Vol. 71/No. 25      June 25, 2007

BY TOM BAUMANN  
MINNEAPOLIS, June 6—More than 40 people attended a panel discussion at the University of Minnesota (U of M) here today, sponsored by the Minnesota Cuba Committee and entitled “Free the Cuban Five."

The panel included U of M students Missy Racho and Galnaz Vayghan, currently enrolled in a course “The Cuban Revolution Through the Words of Cuban Revolutionaries,” and Muhammad Kareem of the Young Socialists.

The Cuban Five—Fernando González, René González, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández, and Ramón Labañino—are revolutionaries who have been held in U.S. prisons since 1998. They were framed up on charges that include "conspiracy to commit espionage," and were convicted in U.S. federal court in Miami in 2001. They are serving sentences ranging from 15 years to a double life term in prisons across the United States.

The meeting opened with a CNN presentation on the case of the Five and a Nightline report on Luis Posada Carriles, an ultrarightist born in Cuba who later became a Venezuelan citizen and who has a history of carrying out violent attacks against Cuba with Washington's support. He currently walks free in the United States, despite repeated calls for his extradition to Venezuela where he is wanted for the bombing of a Cubana airlines flight in 1976 that killed all 73 people aboard.

Citing research on declassified U.S. government documents, Racho gave a presentation on the history of U.S.-sponsored counterrevolutionary activity against Cuba, including violent attacks carried out by ultrarightist organizations operating from U.S. soil with Washington's complicity.

Vayghan centered her presentation on the unfair trial the Cuban Five got in Miami. She noted the arbitrary methods the prosecution used against them.

Kareem pointed to the First and Second Declarations of Havana, a book recently released by Pathfinder Press that contains two manifestos adopted by the Cuban people in the early 1960s during mobilizations to defend the revolution. Kareem said the U.S. rulers keep the Five behind bars because they are a good example of the people forged by the Cuban Revolution and representative of millions of everyday Cubans. "The Cuban Revolution teaches that revolution is possible," he said, and its example can and needs to be emulated everywhere, including in the United States. "That's what the U.S. rulers fear."

Muhammad Kareem contributed to this article.
 
 
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