Cubans in Nicaragua Claim Justice for Barbados Crime

Managua, Oct 4. -Cuban residents in Nicaragua denounce that five Cuban antiterrorist fighters unjustly held in U.S. prisons for 13 years for fighting terrorism, while crimes against humanity such as the explosion of a Cubana airplane remains unpunished.The 35th anniversary of Barbados Crime will be on October 6. This action is repudiated every year worldwide, recalls a text signed in Managua.

"We could not forget that a civil airplane from our country, with 73 people aboard, exploded 35 years ago for a bomb planted by terrorists protected in the United States," Rafael Ruiz, president of the Association of Cuban Residents in Nicaragua, told press.

Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, recently deceased in U.S. territory, Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo were the masterminds and perpetrators of that enormous crime, without any survivor.

Thirty-five years ago, the Cuban people could only paid the last respects to some few coffins with fragments of human remains and personal belongings of some of the 57 Cubans, 11 Guayanese citizens and five Korean officials, who were killed as a consequence of that sabotage.

Among them were also the Cuban junior fencing team, returning with golden medals from the Central American championship of that discipline.

This time, we are also immersed in the battle for the release of the Cuban Five, and particularly Rene Gonzalez, who prison sentence will expire on Oct. 7, but he is prevented from immediately returning to Cuba and reuniting with his family, Ruiz said.

Nothing justifies that Rene Gonzalez, Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labañino and Fernando Gonzalez were condemned to harsh sentences for warning Cuba about violent plots hatched by terrorist groups based in the United States, he stated.

Rene's life is at risk in Miami, because that city is the main hideout of anti-Cuban terrorists, Ruiz noted.

Despite this arbitrariness, "we still trust that the judge changes her decision and let him return to Cuba and reunite his family," says a statement issued in this capital.

On September 16, U.S. federal district court Judge Joan Lenard denied the motion filed by Rene Gonzalez on February 16, 2011, to allow him to return to Cuba, and determined he should stay there for three years more under a regime of "supervised freedom."  (Prensa Latina)