Vol. 75/No. 46      December 19, 2011

BY JONATHAN SILBERMAN  
LONDON—Chanting “Justice now! Free the Five!” 200 people protested outside the U.S. Embassy here Dec. 1. The demonstration demanded the release from prison of Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, and Fernando González and for the right of René González to return to Cuba.

Known as the Cuban Five, they were arrested and jailed in an FBI frame-up operation more 13 years ago. All five were convicted in 2001 on trumped-up conspiracy charges and given sentences ranging from 15 years for René González to double life plus 15 years for Hernández. Three were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage, including Hernández, who was also charged with conspiracy to commit murder. The revolutionaries were in southern Florida defending their homeland by monitoring U.S.-backed counterrevolutionary groups with a 50-year record of murderous attacks and acts of sabotage against Cuba.

The London action was called by the Cuba Solidarity Campaign. Joining the protest all the way from Cuba were mothers of three of the five: Mirta Rodríguez, mother of Antonio Guerrero; Irma Sehwerert, mother of René González; and Magali Llort, mother of Fernando González.

Actions like these are so important, Llort told the crowd, because “it’s the only way to open the prison gates.” She paid tribute to the workers who the day before had taken strike action across the U.K. “Cuba is present alongside anyone engaged in struggle for justice in whatever part of the world.”

Sehwerert characterized the “supervised release” of René González—who was released on probation but prohibited from returning to Cuba for three years—as being “free but still a prisoner.”

Other speakers included Tony Woodley, former general secretary of the Unite union, who recently returned from the U.S. where he visited Hernández in prison and spoke to a rally in Los Angles hosted by the Service Employees International Union-United Service Workers West. Woodley called for an end to the refusal by the U.S. government to allow Olga Salanueva and Adriana Pérez to enter the United States to visit their husbands, René González and Hernández.

Brendan Barber, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, and Jeremy Corbyn, a Labour Member of Parliament, were among other speakers from the labor movement in the U.K.

Eglé Sánchez, general secretary of the Graphical and Print Workers Union in Venezuela, also spoke. Actors Andy de la Tour, Susan Wooldridge and Roger Lloyd Pack read from the prison letters of the five.
 
 
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