Cuban Five case exposes
U.S. double standard on ‘terrorism’
By
Cheryl LaBash
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.
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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.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
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