Message from Gerardo Hernández after being released from the hole

The following message was sent out by the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5. Email [email protected] or go to www.thecuban5.org.

Gerardo Hernández

Aug. 3, 2010

Dear Sisters and Brothers:

I am dictating these words via telephone, which is why I must be brief and I will not be able to say everything I would have liked. Yesterday afternoon I was removed from “the hole” with the same speed in which I was thrown in. I had been taken there supposedly because I was under investigation. These investigations can take up to three months, sometimes more, but I was there thirteen days. As a known Cuban journalist would say - you can draw your own conclusions.

I want to express to all of you my deep gratitude. You know that they were particularly difficult days due to the excessive heat and the lack of air, but you all were my oxygen. I can’t find a better way to summarize the enormous importance of your solidarity efforts.

Many thanks to all the compañeras and compañeros from Cuba and around the world, who joined their voices to condemn my situation. Thanks to the institutions, organizations and individuals of goodwill that in one way or another worked to bring an end to this injustice.

To our President Raúl, that so honors us with his support. To the Cuban National Assembly and its President Ricardo Alarcón, a tireless fighter for the cause of the Five. To my four brothers, who sent me messages of encouragement, and who have also suffered and lived under constant risk of suffering similar abuses. And of course, to our dear Commander in Chief: Thank you for so much honor! (I don’t know if I should say it, but just the privilege of hearing my name in Fidel’s voice makes me feel like thanking those who put me in “the hole”.)

Thank you Comandante for the joy of hearing you and seeing you as great as ever!

Thanks to everyone for having demonstrated again the power of solidarity which, without a doubt, will one day make us free.

The struggle continues!

A big embrace,
Gerardo Hernández Nordelo
U.S. Penitentiary, Victorville, Calif.

Cuban Five must be freed

Gerardo Hernández tortured by U.S. gov’t

Bulletin: On the morning of Aug. 3, Gerardo Hernández was freed from “the hole” due to mass pressure — individual, diplomatic and legal. He has been returned to his former incarceration status. It is time for the U.S. government to free the Cuban Five and send them home.

Aug. 2 — A global outcry is demanding that the U.S. government end the new torturous conditions imposed on Gerardo Hernández. On July 21, prison officials transferred Hernández, one of the anti-terrorist political prisoners known as the Cuban Five, to a 3-foot-by-7-foot solitary cell, known as “the hole.” Prison authorities force him and another prisoner to share this space.

With outdoor summer temperatures reaching more than 100 degrees, the cell temperature is a sweltering 95 degrees; there is only a small amount of ventilation near the ceiling. Hernández is not allowed to shower and is taken outdoors for an hour in a cage every other day.

This is only the latest injustice in 12 years of injustice being perpetrated on each of the Cuban Five, which includes barring all visits from Adriana Pérez, Hernández’s spouse, and Olga Salanueva, René González’s spouse. These are violations of international human rights.

Alicia Jrapko from the U.S. office of the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five told Workers World: “Gerardo Hernández has been thrown in the hole for no infraction of the rules of the prison he is in. The reason for this punishment is because he is Cuban and he has stood up against terrorism. It is no coincidence that every time an appeal for Gerardo comes up he finds himself in the hole.

“Gerardo remains strong,” Jrapko stressed, “but he needs our solidarity and action more than ever before. For those of us in the movement in solidarity with Cuba, Gerardo’s terrible situation offers us a great opening to intervene in the struggle for the freedom of the Cuban Five. Could there be a greater exposure of the phony U.S. war on terrorism than the case of Gerardo, a fighter against terrorism now being subjected to torture in ‘the hole’ of the high security penitentiary in Victorville, Calif.?”

Hernández was sentenced to two life sentences plus 15 years. Although the punitively imposed life sentences for Ramón Labañino and Antonio Guerrero were reduced to long prison terms on appeal, Hernández was excluded from that decision because he has a second life sentence. Although the U.S. prosecution itself proclaimed there was no evidence against him, Hernández was convicted of orchestrating the shoot-down of an insidious Brothers to the Rescue overflight of Cuban territory on Feb. 24, 1996, which resulted in four deaths.

On Aug. 9, 2005, a unanimous three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the Cuban Five’s convictions and ordered a new trial. They said that the convictions in the Miami trial were biased and “a perfect storm of prejudice.”

Although that decision was overruled, the court of world opinion from Nobel laureates to parliaments to labor unions are demanding that these five political prisoners — Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González and René González, who have been held in U.S. jails since 1998 — be returned to their families and comrades in Cuba.

Increasing speculation is being reported, including in a televised statement by Fidel Castro, former Cuban president and revolutionary theorist, that the Cuban Five will be returning home before December. By redoubling the campaign to publicize the facts of this case and building even greater support for the demand to free them, the progressive community can help the process.

For updates, see www.thecuban5.org, www.antiterroristas.cu, or www.freethefive.org.