The families of the Cuban Five are victims of a cruel and unjustified punishment 

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD

• In an interview made in October of 2004, Olga Salanueva, described how heavily armed officials of the FBI came into the Miami home to arrest her and her husband, René González; the arrest resembled a scene from a Hollywood movie .  On the very same day, September 12, 1998, they started an operation based on intimidation and blackmail.  The FBI on that day initiated a "show of espionage" not only against them and their sons and daughters but the other  families as well.

Olga recalls, "I witnessed their brutality as they came into a home where they knew there were children; they knew there was a woman and little children in that home. There were four or five men who came in; there were others in the hallway as the whole place was surrounded. 

"When they saw me appear in the living room they threw me against the wall.  I was frightened as I threw my hands up.  Rene, tell them clearly that there are little girls in here also!" 

Quickly they took Rene, leaving Olga and the children by themselves in the house.  During many hours she had to wait, surrounded by agents, for the search warrant to appear.

Then appeared the cruel threats: They made it clear that there was the possibility that my children were going to be taken away from me.  "Remember that you have your daughters...one of them a small child...which can be sent to an institution".

Meanwhile, the police jailed Rene and the other Cubans arrested - in similar operations - at the Federal Detention Center.  They were not held in regular cells.  It seems that Hector Pesquera the FBI head in Miami had reserved cells in the solitary confinement ward of the institution.  They were placed in these cells; cells where prisoners were isolated and were they confronted the most inhuman conditions possible; cells that were made to punish prisoners who had broken prison rules.  The Five remained there for 17 months. 

On September 14, 1998, two days after their detention, without being able to bathe and without being able to shave, the Five  were brought before a Federal Court judge.  Their photos were distributed to the press with the intention of giving them a shabby image; an image of delinquents. 

Rene who is a pilot and an exemplary father of indisputable character now had to face the brutality of those that treated him like an ordinary criminal.

In court he sees his daughter Irmita.  Irmita who frightened lifts her finger and cries out, "Daddy".

The following Monday,  Pesquera, does not waist any time in starting to blackmail the families of the Five; his purpose was to apply psychological pressure on the prisoners.  

Pesquera's ties with the Miami Cuban Mafia is well known.  It is well known how he feasted in Puerto Rico and then in Miami with the terrorists of the yacht La Esperanza.  He was at the head of the FBI in Puerto Rico when some Cuban-American terrorists were caught red handed in that yacht full of weapons as they planned to kill the president of Cuba; he was behind the release of these terrorists. 

"The only time Rene could see one of his daughters Ivette - she was one year old at that time - is when he observed us walking on the street from the 12th floor where he was at.  This is all he could do for the first year of Ivette's life; an age in which there are so many changes in a child's life...", recalled Olga.

The first time Rene is able to see the children is when Ivette had already celebrated her first birthday.  

When Rene is sent to see his little daughter and his wife he comes in handcuffed.  Olga recalls:  "They sat him in a chair and they handcuff him to the chair.  All of this in front of his daughters".

On July 2000, the Prosecution presents a letter in which if he confesses his culpability of the charges brought against him it would mean a reduced sentence.  The dignified Cuban rejected such a negotiation.

Pesquera's reaction was immediate.   On the 16th of August The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) arrests Olga and sends her to the state penitentiary in Fort Lauderdale.  According to Olga, "This was another way of pressuring Rene as the trial had been moved from September to November.  They left me in jail till November..."

As the detention did not break Olga, a few days before the trial of Rene and his friends, INS ordered her expulsion from the country.  The court proceedings which were to follow were totally manipulated by Pesquera; the Court also relied on a hostile jury. 

Kidnapped without a legitimate access to their families

Since her return to Cuba, more than five years ago, Olga has presented several requests to the US Interest Section in Havana asking permission for her and her daughters to visit her husband.

Her requests for a travel visa has been denied time after time by the US using the ridiculous argument that she represented a threat to national security;  this was the same argument used against Andriana Perez, wife of Gerardo - member of the Cuban Five.

The US breaking all international laws which guarantees such visits uses all the  pretexts to stop the families of the Five from seeing each other. 

All of the families who reside in Cuba have been exposed to humiliating and tedious actions from US authorities.  Such is the case that only one visa is given yearly.  

While the Faith of the Five is being hijacked by a US administration that placates all the whims of it's allies in Miami, Ivette has not been able to visit her father in five years.

On July 14, 2005 a panel of legal experts of the UN declared that the trial and detention of the Five, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino and René González, in Miami was arbitrary and a flagrant violation of international law.

On the 9th of August the 11th Court of Appeals of Atlanta, in a unanimous vote, declared the sentences void and ordered a new trial to take place outside of Florida.  To reach at a verdict the Federal judges read 14,650 pages of text, 119 volumes of transcripts, 15 volumes of allegations, a box of sealed documents, as well as a detail description of the jury selection. 

The German author Gunter Grass, the Portuguese writer José Saramago, the Nigerian poet Wole Soyinka, the South African novelist Nadine Gordimer, Rigoberta Menchú from Guatemala, and South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, all Nobel Prize winners are among the 4,933 writers, artists, professors, politicians and prominent people who representing more than 40 countries have signed a petition directed to The Attorney General of the United States, asking for the immediate release of the Cuban Five.  

Nevertheless, George W. Bush and his clan maintain the same attitude towards Cuba as they had for New Orleans and it's residents.  Despite the world outcry, the Cuban Five remain kidnapped; held in different prisons within the vast United States.  Their families keep on suffering the consequences of a cruel and arbitrary punishment.

Translated from an article in Cubadebate