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Cuban Five case exposes

U.S. double standard on ‘terrorism’

Published Oct 28, 2010 11:34 PM

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. government has used the fear-mongering “terrorist” label against socialist and other independent countries.


Actor Danny Glover visited
Gerardo Hernández at the
Victorville prison in California
on Aug. 8 shortly after
Hernández was released from
solitary confinement.

This myth is exposed inside U.S. borders as the Cuban Five heroes have been unjustly imprisoned for protecting their Cuban homeland from terror attacks launched from Florida. The struggle to tell their story grows stronger.

On the 12th anniversary of their arrest, more than 20 prominent people requested that President Barack Obama “review the case of Gerardo Hernández, René González, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and Antonio Guerrero, internationally known as the ‘Cuban Five,’ and grant them immediate freedom.”

Artists including Danny Glover, Ed Asner, Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen and Oliver Stone, note the U.S. government’s “double standard.” While the Cuban Five remain in federal prisons, real terrorists Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch — who masterminded the 1976 mid-air bombing of a Cuban airliner, killing 73 people — enjoy safe haven in the U.S.

The letter calls for granting U.S. visas to Adriana Pérez and Olga Salanueva so they can visit their jailed spouses, Gerardo Hernández, and René González. (www.antiterroristas.cu, Sept. 13)

On Sept. 27, Danny Glover personally appealed to President Obama urging immediate visas for Pérez and Salanueva. He wrote, “We must not just speak and write of our values of fairness and human rights but also exercise them. In contrast to our country’s unsympathetic stance, in the last ten months, Iran has issued humanitarian visas to American mothers allowing them to see their incarcerated children.” (http://yhoo.it/cszjHE)

Amnesty International issued a report Oct. 14 on the Cuban Five which calls for U.S. executive review of this case “through the clemency process or other appropriate means.” The report objects to the U.S. government’s denial of visas to Pérez and Salanueva to see their imprisoned spouses.

The AI report says that Pérez has not seen Hernández since his 1998 arrest; he has been sentenced to two life terms plus 15 years. And it explains that Salanueva, who legally resided in the U.S. before and during the two-and-a-half years of pre-trial proceedings, alleges that René González “was offered a plea bargain in which she would have been allowed to remain in the U.S. if he pleaded guilty.” He refused and she was deported in 2000 and has been denied re-entry ever since. (www.antiterroristas.cu, Oct. 14)

Although in 2009 the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the Cuban Five’s appeal, a new round of appellate hearings will challenge their convictions based on new evidence of U.S. government misconduct. Inflammatory media reports about the Five’s Miami trial have been linked to prominent journalists who were also paid by the U.S. government to write and air anti-Cuba propaganda.

Two more issues challenge Hernández’s outrageous sentence. His was the first case in U.S. history where a U.S. resident was charged with so-called conspiracy with another country’s air force pilots who were dutifully defending their country’s airspace. The U.S. government has not affirmed or denied satellite images of the incident, which could be critical evidence for the Five. Unprecedented international law issues were not properly dealt with in the original trial. (www.antiterroristas.cu, Sept. 15)

The National Committee to Free the Cuban Five is raising funds to place an ad in the Washington Post. The International Committee for the Freedom of the Five will debut the political cartoons penned by Gerardo Hernández at the VII U.S./Cuba/Venezuela/Latin America Labor Conference in Tijuana, Mexico. For information, see www.theCuban5.org, www.freethefive.org, or www.antiterroristas.cu. To order the new video by Bernie Dwyer, Radio Havana reporter and filmmaker, which tells of U.S. involvement in the so-called Cuban “dissident movement,” go to www.Leftbooks.com.