11) MPs DEMAND JUSTICE FOR CUBAN FIVE

(The following article is from the August 1-31, 2008, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

Cuban News Agency

On the initiative of Francine Lalonde, Bloc Québécois MP for La Pointe-de-l'Ile and Foreign Affairs critic, 56 Members of Parliament have signed a letter demanding justice for the Five Cubans imprisoned in the United States and for their families. Libby Davies, MP for Vancouver East, organized the letter signing within the New Democratic Party.

     The letter explaining the case of the Five was signed by 40 BQ and 16 NDP MPs. In late June, the letter was forwarded to Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, and David Wilkins, U.S. Ambassador to Canada.  

     The letter indicates that Fernando Gonzalez Llort, René Gonzalez Sehwerert, Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez, Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo and Ramon Labanino Salazar, known internationally as the "Five" and imprisoned in the United States for more than nine years, have undergone an unfair trial and conditions of detention which contravene the Constitution of the United States and international law. The letter cites Amnesty International, the United Nations Working Group on arbitrary detentions, and a group of 110 British members of Parliament who denounced the trial and the imprisonment.

     The letter also mentions that the Five are held in separate maximum security prisons and kept for long periods in isolation cells; two of them have been denied their right to family visits. It also states that, since the Atlanta Court of Appeal declared that the verdicts against the Cuban Five were invalid, nothing justifies their imprisonment any longer or the arbitrary situation that is extremely painful for the Cuban Five and their families.

     In 1998 the Cuban government gave to U.S. authorities a thick report which showed that terrorist acts were being plotted on American soil by anti-Cuba groups living primarily in Miami. The information was gathered largely from data collected by the Cuban Five who had infiltrated these groups; but rather than acting on this information, it was the Cuban Five who were arrested on September 12, 1998.

     The Canadian Network on Cuba and the Table de concertation de solidarité Québec-Cuba welcomed the BQ/NDP joint call for justice, adding that "We will continue in our joint efforts to bring justice for the Five by making their case known to the public of Québec and Canada and also in collaboration with other justice seeking organizations in the United States and elsewhere in the world."