Free the Cuban Five!
Cindy Sheehan
Nothing can make injustice just but mercy.
Robert Frost
For quite some time, I have been involved in the call to free the “Hikers,” Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, from Iranian prison. I put “Hikers” in quotation marks, because this is the term they have become known by in the media—not because I believe there was anything more nefarious in their actions. I was first contacted by Josh’s brother, and subsequently have gotten to know Shane’s mother, Cindy Hickey better—I even once had her on my radio show, Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox.
I was delighted on September 21st, the day Shane and Josh, convicted of spying and given a eight year sentence, were shown the highest mercy by the country of Iran and released. I had been invited to meet with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in NYC that day, but financial circumstances prevented me from making a last minute trip from California. I wish I had been able to go to thank him personally, but while I was not in NYC, I was at my home in California basically doing a deathwatch for Troy Anthony Davis who was ultimately “lynched” by the State of Georgia for the 1989 murder of a cop that he most likely he did not commit. However, I have noticed a pattern, if a cop is killed, someone must die—it doesn’t really matter if that person is actually the one that committed the murder.
Besides the cruelty of the police state killings of Kelly Thomas and Oscar Grant and more recently a young black man, Kenneth Harding, who didn’t have evidence of paying his MUNI fare in San Francisco, the cops surely must know that their crimes will be videotaped in this age of almost universal citizen access to this technology—yet the police state still commits its crimes supremely confident in the knowledge that they will assuredly “get away” with them. That’s a bone-chilling thought!
To me, the guilt or innocence of a person is not what’s important in the issue of capital punishment—what’s important is that the use of this state murder is barbaric and needs to end. Troy Anthony Davis was not shown mercy by the State of Georgia, or by the Barbaric State of America. Kelly Thomas and Kenneth Harding were tragically not shown mercy by members of the police sate, but the cops will be shown plenty of that elusive virtue because it's usually only reserved for the wealthy or members of this police state.
The day that the Hikers were released, the Prez of this country said, “I am thrilled. They never should have been in prison in the first place.”
Well, I would like to tell you about FIVE men currently languishing in US Federal Prison who never should be there, "in the first place," either. It’s the little known case of the Cuban Five, or the “Five Heroes” as they are referred to in Cuba.
Many acts of terrorism against Cuba have been planned from the right-wing Cuban exile community in Miami. These terrorists have killed thousands of Cubans and so the Cuban Five, as they would come to be known, were sent to the US to infiltrate this terrorist cell based in South Florida so as to be able to transmit messages back to Cuba to save lives in their homeland.
René González, Ramón Labaniño, Fernando González, Antonío Guerrero and Gerardo Hernández left their families to go to the US.
To make a long story short, in an act of good will, Cuban authorities decided to share information gathered by the Five with the FBI, and instead of rounding up the real terrorists, the Five were rounded up, put on trial in a kangaroo court in Miami where a fair trial was just not possible and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.
The Five Heroes did nothing against the US and never gathered any intelligence against our government—yet they have been in prison since 1998.
I have met their mothers, wives and children all over the world and I have also been in solidarity with the movement to free the Five for several years.
I know that President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela used his good influence with President Ahmadinejad of Iran (in fact, as I am told, worked harder than the US did for the Hikers’ freedom) and I am wondering after so many have called for the release of the Five if there’s any humanitarian that the leaders of this nation would listen to? Of course, the “Communist Dictator,” Hugo Chávez, has no influence here in the US—he himself is on the same path of demonization that Castro, Ahmadinejad, Qaddafy, et al, are on.
The Cuban Five never should have been in prison, either and 13 years is a long time for innocent men to be incarcerated.
It’s time for Obama to show the same mercy as was just shown two of our innocent citizens by Iran and send the Five Heroes home to their families.
It’s not only the humane thing to do; it’s the just thing to do.
U.S. Prosecutor on Cuban Five Case Is an Anti-Cuba Activist
(acn) U.S. Prosecutor Caroline Heck-Miller, who has denied Cuban antiterrorist fighter Rene Gonzalez the right to return to Cuba, is the widow of former Army intelligence officer Gene Miller, and boasts an anticommunist and anti-Cuba background, Granma newspaper reported Friday.
According to the editorial, Gene Miller, a fierce anticommunist, served as an Army counterintelligence officer during the Korean War, was recruited by the Miami Herald as an investigative reporter and gave name to the CIA Peter Pan Operation that dragged more than 14,000 Cuban children away from their home and their parents.
Carolina Heck’s link with Miller explains in great deal her behavior apparently obsessive against Rene and the other four Cuban antiterrorist fighters who have been imprisoned for 13 years in the U.S., wrote Jean-Guy Allard, the author of the article.
This was the same Prosecutor who insisted on taking the case of the Cuban Five to court, refused to lead the trial outside of Miami and played a key part in the long totally outlaw sentences applied against the Cubans.
As it weren’t enough –reads the article– this woman uses her profession to fulfill Intelligence orders, with the zeal of an agent, and was the one who, despite requests to do so from the Department of Homeland Security, decided not to press criminal charges in August 2005 against Luis Posada Carriles, a confessed terrorist who has repeatedly stated that he feels no regrets for his crimes.
Heck-Miller’s lack of ethics, impartiality and the absence of rigor required in her profession, as well as her obsession with applying unfair and inhumane punishments against the Cuban Five are characteristics of an anti-Cuba activist and correspond with the CIA’s interest, Jean-Guy Allard denounced.
Thus the federal prosecutor is obsessed with the idea of kidnapping Rene Gonzalez in the biggest terrorist sanctuary of the world, while his family claims for his return to Cuba on October 7, the day he is expected to be freed.
Argentinean Supreme Court Judge Requests Obama to Release The Five
(acn) In a letter addressed to US President Barack Obama, Eugenio Zaffaroni, judge of Argentina’s Supreme Court of Justice, asked the head of state to release the five Cuban heroes incarcerated in that northern country.
It’s a collective letter written at a personal level so other jurists of the region can reiterate it in more or less similar terms, the Cubadebate Web site reported with information taken from the Pagina 12 newspaper published in Buenos Aires.
Zaffaroni warned that the request made to Obama is not for him to pardon The Five but to commute the sentences given to Rene Gonzalez, Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando Gonzalez.
The request is based on the fact that they have been in jail for 13 years, and even if they were guilty of their charges, supposing that the crimes they are accused of were true, he thinks that the time already served for behaviors that didn’t endanger US security is a reasonable sentence, he pointed out.
In his message, he says that nobody has died or the life of anybody has been put in jeopardy as a result of the actions attributed to these five men.
Doctor Eugenio Zaffaroni is also the vice-president of the International Association of Criminal Law and a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Association of Criminal Law.
He has been honored for being a pioneer in the explanation, on the bases of the theory of criminology, of the crimes committed by the last de facto government in Argentina. He is one of the most prominent Latin American criminal lawyers, with a well known scientific work, points out the Cubabebate Web site.
- INFOCUBA
+ Comité Internacional por la Libertad de los Cinco Cubanos
http://realcuba.wordpress.com/,
paul evrard
http://www.cubainformacion.tv/
http://www.antiterroristas.cu/,
http://www.freethefive.org,
