The five men are Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, Antonio Guerrero, and René González. They were on an internationalist mission to gather information on ultrarightist organizations with a record of violent attacks on Cuba carried out from U.S. soil with Washington’s complicity. They were arrested by FBI agents in 1998, and have been imprisoned ever since. Unable to produce evidence of carrying out any criminal acts, the government instead railroaded them on charges of “conspiracy to commit espionage” and “conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent.” Hernández was also slapped with the most outrageous charge, “conspiracy to commit murder.”

The five Cuban militants were convicted in a federal court in Miami in June 2001—after much publicity in the big-business media that branded them guilty from the get-go. They were given sentences from 15 years in prison to a double life term, and locked up in five federal prisons spread out across the country.

In February 2003 the five were thrown into solitary confinement after an order by the Justice Department charging that the extensive solidarity they had received in the form of correspondence and the few visitors they were allowed made them a “national security risk.” They spent a month in the “hole.” Since then, U.S. authorities have denied visas to Olga Salanueva, wife of René González, and Adriana Pérez, wife of Gerardo Hernández, to travel from Cuba to visit their loved ones.

What’s the real crime of the Cuban Five? Being firm defenders of the Cuban Revolution, in which Cuba’s working people toppled a U.S.-backed dictatorship, put in power a government of workers and farmers, expropriated the capitalists and landlords, and opened the socialist revolution in the Americas.

Despite a relentless U.S. economic war, the Cuban people have stood their ground. They have defended the revolution and lent internationalist assistance to millions from Africa to the Middle East and Asia fighting to end imperialist domination and achieve national liberation. New generations of revolutionary leaders have been tested and gained experience in the process, answering in practice the question, “What will happen after Fidel?”

The five working-class heroes serving draconian sentences in U.S. prisons are such products of the Cuban Revolution. Three of them, for example, fought in Angola in the late 1980s as volunteer combatants when Cuba helped that African nation defeat invasions by the South African regime’s apartheid army. They have shown a similar conduct behind bars, extending solidarity to strikers and other embattled workers in the United States.

Let’s build the actions to demand their freedom!
 
 
Related articles:
U.S. appeals court upholds convictions of five framed Cuban revolutionaries
What’s behind U.S. calls for ‘transition’ in Cuba?
Cubans defend revolution, say no return to capitalist past  
 
 
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