Under orders from Ashcroft?
Cuban Five are thrown in 'hole'
By Gloria La Riva
In a very serious development, the five Cuban men imprisoned
in the United States for defending Cuba from U.S.-Miami
terrorism were suddenly and without explanation thrown into
solitary confinement on Feb. 28 in their respective
prisons.
Prison authorities have not given the official reason for
their illegal confinement in "the hole," but it appears to be
in response to a directive from high up in Washington. It has
all the indications of directed political repression against
the Cuban Five.
Supporters of Cuba and the Cuban Five are urged to
participate in a national call-in campaign to U.S. Attorney
General John Ashcroft and Bureau of Prisons Director Kathleen
Hawk Sawyer.
Leonard Weinglass, appeals attorney for Antonio Guerrero,
one of the Cuban Five serving life in federal prison in
Florence, Colo., said, "None of them belongs in solitary
confinement. It is completely unjustified and unnecessary, as
all of them are model prisoners."
He added, "This comes just as we are in the final
preparations for their appeals before the 11th Circuit Court of
Atlanta. We haven't even been able to visit or talk with our
clients for a proper legal defense."
Cuba's National Parliament issued an emergency declaration,
protesting the solitary confinement. It read in part: "By
blocking access between the Five and their defense attorneys,
the government of the United States is violating the basic
principles and norms of law.
"The authorities knew that the attorneys made consultations
with their clients and had made the necessary arrangements to
meet with them in the coming week to review the documents for
their defense to be presented before the 11th Circuit Court in
Atlanta no later than April 7th.
"This action was adopted by Wash ington with the deliberate
intention of impeding a fair appeals process."
Weinglass is urging supporters of the Cuban Five to write
immediately to the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Wash ington,
not the individual prisons, as they are not responsible for the
confinement order.
He noted in an interview with Radio Havana Cuba that the
Black Panther prisoners in the U.S. were similarly rounded up
into solitary right after 9/11.
It is clear that the Justice Depart ment's repression of
Arab, Muslim and immigrant communities is also being aimed
against the Cuban Five, whose only "crime" was fighting
U.S.-sponsored terrorism against Cuba. The "Homeland Security"
department is a sweeping plan for subjugation of political
resistance to U.S. imperialist plans at home and abroad.
At stake in the case of the Cuban Five is Cuba's very right
to defend itself. They were rounded up by the FBI in late 1998
after the five Cubans thwarted terrorist plots of fascist
anti-Cuba organizations that operate in Miami. These groups
have tried to terrorize the Cuban people and break their
resolve to preserve their socialist revolution.
Many of these groups sprang up in Miami from the ranks of
thousands of Cuban fascists who fled newly liberated Cuba in
1959, after the dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown by
rebel leader Fidel Castro.
While these terrorists have never reconciled themselves to a
revolutionary Cuba, they could never exist as a force without
the support of the CIA and U.S. government. Through the years,
openly terrorist groups like Omega 7, Alpha 66 and CORU of the
1960s and 1970s, followed by more devious organizations like
Brothers to the Rescue and Cuban American National Foundation
in the 1980s and 1990s, have depended on training, funding and
direction from Washington.
Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino,
Antonio Guerrero, René González, and Fernando
González have been unjustly imprisoned since September
1998 when they were arrested by the FBI on trumped-up charges
of espionage on the United States.
Espionage conspiracy, murder conspiracy and other outrageous
charges were leveled at them as they remained 17 months in
pre-trial solitary confinement in the most virulently anti-Cuba
city of the Western Hemisphere: Miami.
As the rightwing media whipped up sensationalist stories
against the Cuban Five, the U.S. attorney's office and
terrorist cabal in Miami prosecuted them in public before and
during trial.
The five went to Miami in the early 1990s on a vital mission
of monitoring anti-Cuba terrorist groups there to prevent
violence against their country. Since the revolution, more than
3,400 Cubans have been killed by right-wing violence assisted
from the U.S.
On March 7 Rev. Geoff Bottoms, who had flown in from
Blackpool, England, to see Ramón Labañino in
Beaumont federal prison in Texas, was told without explanation
that Labañino was not permitted visitors.
Alicia Jrapko and Tanya Cole were at Lompoc prison to visit
Gerardo Hernán dez. Ominously, Jrapko was told by a
prison official, "It is possible you will never get to see them
again."
Free the Cuban Five committees across the United States and
around the world are calling and writing Wash ing ton to demand
their release from the "hole." For more information, contact
the National Committee to Free the Five at: www.freethefive.org
or (415) 821-6545.
Messages of protest can be sent to: Attorney General John
Ashcroft, U.S. Department of Justice, 950 Pennsyl vania Ave.
NW, Washington, DC 20530-0001, (202) 353-1555; and Kathleen
Hawk Sawyer, Director, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 320 First St.
NW, Washing ton, DC 20534, (202) 307-3198, fax (202)
514-6620.
Reprinted from the March 20, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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