World event for the release of the Five being planned

SOME 300 friendship associations and solidarity groups that support the cause of the five Cubans unjustly imprisoned in the United States for combating terrorism and preparing a world event for their release, Cuban television informed this Wednesday.

The event starts on September 12, eight years to the day after the illegal incarceration of the Five, as Fernando González, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, René González and Gerardo Hernández are known to the campaign for their freedom.

That new expression of solidarity at international level, which covers more than 90 countries, also demands that notorious international terrorists like Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles should be sent for trial, the source added.

The U.S. government is still sheltering Posada Carriles, while officially acknowledging his criminal record.

Posada Carriles was arrested in May 2005 and since then Washington has refused to deal with the extradition application presented by Venezuela to try him for pending crimes, including the sabotage of a Cuban passenger plane in 1976, which killed 73 people.

Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Cuban Parliament, called for support for the event as a new way of breaking the silence surrounding the case of the Five and telling the world the truth about it.

He stated that the event is scheduled from September 12 through October 6 with many actions throughout the world to demand the release of those anti-terrorist Cubans.

The Five were sentenced in a rigged trial in Miami with terms of up to double life for infiltrating anti-Cuban terrorist groups responsible for more than 3,000 deaths.

A panel of three judges from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled on August 9 last year to overturn the sentences imposed on the five Cubans.

The U.S. government challenged that decision before the plenary of 12 judges from the abovementioned circuit, in a hearing on February 14. No decision has been announced to date.

In May 2005 a team of experts from the UN Arbitrary Detentions Working Group had previously declared the incarceration of the five anti-terrorist Cubans as arbitrary and illegal and urged the White House to immediately release them. (PL)