News
Alarcon denounces unexplained punishment of Gerardo
29/07/2010
Cuban Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon denounced on Wednesday the confinement in a punishment cell (the hole) Gerardo Hernandez, one of the five Cuban antiterrorists unfairly imprisoned in the United States, has once more been subjected to.
Hernandez was thrown again into the hole on July 21, and Cuba’s procedures to contact prison authorities and the State Department in order to clarify the situation have been unsuccessful, Alarcon told the press gathered at Havana’s Convention Center.
He described this reality as very serious, since Gerardo is in a very small cell, of two meters long by one meter wide, which he shares with another prisoner and where ventilation is limited, since they breathe through a small hole located at the top of a wall.
The US government knows that Gerardo suffers from some ailments, for which he had been asking for medical examination since April. He was finally seen by a physician on July 20 and diagnosed problems requiring treatment.
Apparently, the ailment is caused by a bacterium that, according to the physician, is circulating among inmates, some of whom have become seriously ill, and we’re not sure if that’s Gerardo’s problem, since he hasn’t had any test and was taken to the hole the day after the consultation, he pointed out.
He added that he also has problems with his blood pressure, something understandable because, in spite of being only 45 years old, he has been imprisoned under harsh conditions for almost 12 years now, in spite of which he has stood firm.
The other four are Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez, Ramon Labañino and Rene Gonzalez, arrested on September, 1998, and given excessive sentences for monitoring the activities of counterrevolutionary groups planning criminal actions against the Cuban Revolution and its leaders.
We’re concerned about his poor health –and above all the lack of specialized treatment-, all the worse for being in the hole, because temperature in his prison is over 35 degrees Celsius.
We denounce this very serious situation. We’re following the events, said Alarcon, and let’s hope they end right now or tomorrow. We’re doing all we can and we have contacted his lawyers, but if there’s no clarification on this problem, the National Assembly will have to issue a statement, he stressed.
Since we heard about this situation unofficially, we have been demanding the US authorities for a statement and we haven’t had an enlightening answer on what happened or why he has been punished, he said.
Recently, his sister Isabel saw him and corroborated his situation, because he showed up on a visit bound in chains hand and foot and they spoke by telephone through a glass wall, a condition imposed on punished prisoners, recalled Alarcon.
We have no explanation whatsoever and it’s obvious to us that Gerardo was summoned by various officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigations, who went to the prison and took part in his being thrown into the hole. Evidently is not an action carried out purely by the prison, he underlined.
The fact that this is the third time Gerardo is taken to the hole in moments of appealing procedures is curious, in this process of unfair imprisonment of our Five Heroes.
He should be working with his lawyers on the arguments for his habeas corpus, and the US government knows that, clarified the President of the Cuban Parliament.
At present, Gerardo is unable to have any contact with his lawyers, receive mail or speak by telephone. He’s completely isolated and, on top of that, considering his health, his integrity is put at risk, something the US government is entirely responsible for, he underlined.
Alarcon made these statements to representatives of the national press accredited to the 5th ordinary period of sessions of the National Assembly of the People’s Power (Parliament), the 12 working committees of which are meeting on Wednesday and Thursday.
See original article from the Cuban News Agency
Political victims
29/06/2010
By Lizzie Cocker for the Morning Star
Morning Star interview with Olga Salanueva and Adriana Perez, wives of two of the Miami Five...When Miami judges condemned five Cuban men to prison for espionage in a political show trial in 2001 it was hoped they'd quietly disappear, along with their embarrassing investigation into anti-Cuban terror groups operating out of the US city.
But in its high-stakes war against the truth Washington misjudged the ferocious fight it had prompted - not with Cuba or human rights groups, but with the families of the prisoners now known as the Miami Five and solidarity activists from across the world.
During a visit to England two of the prisoners' wives, Adriana Perez and Olga Salanueva, told the Star that in the face of the US government's unrepentant commitment to this stitch-up they have not wavered in their dedication to securing the return to Cuba of their husbands, Gerardo Hernandez and Rene Gonzalez, and their comrades Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando Gonzalez.
The fortitude of these women is overwhelming. Adriana and her husband Gerardo, who has received the cruellest punishment of the five - two life sentences plus 15 years - married at the age of 18 after a whirlwind teenage romance, making a pact to finish their studies and build careers so that in 10 years they would be ready to start a family.
By the time Adriana was 28, the young couple were buying things for their unconceived baby. Then, as she explains, "he was arrested and everything was interrupted.
"We thought we had so many years ahead of us to plan and to achieve our dreams," she says.
Repeated visa denials on the grounds that Adriana and Olga are threats to US national security have meant that the women have not seen their husbands since they were arrested in 1998.
The US government, which maintains a strangling 50-year blockade against Cuba along with other forms of state aggression, reserves a more intimate hostility for the wives of the Cuban prisoners, limiting their interactions with their husbands to monitored, recorded and interrupted 15-minute phone calls.
"As Cubans we always feel that hostility from the United States. Precisely because of that kind of hostile policy I have had to be separated from the things that I want the most," Adriana says. "We didn't want to live in this way."
The wives' goal, after securing their husbands' freedom, is "to try and recover the time we've lost and everything we have not been able to do throughout these years. Every day we wake up dreaming of this."
The wives' eyes look as though they contain the suffering of a people, but they also betray an invincible humanity which is determined to fight.
Adriana reflects that "sometimes you don't know where to get strength from and you think 'I can't survive all these years.' You look for reasons to survive.
"The first one is the love we have for each other, for our husbands, our respect and admiration for their strength and the work that they did.
"And the strength that they have to get through the psychological torture and all the other violations against them. All of their strength has been transmitted to us.
"Another very important reason is the support that we have received from our own people and the international solidarity - to know that it's not just our struggle."
Olga was left to raise two daughters, Irma and Ivette, by herself when her husband Rene was ruthlessly torn from their home in the US at 5am on September 12 1998. They were forbidden from saying so much as goodbye. Three years later he was sentenced to 15 years.
"From the beginning I felt very sad about what was happening to my husband. I felt alone with my two daughters and it was a very difficult feeling," she says.
"We suffered an injustice and, although I felt pain because of my husband, at the same time I felt motivated to keep struggling because of my daughters."
Central to the strength of the global campaign for their husbands, which has attracted figures including 10 Nobel laureates and celebrities such as actor Danny Glover, has been the prioritising of collective over individual struggle.
Just as Rene bravely refused to accept the condition that if he did not testify against his comrades his family would be deported from the US, the five refused to submit to initial pressure from their counsels. Olga emphasises that individual justice "is not the essence of any of the five or of the families." Whenever she is asked about her own circumstances she always stresses that their biggest fight is resolving Gerardo's situation.
"Even though each one of them suffers from their own problems, they know thatGerardo is in the worst situation ."
The second to last hope within the US judiciary system of freedom for Gerardo was exhausted last year when the Supreme Court refused to review his case.
But last month the US wing of the campaign to Free the Five released evidence showing that as their trials took place bigshot Miami journalists were paid tens of thousands of dollars to write defamatory articles, the purpose of which was to whip up public hostility towards the Cuban anti-terrorism agents. This evidence has offered new hope for justice for the five.
Although a number of the guilty journalists have been named and shamed, the Obama administration continues to block the release of government contracts with these journalists. Cuban Five Committee co-ordinator Gloria La Riva says this secrecy adds to other evidence of a cover-up of potential violations of the Smith-Mundt Act, which prohibits the state from seeking to propagandise the US public.
This new evidence has helped defence lawyer Leonard Weinglass to pursue the last legal recourse in the US - a collateral appeal or "attack" on the conviction.
Adriana stresses that this is an important moment. "Now we have very real evidence with which we can denounce US policy," she says. "And being victims of that kind of policy allows us to speak out about what that really means in terms of our families and our husbands.
"I trust that a solution can be achieved. I don't know if it will happen with Obama or another president, but I think it will be possible with global support.
"Because the truth always triumphs, we are fighting very hard to make that truth be known."
The families of the five say that, not only do global solidarity campaigns play a crucial role in raising awareness and subsequent pressure which feeds into the US system, they also directly touch the central fighters in this battle, the five themselves. They receive tides of solidarity letters from around the world, most of them from Britain. They also receive the Morning Star every day - when the prison guards allow it.
With the prospect of being isolated from their loved ones for many more years to come, the families say their inspiration to keep going comes from these men's ability to break through the cell walls by staying engaged with the rest of the world.
Adriana says that receiving the Morning Star in prison plays a part in the men's desire to stay informed about international struggles.
"It shows you that their minds are out of prison," she insists.
While the families have no illusions that their battle is with nothing less than "the power of an empire over families," Olga asserts that "hope is ours and we can't allow anyone to take it away from us.
"It is like a challenge. We know that we have an enemy in front of us that has hatred for five people and five families.
"At the end of the day, we will win."
Photo with many thanks to Mark Thomas(c)
Original story from the Morning Star
Government paid journalists to report against Miami 5 during their trial
06/04/2010
by Linn Washington Jr. for Counterpunch
Is it coincidence or conspiracy?Supporters of five Cuban intelligence agents now serving lengthy sentences in US federal prison following controversial espionage convictions, say federal government documents detailing payments made by a US government-run anti-Castro propaganda operation to prominent Miami-area journalists prove a conspiracy.
Articles by those journalists and others, a federal appeals court once noted, contributed significantly to inflaming “pervasive community prejudice” in Miami which made it impossible for the agents known as the Cuban Five to receive a fair trial.
Others, however, claim it’s just coincidence that the same journalists who were paid $1,125 to $58,600 to appear on anti-Castro programs produced by the U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting before and during the trial for the Cuban Five also published scandalous articles about the Five in an influential Spanish language newspaper owned by the Miami Herald and in other local media.
The National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, during a recent press conference in Washington, released documents listing both the amounts of federal funds paid to the journalists and the articles they published.
“This is a most blatant and outrageous example of government influence destroying the right to a fair trial and the right to appeal,” said Gloria La Riva, Coordinator of the National Committee.
“During the pre-trial period there were hundreds of articles on the Cuban Five and not one was favorable,” La Riva said.
La Riva, in her remarks at the National Press Club in Washington, said the payments to journalists, funneled through Radio and TV Marti, violated federal law banning domestic government propaganda.
The National Committee along with the National Lawyers Guild, the Partnership for Civil Justice and the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition are calling upon U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to take immediate action to correct the unjust convictions of the Cuban Five – two of whom are serving life sentences.
The eight-month long trial for the Cuban Five that ended with their convictions in June 2001 is widely condemned as unfair partly due to the acid nature of the anti-Cuban Five news coverage that saturated Miami, where the trial was held despite repeated defense requests to have the proceeding moved away from a city containing America’s largest anti-Castro Cuban population.
A May 2005 legal analysis of the Cuban Five case conducted by the United Nation’s Human Rights Commission proclaimed the original trial “did not take place in the climate of objectivity and impartiality” required for fair trials. The Commission’s report called for a new trial.
The US federal appeals court panel that ordered a new trial for the Cuban Five in August 2005 concluded that extensive pre-trial publicity and publicity during the trial, coupled with prosecutorial misconduct, created a "perfect storm” of gale-force unfairness against the defendants.
President George W. Bush's administration demanded a rehearing on that new trial grant and won a reversal in an August 2006 ruling that found insufficient evidence that news articles ‘impaired’ the right to an impartial jury.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal from the Five.
Ironically the same federal prosecutors who claimed “objective” news coverage didn’t rob the Cuban Five of their fair trial rights cited negative coverage in Miami when seeking to relocate the trial of a Hispanic federal agent who filed a race discrimination lawsuit against the federal government.
This astounding flip-flop by federal prosecutors regarding the prejudicial impact of news coverage came exactly one year after the Five’s conviction. Federal appellate judges found no fault with this flip-flop.
The Cuban Five, who were dispatched to the US to monitor the activities of anti-Cuban organizations in the US, enjoy hero status in their Caribbean island nation.
These men have support from governmental leaders of a wide array of nations including Argentina, Belgium, Mali, Panama, Russia and Sweden. These leaders see the Five’s imprisonment as persecution, noting that vindictive federal authorities are even denying wives of two Five members permission to visit their incarderated husbands.
The five are: Antonio Guerrero; Fernando Gonzalez; Gerardo Hernandez; Ramon Labanino and Rene Gonzalez.
U.S. authorities consider the Cuban Five dangerous operatives inserted into the U.S. to undermine opponents of the Cuban government living in the U.S. and to spy on U.S. military installations and U.S. political and law enforcement activities.
The Five, however, say their U.S. mission sought to only prevent violence in Cuba by monitoring violent anti-Castro extremists in south Florida, some of whom were conducting terrorists attacks inside Cuba.
Curiously, the FBI arrested the Five in September 1998, three months after the Cuban government gave the FBI voluminous documentation on anti-Cuban government terrorists operating in south Florida, some of whom were openly engaged in paramilitary training.
“The Cuban government gave the FBI names, addresses, videos and documents. The FBI took the information, said they would get back to them but never did,” said Leonard Weinglass, the attorney handling appeals for the Cuban Five.
Weinglass is preparing to file a new round of appeals for the Cuban Five in mid-June that will include evidence of the government payments to those journalists who later authored negative articles.
“No one knew at the time of the trial about the heavy hand of government interference. The reporting was very prejudicial,” observed Weinglass, who didn’t represent the Five at their original trial.
The National Committee to Free the Cuban Five is engaged in a separate legal battle to pry additional documents from the U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting regarding its payments to journalists. The office is s refusing to release these.
Some see similarities in government payments to journalists like Pablo Alfonso (who received $58,600 during the Five’s detention and trial period, during which time he wrote 16 negative articles), with the much criticized payments the Bush Administration provided journalists to advocate for its No Child Left Behind education program.
One of those Bush-financed "journalists," conservative media personality Armstrong Williams, received $240,000 in payments…payments that a 2005 GAO report subsequently declared illegal.
Yet a more accurate comparison of government-journalist collusion is the FBI's secret employment of news media sources to generate negative publicity during its infamous COINTELPRO assaults against African-American and anti-Vietnam War activists during the late 1960s and early 1970s. COINTELPRO actions included interference with court proceedings in an effort to win convictions.
“Much of the Bureau’s propaganda efforts involved giving information or articles to “friendly” media sources,” stated a 1976 U.S. Senate report on the illegal COINTELPRO actions.
The deliberate journalistic sabotage of the Cuban Five trial by paid-off journalists, as detailed in the documents released by the National Committee, apparently is not news considered worthy of reporting by mainstream U.S. media, which has blacked out the story.
A post-press conference examination found no next-day coverage in domestic mainstream media in the news data bases of Google, LEXIS and Yahoo.
“The U.S. news media hasn’t covered the Cuban Five story sufficiently,” says National Committee Coordinator Gloria La Riva.
Linn Washington is a founding member of the new collectively-owned, journalist-run online newspaper ThisCantBeHappening. His work, and that of fellow journalists Dave Lindorff, John Grant and Charles Young, is available at: www.thiscantbehappening.net
Original article on Counterpunch website
Press release by US Committee to Free the Five
More on the five from the UK campaign