adminurged President Barack Obama to end that injustice, as marking the 13th year of their imprisonment.
A new campaign of support has been launched for Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez, imprisoned since September 12, 1998.
The International Committee to Free the Five noted that while the United States keeps these innocent men in prison, it protects terrorists such as Luis Posada Carriles.
A Press release issued by the group stated that activists this year would pay tribute to the young Italian Fabio Di Celmo, killed on September 4, 1997, during a bomb attack on Havana’s Copacabana Hotel ordered by Posada Carriles.
The solidarity committee demanded Washington “to extradite criminal Luis Posada Carriles, wanted as a fugitive in Venezuela, a country that has been demanded his extradition for six years and wants the Five to be released”.
The Five, Gerardo, Ramon, Antonio, Fernando and Rene are universally known, were detained in Miami on September 12, 1998, while working to warn their country of criminal plans by anti-Cuban terrorist groups based in Florida.
The committee also notes that after just seven years of prison, “freedom was awarded” in the United States to two of the murderers of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and his young US secretary Ronny Moffit.
Both were killed on a Washington street on September 21, 1976.
The perpetrators of the crime were Cuban-born terrorists Jose Dionisio Suarez, Virgilio Paz and Guillermo Novo.
Summary of the case
In September 1998, five Cuban men were arrested in Miami by FBI agents and kept in isolation cells for 17 months before their case was even brought before a court.
Their mission in the United States was monitoring the activities of the groups and organisations responsible of terrorist activities against Cuba.
Gerardo Hernandez, Ramón Labañino, Fernando Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero and René Gonzalez were accused of the vague crime of conspiracy to commit espionage.
The US government never accused them of actual espionage, nor did it affirm that real acts of espionage had been carried out, as no classified document had been confiscated from them.
In spite of the vigorous objections raised by the Five’s defence, the case was tried in Miami, Florida, a community with a long history of hostility toward the Cuban government, that prevented the holding of a fair trial.
The trial, which lasted over six months, became the longest trial that the United States had known until then.
More than 119 volumes of testimony and over 20 000 pages of documents were complied, including the testimonies of three retired army generals and a retired admiral, who agreed that, did not existed evidence of espionage.
Near the trial’s conclusion, when the case was about to be presented to the jury for its consideration, the US government recognised in written that it had failed to prove the main charge of conspiracy to commit murder against Gerardo Hernandez, alleging that it was facing an “insurmountable obstacle” in connection with winning the case.
The jury nonetheless found the Five guilty of all charges, under intense pressure brought to bear on them by the local media.
Found guilty, the Five were given in sum four life sentences and 77 years and were imprisoned in five completely separate maximum security prisons without communication between them. – Prensa Latina/Cuban Embassy.
§Gerardo Hernández Nordelo: 2 life terms plus 15 years
§Ramón Labañino Salazar: 1 life term plus 18 years
§Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez: 1 life term plus 10 years
§Fernando González Llort: 19 years
§René González Sehwerert: 15 years
Additionally they were imposed a clause according to which “as a further special condition of supervised release the defendant is prohibited from associating with or visiting specific places where individuals or groups such as terrorists, members of organisations advocating violence, and organised crime figures are known to be or frequent.”
The charges of conspiracy to commit espionage and conspiracy to commit murder represented for three of them life sentences, being the first people ever to be sentenced to life imprisonment for espionage in the United States in a case where no secret document was ever handled. – Prensa Latina/Cuban Embassy.
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