Opening the meeting, Nalda Vigezzi of the Boston-based July 26 Coalition said the event was being held on the 30th anniversary of the bombing of a Cuban commercial airliner over Barbados. The meeting backed the demand on Washington by Caracas to extradite to Venezuela Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban-American rightist and naturalized Venezuelan citizen linked to numerous attacks against Cuba, including the 1976 bombing of the Cuban airliner that killed 73 people. While the U.S. government has refused Venezuela’s demand to extradite a self-described mass murderer, panelists pointed out, it has fought every attempt to release the Cuban Five. The “crime” of the five men was that in order to defend their country’s sovereignty they entered rightist Cuban-American groups. These organizations had a record of violent attacks on Cuba carried out from U.S. soil with Washington’s complicity.

Speakers included Alicia Jrapko of the International Committee to Free the Cuban Five; Salim Lamrani, editor of Superpower Principles: U.S. Terrorism against Cuba; National Lawyers Guild president Michael Avery; and professor Noam Chomsky.

The meeting also heard greetings from Gerardo Hernández, one of the Cuban Five, who is serving a double life term. The other four, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernándo González, and René González, are serving terms ranging from 15 years to life.

—JOHN HAWKINS