Here is a link to an article by Danny Glover about visiting one of the Cuban Five in prison in California.

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/international-i/20-agosto-visiting.html

By Arthur Shaw

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa criticized the unjust imprisonment of the Cuban Five, jailed for preventing terrorist attacks on Cuba from Miami, Florida.

Pres. Correa condemns the political imprisonment of the Cuban Five as an USA attack on human rights.

In his regular Saturday nationwide broadcast to the Ecuadorian people – this time from Pedro Maldonado in Pichincha province – Pres. Correa expressed his hope that this vile injustice in the USA against the Five will be reversed and the five anti-terrorist fighters and patriots returned their home in Cuba.

The Cuban Five are Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González. They were arrested September 12, 1998 and railroaded in rigged trial in an rabid anti-Cuban Miami court in 2000. In May 2009, the GOP-infested US Supreme Court refused to overturn the Kangaroo convictions of the Cuban Five, upon the urging of the Barack Obama regime.

“During the changing of the presidential guard ceremony, we were accompanied by a special guest, Irma Schewerert, a Cuban woman and mother of one of the Cuban heroes, who have been imprisoned in the United States for more than 11 years now,” Ecuadorian Pres. Rafael Correa said. “In real terms, this is an attack on human rights and hopefully this situation will soon be reversed. These Cubans are political prisoners. Political, yes! These ones really are political prisoners.”

“The Five were accused of espionage when what they were doing was preventing acts of sabotage mounted by a particular section of the ultra-right Cuban community in Miami. And instead of being congratulated for it, they were subjected to a questionable trial,” Correa noted.

Correa studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he earned a Master of Science in Economics in May 1999, and later a PhD in Economics in October 2001.

Throwing the heroic Cuban Five into the US gulag is consistent with hypocritical protection and immunity that the bourgeois regime in the USA conferred on Luiz Posada and Orlando Bosch, two terrorists fiends who blew up Cuban-owned commercial airliner in mid-air in 1976, slaughtering all 73 people on board. The bourgeois regime in the USA shamelessly pardoned Orlando Bosch after the 1976 massacre and declined to extradite Luis Posada to Venezuela, the country where two pro-US imperialist psychopaths masterminded the plot to destroy the airliner and slaughter its passengers and crew.

In July 12, 1998 published interview with NY Times reporter Ann Louise Bardach, headlined A Bombers Tale, Posada boasted openly about some of the people he murdered and other acts of terrorism committed AFTER the 1976 attack on the Cuban airliner.

Still, the bourgeois regime and most of the bourgeois media in the USA say the Cuban Five should stay in US prisons because the US is anti-terrorist.

The Cuban Five worked to prevent a repetition of the 1973 bombing of the Cuban airliner that slaughtered so many innocent people.

How is preventing another massacre an act of terrorism on the part of the Cuban Five?

Again, how is protecting terrorists who now reside comfortably in Miami anti-terrorist on the part of the US regime?

By Arthur Shaw

Ramon Labañino is one of the Cuban Five, a group of five political prisoners held in five separate US prisons. Labanino had his 47th birthday on June 9 but remained in an solitary confinement cell where he has been held since April 27.

Solitary confinement is a special form of imprisonment in which a prisoner is denied contact with any other persons, excluding members of prison staff. It is considered by some, especially prisoners, as a form of psychological torture. Solitary confinement is colloquially referred to in “American” as the ‘hole’, ‘lockdown’, or the ‘SHU’ (pronounced ‘shoe’).

Labañino is currently being held in a solitary confinement cell at the Kentucky maximum security penitentiary.

The change from prisoner population to solitary confinement resulted from being re-sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment by the Federal Court of Miami last December. The Miami court changes is sentences in accordance with the latest demands of the reactionary sector of the Cuban American community in Miami.

During a brief interview with Prensa Latina, the proletarian news agency in Cuba, Labañino’s wife Elizabeth Palmeiro explained that her husband is currently “being held in isolation just as he was for the first 17 months after his arrest in 1998.” This time “they have put him in the ‘hole’ claiming alleged security reasons, given that he cannot be together with the rest of the prison population in a maximum security prison if he is now only classified as a “medium security” prisoner.

As is widely known, lunacy prevails among the authorities who run the US gulag which contains over 2,000,000 immates.

The issue is, Elizabeth Palmeiro said, that while the US gulag authorities are deciding where Labañino is to be relocated as medium security rather than maximum security prisoner, “Ramón remains in the hole.”

The prison authorities who run the US gulag hope that this time the “hole” will break Labanino and turn him into an imperialist collaborator

Ramon Labañino, Fernando González, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández and René González … the Cuban Five … were arrested on September 12, 1998 in Miami and later subjected to a kangaroo political trial, tampered with by representatives of the reactionary sector of the Cuban American community in Miami. The kangaroo trial resulted in long, unjust, and excessive sentences for the railroaded Cuban Five.

The Five, as the world knows them, infiltrated anti-Cuban terrorist organizations in Florida and their crime was to expose terrorist plots hatched against the Cuba from the United States. Strangely, none of these “anti-Cuban terrorist organizations in Florida” were in 1998 or now on the list of terrorist organizations prepared by the US attorney general although these organizations had murdered over 3000 people in Cuba and destroyed millions of dollars of property.

Argentinean personalities have sent a letter to Hillary Clinton and Janet Napolitano demanding visas for two Cuban women so they can visit their husbands imprisoned in the United States for more than 11 years.

The letter, delivered early in the morning of February 16th to the US Embassy in Buenos Aires has the signatures of Nobel Peace recepient Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Estela de Carlotto President of Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, Nora Cortiñas Mother of Plaza de Mayo – Founder Line, writer and journalist Stella Calloni, Graciela Rosemblum President of the Human Rights Argentinean League, jurists Beinusz Szmukler and Carlos Zamorano, Fray Antonio Puigjané, Capuchino Priest, Sociologist Atilio Borón and Philosopher León Rozichtner. All signers are Argentinean members of the International Commission for the Right of Family Visits.

A copy of this document has been sent to several international human rights organizations.

The signers denounced the United States for violating the right of family visits and for denying visas to the wives of Gerardo Hernández, serving two life sentences and René González serving 15 years.

In the letter, which can be seen on several websites, those who signed asked: Where is justice and the sense of humanity in the US?

As it is publicly known, Gerardo and René are two of the Five Cuban Patriots imprisoned in the United States for monitoring criminal based in Miami.

The letter also denounced the fact that while the Five continue to serve unjust prison terms, on March 1st the international criminal Luis Posada Carriles will appear in a Court in El Paso, Texas for charges of lying to immigration authorities instead of facing justice for the numerous crimes he has committed.

SEND LETTERS, FAXES, E-MAILS
OR MAKE A PHONE CALL

On July 15, 2009 the US denied for the tenth time the visa application presented by Adriana Pérez

We ask you to please contact Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking the following:

1) To immediately grant a HUMANITARIAN VISA to ADRIANA PEREZ to visit her husband GERARDO HERNÁNDEZ in prison and end the violation of the right of family visits.

2) To grant multiple visas to all family members of the Cuban Five so they can visit their imprisoned loved ones in the US.

To contact the US State Department:

US State Department
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
2201 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20520

Fax number: 1-202-647-2283
Phone number: 1-202-647-4000

In July, 2008 Olga Salanueva was classified as “permanently ineligible.” On December 18, 2009, she was denied humanitarian parole.

We ask you to contact Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano asking the following:

1) To immediately grant a HUMANITARIAN VISA to OLGA SALANUEVA to visit her husband RENE GONZALEZ in US prison.

To contact Homeland Security:

Janet Napolitano
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Washington, DC 20528

Fax number: 1-202-282-8401
Phone number: 1- 202-282-8000
Comment line: 1- 202-282-8495

If possible please send copies of your letters to the United Nation Human Rights Council e-mail: InfoDesk@ohchr.org

Urgent Action e-mail urgent-action@ohchr.org
Complaint Procedures 1503 e-mail 1503@ohchr.org.