Cuban Parliament Issues Call to Step Up Campaign to Free the Five

HAVANA, Cuba, Aug 2.- The members of the Cuban National Assembly (Parliament) agreed on Monday to step up an international campaign for the release of five Cuban antiterrorists who remain unjustly imprisoned in the United States since 1998. “It is necessary to take this struggle to higher levels,” reads a document unanimously approved on Monday morning during the beginning of the Seventh Ordinary Period of Sessions of the Seventh Legislature of Parliament that takes place at Havana’s Convention Center.

The text, presented to the parliamentarians by the Parliament president, Ricardo Alarcon, urges honest people all over the world to show their solidarity and multiply actions to bring down the wall of silence around the case of Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez, Ramon Labañino, and Rene Gonzalez —internationally known as the Cuban Five—, who were arrested and given harsh and unjust sentences for monitoring anti-Cuba extremist groups in South Florida that were planning and carrying out terrorist actions against the Caribbean nation.

The document refers in particular to the case of Gerardo Hernandez, sentenced to two life terms plus 15 years after an illegal process in which the judge did not accept any of the mitigating factors presented by the defense team, slander was admitted, and the members of the jury were threatened.

The statement demands the disclosure of evidence on Gerardo’s alleged involvement in the shooting-down of two aircraft of the terrorist organization Brothers to the Rescue by the Cuban government on February 24, 1996 —a charge that was never proven.

Gerardo has been facing additional difficulties to communicate with his lawyers and with the Cuban diplomatic representatives in the U.S. while his access to the mail is limited and obstructed, even that of a legal nature related to his case.
(ACN)