[Ppnews] Cuban Five - Been to Cuba Lately?

[Political Prisoner News]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-farrell/been-to-cuba-lately_b_850838.html
Mike Farrell

Actor, 'M*A*S*H' and 'Providence'
4/21/11 01:20 PM ET


Been to Cuba Lately?


Hey, how you doing?

What's new? Been to Cuba lately?

Oh, that's right, you're only a U.S. citizen; you can't.

You can't. How stupid is that?

I guess they worry you'll catch communism or 
something. But you know what? Canadians and 
Europeans go there all the time without catching 
... well, I guess Tea Party types say they're 
already socialists, so ... But hey, that's what they say about Obama.

But really, I ask you, what's the big deal? I 
went to 
<http://www.mikefarrell.org/Journals.html>Cuba 
some years back and I didn't come back a commie, 
though some on Fox might argue the point.

Our group had the required dispensation for 
researching Cuban medical and educational needs. 
And the trip was very interesting. We saw some 
extraordinary things, learned a lot about the 
country, the people and the government. We saw 
that education is free and they encourage -- and 
pay for -- people to become doctors. As a result, 
Cubans have free medical care and the government 
provides doctors to other countries. In fact they 
offered to send a group of physicians here to 
help out after Katrina. But I guess Mr. Bush and 
company didn't like the idea of free medical care.

Mr. Obama seems inclined to change things a bit, 
but our decades-old embargo continues to do harm 
-- as much to us as to them, one could argue. And 
the politics that drive it are truly absurd. We 
have relationships with Vietnam and China, for 
God's sake, so why do we let a group of diehard 
right-wing Cuban émigrés in Miami and their 
acolytes in Congress wave their tattered 
anti-communist banner and frighten us away from a 
productive relationship with another baseball-loving Caribbean island?

This anti-Castro obsession has led us down a 
rocky road for decades: a bungled invasion; 
illegal, embarrassing assassination attempts; 
nearly a nuclear war; the harboring of terrorists 
on our own shores; and decades of lies and hypocrisy.

It's nuts. And it continues. Two recent examples 
of the utter stupidity of our ongoing cold war 
against Cuba include the operetta involving an 
actual terrorist, 
<http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/01/27/2037694/defense-attacks-credibility-of.html>Luis 
Posada Carriles, and the dark tragedy of the Cuban Five, who are not.

Posada Carilles, who once told the 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/luis_posada_carriles/index.html>New 
York Times, "I sleep like a baby," is, according 
to evidence known by our government, a CIA asset 
responsible for an ongoing terror campaign 
against Cuba, including the 
<http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/01/2011112104142751917.html>bombing 
of an airliner that cost 73 lives. Months after 
his publicly celebrated move to the U.S. in 2005, 
Posada Carriles was finally charged by the Bush 
Administration, not with terrorism but fraudulent entry.

The ante was raised a bit by the Obama Justice 
Dept. in 2009, adding perjury charges (again not 
terrorism) for statements he made under oath 
relating to hotel bombings. But after he was 
finally 
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-01-11/luis-posada-carriles-trial-of-the-terrorist-who-almost-killed-me/>brought 
to trial three months ago in federal court in El 
Paso, Texas, under a Bush-appointed judge who, 
according to one report, "simply turned the floor 
over to the defense attorney," Posada Carriles 
was acquitted of all charges and is now free to 
enjoy life in Miami, where anti-Castro zealots cheer him as a hero.

Compare that outrage to this one:

Because of decades of attacks against Cuba by 
U.S.-based anti-Castro organizations like CORU, 
the F4 Commandos, Brothers to the Rescue, Omega 7 
and Alpha 66, which Cuba reported 10 years ago 
had cost thousands of lives and great damage 
(including hotel bombings connected to Luis 
Posada Carriles), five Cuban intelligence 
officers were sent to the U.S. to gather 
information about these groups in an attempt to blunt their effectiveness.

The<http://www.freethefive.org/> five, Gerardo 
Hernández Nordelo, Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez, 
Ramón Labañino Salazar, Fernando González Llort 
and René González Sehwerert, not only succeeded 
in doing so, but sent home information on the 
activities of the groups that the Cuban 
government then made known (as if it was news) to U.S. authorities.

Agents of the 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Five>FBI went 
to Cuba in 1998 to receive the information 
gathered by the five, returning with reams of 
evidence of terrorism committed by U.S.-based 
groups. However, instead of acting against them, 
the FBI, having discerned the identities of the 
five, arrested them instead, hoping to charge them with espionage.

But, because all they had done was infiltrate, 
observe and report on the groups committing 
terror against Cuba, the U.S. was unable to prove 
the five had done anything illegal other than 
being unregistered agents of a foreign power. So, 
Bush's Justice Dept. retrenched and charged them 
with "conspiracy" to commit espionage and 
"conspiracy" to commit murder (because the Cuban 
Air Force shot down two Brothers to the Rescue 
planes after a mission over Cuba).

Refused a change of venue, the men, now known as 
the Cuban Five, were convicted in a Miami court 
(!) and sentenced to long terms in prison 
(Gerardo Hernández Nordelo receiving two life 
sentences on the conspiracy to commit murder charge).

With their sentences overturned on appeal (a 
three-judge panel citing "prejudice" in Miami), 
reinstated and subsequently refused review, the 
Cuban Five have now served 12 years in American 
prisons for protecting their country from U.S.-based terrorism.

An international effort calling for freedom and 
fairness for the Cuban Five has grown up around 
the case. It includes Amnesty International, 10 
Nobel Laureates, Mary Robinson, the UN High 
Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002, 
and many others. Former 
President<http://www.freethefive.org/> Jimmy 
Carter added his voice after a recent trip to Cuba, saying,

I believe that there is no reason to keep the 
Cuban Five imprisoned; there were doubts in the 
U.S. courts and also among human rights 
organizations ... Now, they have been in prison 
12 years and I hope that in the near future they 
will be released to return home.

So do I. In the interests of full disclosure, I 
am one of a group of Actors and Artists United 
for the Freedom of the Cuban Five. For more information, www.thecuban5.org.




Freedom Archives
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415 863-9977

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