Vol. 73/No. 21      June 1, 2009

Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, and René González were in south Florida monitoring rightist groups that have a history of carrying out deadly attacks on Cuba. They were arrested in Miami in September 1998 and later convicted in a political frame-up trial on charges including failure to register as foreign agents, conspiracy to commit espionage, and, in the case of Hernández, conspiracy to commit murder.

The gathering—the Second International Youth Meeting in Solidarity with the Cuban Five—decided to call for international days of action June 6-8 to raise awareness of the case and to demand that the U.S. government release the prisoners.

In the coming month the U.S. Supreme Court will be considering whether to accept a petition to review an appellate court decision that rejected defense arguments that the five were prevented by the political atmosphere in Miami from receiving a fair trial.

The conference also decided to deepen the work of reaching out—especially in the United States—to campuses, media outlets, prominent artists, academic and religious figures, and others to broaden awareness of the case and to win new support.

The 145 mostly young delegates at the conference came from 42 countries and 82 organizations. Dozens of youth from Cuba attended. The two-day agenda was built around a series of short presentations followed by ample time for discussion, questions, and comments.  
 
‘An eminently political case’
Ricardo Alarcón, the conference keynote speaker and president of the Cuban National Assembly, explained that the place to focus demands to free the five is on the U.S. government.

“The United States government could right now resolve this question simply with the stroke of a pen,” Alarcón told the delegates. “With a signature of the president our fight would be finished and the injustice against our five comrades would be over.”

Alarcón mentioned that the U.S. government dropped the charges May 1 against Keith Weissman and Steven Rosen, two men accused of spying for Israel. Action by the U.S. administration and its Justice Department could also be taken in the case of the five, he said.

Olga Salanueva, the wife of René González, spoke about the political character of the case.

“We are always optimists but we are not divorced from reality,” she told the delegates. “Everyone would be very happy if the Supreme Court would declare them innocent and send them to Cuba. But we shouldn’t delude ourselves, this is not a legal case, it is an eminently political case.”

Salanueva pointed to the examples of Nelson Mandela, who spent nearly three decades in prison, and the five Puerto Rican independence fighters—Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andrés Figueroa Cordero, Irving Flores, Lolita Lebrón, and Oscar Collazo—who were imprisoned in the United States for more than 25 years.

“They were liberated after many years of imprisonment, due to the struggle and international solidarity of many people,” she explained. “Not because of the justice system.”  
 
Case before Supreme Court
Attorneys for the five have now filed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review whether the five received a fair trial. The court, which receives some 10,000 new cases each year and decides to hear a small fraction of them, will announce the cases it has chosen to hear before the current session ends in June.

In addition 12 amicus curiae—“friend of the court”—briefs have been filed before the Supreme Court by national and international jurist and human rights organizations requesting review of lower court rulings.

The petition centers on three points: that the decision by government prosecutors to strike seven jurors who were Black was discriminatory; that the request by the defense for a change of venue due to pervasive anti-Castro prejudice in Miami was well founded and should have been granted; and finally, that the conviction of Hernández—without any evidence to support the charge—of conspiracy to commit murder “illustrates the manifest unfairness” of the trial.

Hernández was charged with involvement in the 1996 shootdown by the Cuban air force of two planes piloted by members of Brothers to the Rescue. That organization had staged numerous provocative flights into Cuban airspace before the two planes were shot down over Cuban territorial waters. Evidence introduced during the trial cited the long record of involvement with CIA-sponsored deadly attacks against Cuba by the group’s central leader, José Basulto.

The international conference also called for stepping up the fight to win visas for Adriana Pérez, the wife of Hernández, and Salanueva. The two women have been denied visas to see their husbands for nearly 11 years and nine years, respectively.

Pérez described the visa denial as “a form of cruelty and psychological torture” directed at the two men and their families.

“In our case, we have been refused entry into the United States because the authorities have argued that Olga and I could represent a danger to the security of the United States,” Pérez said. Part of this campaign is tied to the U.S. government’s charge that Cuba promotes “terrorism,” she noted. The island was included again this year on the U.S. State Department’s so-called state promoters of terrorism list.

“We are making the 10th request for a visa for me,” Pérez said. “It is the first request under the new government of Obama, but we cannot sit and trust in the good will or intentions of the new administration. We must pressure, fight for the rights of visitation for all of the five.”

Pérez urged participants to write letters to U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano demanding that they be granted visas.

In her report to the conference, Kenia Serrano, president of the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples, noted the breadth of international support for the case.

There are 147 countries with Cuba friendship associations and 111 countries with solidarity organizations, she reported. In Asia alone there are 119 solidarity organizations in 31 countries. Within Cuba there are 70 centers organized to fight on behalf of the five.

Serrano said that the United States is the main target, with a focus on U.S. public opinion. She reported that there are 28 solidarity committees in 17 states. There is great, untapped potential in the United States to win support, she noted.

“It’s not just U.S. citizens,” she added. “There are immigrants in the United States from around the world. We should reach out to the leaderships of the groups that represent them.”

Tom Baumann also contributed to this article.
 
 
Related articles:
Free the Cuban Five now!
Cuban revolutionary speaks from U.S. jail
Interview with Gerardo Hernández, one of Cuban Five  
 
 
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