Rene Gonzalez of the ‘Cuban Five’ Arrives in Cuba
by Circles Robinson
HAVANA TIMES, March 30 — Rene Gonzalez, the only member of the Cuban Five not in prison, arrived in Havana just after noon on Friday to visit his seriously ill brother Roberto.
Rene Gonzalez, 55, is one of the five Cuban intelligence agents arrested in 1998 and sentenced in 2001 for conspiracy to spy in the United States.
He served 13 years in prison before being released last October. Nonetheless, he must still remain for three years in the US under a probation program that prevents him from traveling to Cuba to live with his wife and family.
Judge Joan Lenard approved the humanitarian request from Gonzalez to visit his brother, who is suffering from terminal lung cancer, as long as he fulfils several conditions and returns within two weeks.
The Cuban Five’s trial has been criticized as biased by jurist organizations including the National Lawyers Guild (US), and by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions.
Cuban authorities stress that their mission was only to thwart attacks on Cuba planned within Miami’s militant exile community.
To be sure, all five were guilty as charged. Despite the kangaroo court trial they received the issue truly is not whether they were innocent or guilty despite the rhetoric. The issue is do the punishments fit the crimes. The answer is clearly no. They were convicted of failing to register as foreign agents and in two cases, conspiracy to commit murder. Traditionally, the US has deported convicted spies or arranged some sort of exchange. Our spies for their spies. As an African-american, I sympathize completely with the Cuban 5 supporters over the failure once again of the American criminal justice system to mete out fair and equitable justice. But this case is not an indictment of the US war on terror. The Cuban 5 were sent to the US to spy. However noble their cause, they broke US law. I refer you to the case of Alan Gross if you do not understand what can happen when you breach the laws of a soveriegn government.
The Cuban Five put the lie to the so-called U.S. War on Terrorism .
They were fighting U.S. based terrorism and were jailed on trumped up charges of spying