Free Peltier & Cuban Five

Leonard Peltier & the Cuban 5 are being kept behind prison walls by the United States government to silence those who would expose the terrorist crimes carried out by the FBI and CIA on behalf of finance capital. In the month of September, supporters of Peltier and the Cuban 5 will ratchet up the visibility and pump up the volume on the struggle to free these political prisoners.

Leonard Peltier, an Anishnabe and Dakota/Lakota member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), has been serving life in prison since 1977 because two FBI agents were killed during a June 26, 1975, shootout at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, even though no evidence links him directly to the killing.

That day, FBI agents and SWAT teams had surrounded the AIM camp. They unleashed the crossfire that most likely killed the agents. One Native man, Joe Stuntz Killsright, was also killed, but his death has never been investigated by the state.

At the same time, corrupt Pine Ridge authorities were in Washington, signing away one-eighth of Lakota land for mining exploitation to transnational energy giants, including the Shell, Kerr-McGee and Exxon corporations.

Despite the lack of evidence, the admission by a key prosecution “witness” that she was threatened into lying on the stand, and the signatures of over 35 million people around the world, Peltier remains behind bars.

For more information about plans to build activities to demand his freedom on Sept. 12—Peltier’s birthday—email [email protected], call 915-533-6655, or visit www.leonardpeltier.net.

The Cuban 5—Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González— did nothing more than infiltrate right-wing Cuban-American terror cells in Miami, which are widely reported to enjoy the protection, financial support and training of the CIA. The five were monitoring the groups to try to prevent terror attacks against their island homeland.

Yet despite a ruling a year ago by a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, which threw out the conviction of the Five on the basis that they could not have received a fair trial in Miami, an anti-Cuba stronghold, they remain in prisons across this country, serving four life sentences and 75 years, collectively. The full Appeals Court this August restored their conviction for allegedly engaging in “espionage” and threatening “national security.”

The U.S. government, of course, is waging aggression in the Middle East under the cover of a “war on terror.” It is using the same red herring in this case to cover up the fact that U.S. finance capital has employed every weapon at its disposal—including terror and military invasion—to try to overturn the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Because of that great victory for the masses, what was once a U.S. neocolony now controls its own resources and has a free medical system that is also helping the poor of many other countries. The Cubans have worked tirelessly to build socialism—a planned economy to meet the needs of all—despite over four decades of hostility and economic blockade from their powerful imperialist neighbor.

For more information on Inter na tional days to Free the Cuban 5, Sept. 12 to Oct. 6, and the National March on Sept. 23 visit freethefive.org.