Socialist workers and Young Socialists in the city and elsewhere in the country will be organizing similar events, including house meetings with co-workers and unionists, forums on college campuses, and presentations to groups involved in struggles against the employers and their government.

"We are organizing to get out the truth about the case," said Koppel. "We are explaining that Gerardo Hernández, René González, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, and Fernando González were on an international mission to defend their country and revolution from attacks by the U.S. government and Cuban counterrevolutionary forces based in the United States.

"The five are working-class heroes, who have risked their lives to defend the first socialist revolution in the Americas," Koppel said. "As with any class-war prisoner in the dungeons of U.S. imperialism, the most basic task of working-class fighters is to ensure the five are not isolated as they face continuing pressure from the U.S. rulers.

"There are thousands of working people and youth who are resisting the assaults by the bosses and the government who will want to learn about this fight, come to identify with these five brothers, and join in the demand that they be released and allowed to return to Cuba," Koppel said.

Washington refuses to recognize the five as political prisoners, Koppel said. It has sent them to five separate federal prisons across the United States. "The purpose of the brutal treatment in dividing them up is to degrade and force them to their knees," Koppel said. "Their treatment is parallel to that being meted out to the 300 prisoners who were kidnapped and taken by U.S. authorities to Washington's naval base in Guantánamo, Cuba. Even under the czar of Russia and the Batista dictatorship in Cuba, opponents of the government were not separated and isolated from each other, as U.S. authorities are doing with the five Cuban revolutionaries.

"This frame-up is part of the U.S. employers' offensive against working people here at home," he said. "It is an attack on fundamental rights and is aimed at intimidating anyone who opposes the bosses' assaults or U.S. government policies."  
 
Prosecution's frame-up
In 1998 the FBI announced with much fanfare and media hype that it had discovered a "Cuban spy network" in Florida. Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González were arrested and 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 provocatively violated Cuban airspace and refused to heed warnings to head back before they were downed near Havana.

In mid-December, Hernández was given two consecutive life terms plus 80 months in jail on these trumped-up charges. Days later, Ramón Labañino was sentenced to one life term; René González received a 15-year sentence; and Fernando González got 19 years in prison.

These convictions and sentences are an attack directed not only at revolutionary Cuba but at workers' rights in the United States. FBI agents broke into their homes repeatedly over the three years prior to the arrests, violating the Fourth Amendment protection against arbitrary search and seizure. The prosecution's "evidence" consisted of information the FBI claimed to have collected in these raids, and from short-wave radio transmissions government agents asserted they intercepted between Havana and the defendants.

The judge refused a defense motion to move the trial out of Miami, even after several potential jurors, especially Cuban-Americans, disqualified themselves for fear of reprisals if they voted "not guilty." No evidence of any military secrets being stolen from the United States and turned over to Cuba was ever presented by the prosecution.

As with Washington's attacks on workers' rights under the guise of fighting terrorism since September 11, the U.S. rulers used the "spy scare" case against the five Cubans as a means to justify broader powers for the FBI, including sanctioning break-ins and electronic eavesdropping, frame-up trials on scanty evidence, and harsh prison conditions, such as extended solitary confinement solely based on the character of the charges against the defendants.  
 
Cuban government campaign
All five defendants have stated they were reporting on activities of right-wing Cuban-American groups in Florida with a record of violent activities against Cuba, carried out with knowledge and complicity from Washington. They have announced they will fight their convictions through appeals. Responding to the verdict, Guerrero said that if "I were asked to do something like this again I would do it with honor."

The Cuban government, which has launched an international campaign in defense of the five, called a special session of the country's National Assembly December 29. With a unanimous vote, the Assembly named the five patriots "Heroes of the Republic of Cuba," because they carried out "with exemplary dedication, dignity, and steadfastness the sacred mission of defending the nation and protecting it from terrorism."

The year 2002 has been dedicated as the "Year of the Heroic Prisoners of the Empire" in Cuba because of the importance of the fight to free the political prisoners. Rallies, meetings, national "round table" discussions, and other events have sought to deepen the education of the Cuban population on the fight.  
 
History of attacks against Cuba
During the trial defense lawyers for the five were able to present extensive information on how U.S.-based Cuban-American groups have carried out attacks against Cuba since the 1959 revolution, as well as those in Miami who have stood up to oppose Washington's economic war on the country. The defense also succeeded in exposing how the U.S. government has provided a base of operations for these organizations and refused to take any effective steps to halt their activities.

For example, a series of bombings of tourist spots in Cuba in 1997 was "organized, planned, and financed from the United States," declared Roberto Hernández Caballero in the trial. Hernández, currently a lieutenant colonel for the State Security Department of the Interior Ministry of Cuba, testified as a defense witness.

This evidence further boosted the defense case that the five men face frame-up charges that should be dropped. Testimony by a series of witnesses brought to the stand by defense attorneys shed further light on Washington's unceasing cold war against Cuba.

Retired U.S. Air Force colonel George Buchner testified March 21 that evidence from the records of the U.S. government's National Security Agency shows that the Brothers to the Rescue pilots were well inside Cuba's airspace when they were shot down. This contradicted earlier claims by Washington, and by a 1996 United Nations Security Council report, that the planes were brought down over international waters. Buchner's testimony and similar evidence presented in a federal courtroom received little media coverage beyond Miami.

Brothers to the Rescue leader José Basulto had tried to portray himself in earlier testimony as a "nonviolent resister" to "Castro's tyranny" and a follower of Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi.

After the defense grilled him on the stand for five days, however, Basulto testified March 16 that he would do nothing to stop illegal arms shipments to Cuba because "he broadly supports exile groups bent on overthrowing Fidel Castro violently," according to the March 17 Miami Herald.  
 
Washington's lies
Washington's campaign around Cuba's shooting down of the Brothers to the Rescue planes is a good case to review. That Gerardo Hernández is serving a life term for "conspiracy to commit murder" in relation to the provocative assault on Cuba is a historic injustice.

Before the United Nations and at other international forums in 1996 officials of the Cuban government meticulously dismantled the lies peddled by the U.S. government about the incident. Roberto Robaina, Cuba's Foreign Minister at the time, reported to the United Nations General Assembly the history of infiltrations and armed pirate attacks from southern Florida, including 25 incursions into Cuban airspace by Brothers to the Rescue planes the previous year and a half. The U.S. Federal Aviation Agency had even revoked Basulto's pilot's license, citing 14 violations of Cuban airspace between 1990 and 1996.

"The government of Cuba takes full responsibility for the patriotic action that was carried out in legitimate defense of the country's sovereignty and security," Robaina told the UN meeting. "This incident was not the consequence of a deliberate act by Cuba. It was not we who could prevent these violations from continuing. The U.S. government," he said, "from whose territory these acts of aggression were launched, was the only one that had this opportunity in its hands."

At the time the Militant noted the "tragedy was not what happened but what was averted. Acts of terrorism and aggression by armed, U.S.-based 'civilians' have been slowed. Who can doubt that it has now become more difficult to recruit pilots and others to carry out provocations and terrorist acts against the Cuban Revolution?"

The driving force behind the attacks and economic warfare against the Cuban people is not the counterrevolutionary Cuban groups in Miami, Koppel noted. It is the imperialist ruling class in the United States, whose holdings were expropriated by the working people of Cuba and who will never forgive or peacefully accept the challenge to capitalist property and prerogatives that the socialist revolution in Cuba offers, and the example it provides, to millions of toilers around the world.

Koppel said the campaign to defend the five revolutionaries offers working people and youth a great opportunity to discuss these questions as broadly as possible, to defend workers' rights in the United States, and to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Cuban people. The socialist leader also encouraged supporters of this fight to write to the five prisoners and said both the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial will be sending each one a subscription to the publications.

"I recently attended in Cuba a presentation on the new Pathfinder title From the Escombray to the Congo: In the Whirlwind of the Cuban Revolution by Víctor Dreke," Koppel said. "During the meeting Dreke presented copies of the book to Magali Llort, the mother of Fernando González, one of the jailed Cubans. It was evident at the meeting the degree of support the five have in Cuba, and how they are seen as part of the struggle against U.S. imperialism."

Koppel said the dedication written by Dreke in each of the books to be sent to the imprisoned revolutionaries captured this spirit. Dreke wrote: "To the five heroic prisoners of the empire: I congratulate you for your firmness and bravery. Your are worthy representatives of Martí, Maceo, Camilo, Che, and Fidel. I send you the book with all the respect and affection you deserve. The old oak trees are proud of the new pines."
 

René González, #58738-004, FCI Loretto, P.O. Box 1000, Loretto, Pennsylvania 15940;

Antonio Guerrero, #58741-004, U.S.P. Florence, P.O. Box 7500, Florence, Colorado 81226;

Gerardo Hernández, #58739-004, U.S. Penitentiary-Lompoc, 3901 Klein Blvd., Lompoc, California 93436;

(for Fernando Gonzalez) write to: Ruben Campa, #58733-004, F.C.I. Oxford, P.O. Box 1000, Oxford, Wisconsin 53952-0505;

(for Ramón Labañino), write to: Luis Medina, #58734-004, U.S.P. Beaumont, P.O. Box 26035, Beaumont, Texas 77720-6035.  
 
 
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