Audio: Attorney Leonard Weinglass on the Cuban Five

HAVANA, Cuba, Oct 12 (acn) South African trade union organizations demanded the freedom of the five Cubans imprisoned in the United States since 1998 for fighting terrorism.

Sidumo Dlamini, president of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), ratified COSATU’s willingness to work with other international organizations with the objective of spreading the truth about the case of Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez, Ramón Labañino and Rene Gonzalez.

Dlamini urged the U.S. government to immediately grant entry visas to Olga Salanueva and Adriana Perez so that they can visit their respective husbands, Rene Gonzalez and Gerardo Hernandez, in jail.

COSATU’s leader talked highly about the Cuban contribution to the liberation of Angola, the defeat of the apartheid and other solidarity actions carried by the Cuban trade union movement with South Africa in different fields.

Raymundo Navarro, member of the National Secretariat of the Cuban Workers Federation told ACN that during the recently held 10th Congress of the African organization, COSATU received the commemorative stamp for the 70th Anniversary of the Cuban trade union organization.

COSATU has more than two million members in 21 groups that represent all the sectors of South Africa. 

Sindicalistas sudafricanos exigen libertad de Los Cinco

Relatives of the Cuban Five Received at Belgian Foreign Ministry

HAVANA, Cuba, Oct 12 (acn) A delegation of relatives of the five Cuban antiterrorism fighters unjustly incarcerated in the United States was received on Monday by Koenraad Rouvouy, Director for Latin America and the Caribbean of the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The delegation is made up by Adriana Perez and Olga Salanueva, the wives of Gerardo Hernandez and René Gonzalez, respectively, who were accompanied by Cuba’s ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium, Elio Rodriguez.

During the meeting with the top Belgian official, Perez and Salanueva highlighted the injustice committed against them and their husbands, with the denial of entry visas to visit them in jail.

Gerardo Hernandez and Rene Gonzalez, imprisoned for 11 years now along with Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labañino and Fernando Gonzalez, were condemned to harsh sentences ranging from 15 years to two life imprisonments.

The Five, as they’re internationally known due to the international campaign in favor of their release, were monitoring the activities of Florida-based anti-Cuban organizations, in order to warn the Cuban people about their criminal actions.  

Perez and Salanueva will fulfil a working program in Belgium and in the Great Duchy of Luxembourg, and will participate in the plenary meting of the European Parliament, in the French city of Strasbourg.    

Recibidas en cancilleria belga familiares de Los Cinco

Oct. 13, 2009
Reprinted from antiterroristas.cu

Today, October 13, 2009, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida imposed a new sentence to Antonio Guerrero, unjustly imprisoned for more that 11 years in Florence, Colorado, one of the toughest detention facilities, dubbed by the Guinness World Records as the most secure prison in the world, where the inmates are in solitary confinement for most of the day, and that is labelled by some as the "Alcatraz of the Rockies" and its prison regimen as “a living tomb”.

As it is known, Antonio had been initially condemned by that same court to a life sentence plus 10 years. That sentence was considered excessive, contrary to the legal rules currently in force and was vacated by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, establishing that the defendant did not gather or transmit any information related to the national security of the United States.

The new sentence of 262 months (nearly 22-year) of prison is the result of international solidarity and the tenacious effort of his defense counsel, Leonard Weinglass, and although it is not as absurdly exorbitant as the one before, it is also unjust. It’s time to intensify the struggle for the immediate freedom of our five compatriots.

This episode is one of the so many proofs that confirm the absolute arbitrariness of the process followed against who are imprisoned in the United States only and exclusively for fighting anti-Cuban terrorism promoted by US authorities. The irrational disproportion of the originally imposed sentences was one of the issues reclaimed by the defense regarding to which it was possible to reach a partial, limited and contradictory achievement. In 2008 the Atlanta Court of Appeals ratified the unfair guilty verdicts of the Five, annulled the sentences of Antonio, Ramón and Fernando and remanded for resentencing.

As an expression of the strange way of doing justice in that country, the Court of Appeals recognized that in spite of the fact that Gerardo Hernández Nordelo deserves be resentenced, they decided not to do that and ratified the cruel sentence of two lives plus 15 years.

Gerardo, Ramón, Antonio, Fernando and René are innocent and should never have been deprived of freedom. Every day that they remain in prison will be a shameful confirmation of the US Administration complicity with terrorism.

Leonard Weinglass address the press following the hearing
(photo by Bill Hackwell)