The five men--Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, René González, and Fernando González--were framed up and convicted in June 2001 on spying and other conspiracy charges. What was their real "crime"? Gathering information on the activities of ultrarightist groups that, operating on U.S. territory with the knowledge and complicity of Washington, have a record of carrying out violent attacks on Cuba. In other words, defending their country in face of attacks that are the result of the U.S. government’s four-decade-long campaign of aggression against the Cuban Revolution.

All five men are examples of revolutionaries who have devoted their lives, not only to the defense of Cuba, but to the worldwide fight for liberation from imperialist oppression. Prior to taking on their mission in the United States, three of the five carried out missions of international solidarity in Angola. There, tens of thousands of Cuban volunteer combatants fought shoulder to shoulder with Angolan freedom fighters and helped crush the invasion of that African country by the apartheid regime in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Consistent with their lifelong records, the five Cuban patriots have set an example from within prison walls, refusing to bend their knees to Uncle Sam despite the draconian sentences imposed on them. And they have been "model prisoners," as their attorneys point out.

After sentencing them on frame-up charges, the U.S. authorities, in one of their many efforts to isolate them, dispersed the five men to separate penitentiaries thousands of miles from each other. The latest assault by federal prison authorities, throwing the five simultaneously into the "hole," is an inhuman denial of elementary rights. It deprives the five of normal access to their lawyers and visits by family and friends. It impedes the legal appeal of their convictions.

This attack is part and parcel of the broader war on workers’ rights as the U.S. imperialist rulers accelerate their drive toward an all-out military assault on Iraq.

We urge you to join the campaign to send letters to federal prison authorities demanding that the five Cuban patriots be released from the "hole" immediately (see article on page 3). Defenders of the five Cubans can do many other things as well, such as organizing public forums and other activities to get out the facts about this case and win a broader hearing for the longer-term campaign to win their freedom.
 
 
Related articles:
Cuban revolutionaries held in U.S. jails thrown in ‘hole’  
 
 
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