Message from the Five to the World and the American People

The five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters, who were unfairly given extremely long sentences in the United States, sent a message to the world and the United States on September 12, marking 15 years of their unfair incarceration for having monitored US-based violent organizations that planned terrorist actions against their country and their people.

In their message, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, Antonio Guerrero and Rene González, internationally known as the Cuban Five, say that September 12 marks 15 years since the brutality of five simultaneous arrests stormed their homes to begin one of the most shameful chapters in US legal history, which was the trial against them.

The arrests and trial against the Five will remain in history as one of the most ignominious and vile episodes in the relations between the United States and Cuba, the message reads and recalls that months before, following the mediation by Nobel Literature Prize Gabriel Garcia Marquez, both countries had started actions to cooperate in the fight on terrorism.

In June, 1998, an FBI delegation visited Cuba after having received huge information about terrorist activities organized in Miami against the island  and they promised that they would take action, but instead, the Bill Clinton administration arrested and took to court the five Cubans who were collecting information to prevent the terrorist activities against the Cuban people.

The US judicial system was openly used as a means to protect terrorists, while the Five were taken before a threatened jury, reads the message and recalls the cruel solitary confinement they were submitted to break their spirit and prevent them from preparing an effective defense. The evidence was altered, damaged or suppressed and the orders by the Judge were openly violated.

All this occurred as the US media maintained strict silence on the case to keep the American people ignorant, and on the other hand launched a hostile propaganda campaign against the defendants. ON June 8, 2001, the jury found the Five guilty in a trial that if it had been reported, it would have put to question not only their case, but also the US federal justice system.

Fifteen years have already come by, during which, the US administration and the justice system have turned a deaf ear on the claims by United Nations bodies, Amnesty International, several Nobel laureates, parliamentarians and parliaments, personalities, legal and religious institutions, the message notes.

Only the lifting of this other blockade, which has been imposed on the US people to prevent them from learning the truth, would make it possible to end the injustice.

On September 12, Cuba will wake up full with yellow ribbons. It will be the Cuban people the protagonist of that message based on a symbol that became a tradition for the US people. This is a huge challenge for those who have managed to silence the case and who refuse to inform the world on this event, which probably is one of its kind, say the Cuban Five in their message which adds that it is a whole nation and its people asking the US people to urge their government to free their unjustly incarcerated sons.

In the meantime, the Five will continue to deserve the massive deployment of affection; they will continue to be worthy sons of the generous nation that offers such love and of the  support of those, who around the world have joined their cause, reads the message and reiterates that the Cuban Five will also continue to to denounce the over-15-year injustice and will never yield as they count on the moral advantage, which has allowed them to resist and withstand with honor the burden of vindictive hatred imposed by the most powerful government on the planet, the message concludes with the signature of the Cuban Five.