Read more letters and postcards sent to us by the Cuban 5

FREE THE CUBAN 5! DEFEND CUBA'S SOCIALIST REVOLUTION!

In June 2001, a Miami jury found five Cubans guilty on charges ranging from spying, conspiring to kill and endangering the security of the United States. The five men had already spent three years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement. Gerardo Hernandez was given two life sentences plus a further 15 years! Ramon Labanino was given life, as was Antonio Guerrero. Fernando Hernandez, who had infiltrated the notorious 'Brothers to the Rescue' organisation and posed as an anti-Cuban agent, was given 19 years imprisonment and Rene Gonzalez 15 years. In reality, these men had been working to foil the persistent attempts by right-wing counter-revolutionary groups in the United States to commit acts of of sabotage and terrorism against the Cuban people and their socialist revolution. Among those they attempted to expose was Posada Carrilles, wanted for the destruction of a Cuban airliner in 1976 when over 70 people were killed. Carilles is wanted in Venezuela for this terrorist act but the US government refuses to extradite him.

Rene Gonzalez gave a defiant speech from the dock: 'The whole issue of Cuban agents has a very simple solution: Leave Cuba alone. Respect the sovereignty of the Cuban people. We have better things to do, all of them a lot more constructive than watching the criminals who freely walk the streets of Miami'. While Ramon Labanino said, 'From this forum I denounce the law enforcement agencies of the United States that have concealed and failed to take action against terrorism and terrorists. If preventing the deaths of innocent human beings and preventing a senseless invasion of Cuba are the reasons I am being sentenced today, then I welcome that sentence. This has been a political trial and therefore we are political prisoners. It is a history that will do us true justice!' The 5 have since spent months in solitary confinement, while their families are denied visiting visas. On 9th August 2005 the 5 won a victory when the Federal Appeals Court in Atlanta unanimously overturned their convictions and ordered a retrial. The Court found that the original trial was not fair due to the prejudices of sections of the local community in Miami (the home of the violently anti-communist Miami Mafia) and the extensive hostile publicity surrounding the case. Judge Birch said that the original Miami trial was "a perfect storm of prejudice" and that a new trial was necessary.

With their sentences overturned, the Cuban Five should have been released but, months later they remained inside. The most significant recent development is that the 11th Court of Appeals of Atlanta has reversed the decisions ordering a re-trial, and said that the case could be condcted in Miami. President of Cuba’s National Assembly Ricardo Alarcón of the Cuban Communist Party remarked that the present Judge Wilson (from Miami) must “feel very satisfied at this moment” because “he knows that he would be the last person targeted for a bomb attack in Miami.” In other words he is deliberately playing into the hands of the counter-revolutionary mafia by keeping the Five Cubans in jail.

At the same time the right wing terrorist Orlando Bosch is enjoying a pardon granted by the US, a man who admits responsibility for the killing of 73 people aboard a Cubana plane in October 1976, as well as assassination attempts against Cuba’s elected leader Fidel Castro. And Luis Posada Cariles, wanted in Cuba and Venezuela for involvement in these reactionary plots, remains under US protection. So while locking up innocent people such as the Five and the hundreds in Guantanamo concentration camp, Cuban land occupied by the US with British state support, real terrorists are wrapped in cotton wool. And the role of British imperialism is often ignored: the Labour government has consistently condemned Cuba in the UN for ‘human rights violations’ - meanwhile Labour violates the rights of the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as poor people in Britain such as asylum seekers who are locked up and deported, and young people who are criminalized and given ASBOs. The imperialists are scared of Cuban socialism and its example to these oppressed people. By September 12 the Cuba Five will have been unjustly imprisoned for eight years. The latest ruling keeps them locked up indefinitely.

As Ricardo Alarcon, Cuban communist parliamentary leader says "The battle for the Five has not reached its end; a new chapter is beginning and we have to keep up the fight in every way we can." The 5 are guilty only of fighting US imperialism to defend Cuba's revolutionary gains. Their struggle is our struggle, we must give them our full support.

www.ratb.org.uk / www.revolutionarycommunist.com

Click for reports from the 2006 international month of action for the 5.

Back to front page