providing Cuban authorities with flight plans of the four Brothers to the Rescue pilots whose planes were shot down in 1996 by the Cuban air force. A number of defense witnesses offered ample evidence that these rightists repeatedly violated Cuban airspace and refused to heed warnings to head back before they were downed near Havana.

In a statement featured in the June 20 issue of the Cuban daily Granma, the government of that country condemned the June 8 convictions in a U.S. court of five Cuban citizens on espionage and murder charges. The five, the statement says, were part of an operation to "discover and report on terrorist plans hatched against our people" in Florida by counterrevolutionary opponents of the Cuban Revolution.

The imprisoned Cubans wrote at the time: "Our tiny nation, which has heroically survived four decades of aggressions and threats to its national security, of subversion plans, sabotage, and destabilization, has every right to defend itself from its enemies who keep using U.S. territory to plan, organize, and finance terrorist actions breaking your own laws in the process."

In mid-December, Hernández received two consecutive life terms plus 80 months in jail for these trumped-up charges. Days later, Labañino was sentenced to one life term; René González received consecutive 10-year and five-year sentences; and Fernando González got 19 years in jail. Antonio Guerrero, the last to be sentenced, two days after Christmas, was given life.  
 
Campaign to free the five
Andrés Gómez, national coordinator of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, a Miami-based organization of Cubans supporting the revolution, said in an interview that his organization, the National Committee to Free the Five, the U.S.-Cuba Labor Exchange, and other organizations have launched a nationwide tour to demand freedom for the five. Public meetings begining February 13 in Philadelphia will go at least through the end of March. Gómez and Cuban Interests Section representatives will be among the featured speakers at a number of these meetings.

The February 8 Granma article also reported that "solidarity with the five Cuban patriots continues to grow around the world. In Peru, the Cuban-Peruvian Friendship House has collected thousands of signatures on a petition, and the Puerto Rican Committee of Solidarity with Cuba organized a large demonstration in front of the federal court in San Juan, calling for the prisoners' release.

"In Uruguay, representatives of leftist parties also demanded the liberation of the Cuban heroes, and the same is true of rallies recently held in Porto Alegre, Brazil. In France there is a letter-writing campaign in solidarity with those anti-terrorist fighters."

Interviewed on Cuban television during the February 7 roundtable, Dagoberto Rodríguez of the Cuban Interests Section stated that in the few conversations that he has been able to have with the five Cuban patriots recently, he has noted "their tremendous spirit, their unyielding integrity, their faith and confidence in the Revolution."

According to Granma, all of the five "have demonstrated through their demeanor that they are more than prepared to put into effect a phrase sent by Fernando to his wife on December 23 of last year: 'We will be able to withstand anything.' "
 
 
Related article:
Free the Cuban revolutionaries  
 
 
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