Doug Lorimer
On September 21, while the US government was considering freeing notorious right-wing Cuban emigre terrorist Luis Posada Carriles from detention for illegally entering the US, supporters of five Cuban men convicted in 2001 of spying on the US held a news conference in Washington to demand their release.
"These five men had come to the US in order to infiltrate these terrorist right-wing groups that have threatened us in Miami for decades", Andres Gomez, of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, told the news conference. He spoke in advance of a planned September 23 protest march to the White House, where supporters of the Cuban Five will push for their release — and for the US to grant Venezuela's request to have Posada extradited.
The five Cuban men — Ramon Labanino, Rene Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernandez and Fernando Gonzalez — have been imprisoned in the US since 1998.
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals in Atlanta tossed out their convictions in 2005, finding that Miami's anti-Castro political climate and intense media coverage had made a fair trial impossible. However, a full panel of judges, accommodating to Washington's hostility to socialist Cuba and support for right-wing Cuban emigres, later reinstated the convictions, finding the trial was fair.
The US McClatchy Newspapers chain reported that speakers at the September 21 news conference included Francisco Letelier, whose father, former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier, was assassinated 30 years ago in Washington by US-backed Cuban right-wing terrorists. Letelier was a leading voice in exposing the crimes of General Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship and its US backers. For speaking out, he and his aide, Ronni Moffitt, were assassinated.
Just two weeks after the murder of Letelier and Moffitt, the same terrorist network bombed a Cuban airliner in flight over Barbados, killing all 73 passengers aboard, on October 6, 1976. Posada, a naturalised Venezuelan citizen, escaped from a Venezuelan prison in 1985 while awaiting trial on charges of plotting this terrorist act.
Franscico Letelier, who lives in Los Angeles, called on the US government to declare Posada a terrorist.
For information on the campaign to free the Cuban Five visit or .