To kick off the month’s activities, 30 supporters of the Cuban Five attended a press conference and rally outside the Justice Department today. The activity was called by the newly formed D.C. Metro Free the Cuban Five Committee.

Pictured speaking above is Netfa Freeman of the D.C. No War on Cuba Movement. Other speakers included Luis Rumbaut, Cuban American Alliance Education Fund; Shirley Pate, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; Wayne Smith, former head of the U.S. Interests section in Havana; Banbose Shango, Venezuela Solidarity Committee; Sonia Umanzor, Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front; and Gloria LaRiva, National Committee to Free the Cuban Five.

The press conference also built a meeting hosted by the Howard University Law School tonight at which Leonard Weinglass, a defense attorney in the case, will speak.

Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González have been imprisoned in the United States since 1998. They were convicted and sentenced following a 2001 frame-up trial in Miami. The five were monitoring counterrevolutionary Cuban-American groups in Miami that have carried out violent attacks in Cuba with complicity of the U.S. government.

—SAM MANUEL