The Cuban Five: An End to Injustice

Elio Delgado Legon

HAVANA TIMES — The coming month of September will mark 15 years of one of the greatest injustices ever to be committed in the United States. I am speaking of the detention, trial and conviction of five innocent Cubans, whose only crime was to try and prevent acts of terrorism against Cuba which were being planned in the state of Florida.

The people of the United States have the right know the truth about these Cubans, but they continue to be denied any information on the case.

The time has come for an honest source to speak out against this act of censorship and to provide the public with all of the information that can be secured about this, the longest, most irregular case the US justice system has ever known.

The time has come for the noble people of the United States to know the opinion of the Commission on Arbitrary Detentions of the UN’s Human Rights Council about the case of the Cuban Five.

It is time for US citizens to know that the Atlanta Court of Appeals overturned the ruling of this trial and called the situation around the proceedings created by Miami’s press a “perfect storm”, referring to efforts to steer the jury and judge, efforts which, we later learned, were undertaken by unscrupulous journalists on the US government’s payroll.

It is time for the people of the United States to hear the opinion of US lawyers about the case and, in addition to this, what 10 Nobel Prize laureates and numerous cultural, artistic and political figures from the United States and other parts of the world have expressed about their imprisonment.

The time has come for the citizens of the United States to know that the overwhelming majority of parliaments around the world have approved motions urging the US government to put an end to the unjust imprisonment of the Cuban Five, who were accused, without evidence, of committing espionage, and of other crimes as well, when, in fact, all they were doing was collect information of terrorist plots hatched by violent anti-Cuba grounds based in south Florida.

The time has come for the US press to break the silence and begin publishing the facts about these five Cubans, about whom books have been written, supported by over 300 solidarity committees around the world which are constantly asking the United States to release them, to make right the wrong committed against these innocent men.

Next to no one in the United States knows that the defense presented a writ of habeas corpus, based on new evidence regarding journalists paid by the government to steer public opinion, and that the judge has not yet replied.

We must tear down the wall of silence which keeps US citizens from knowing the truth, the truth they are entitled to know, a truth that has been denied them, just as the right to travel to Cuba has been denied them, for over fifty years, so that they will not be able to get to know Cuban reality up close and will continue to believe the prefabricated lies their press divulges about this small Caribbean country.

In previous articles devoted to this issue, I have enumerated the violations of US law committed during the case of the Cuban Five, and described the long and disproportionate sentences that have been imposed on them, as well as the abuses to which they have been subjected, the crimes they were declared guilty of (without any proof from the prosecution), and the personalities and institutions that have pronounced themselves in favor of their release, one of whom has already served their term.

In Havana Times, you can read my five previous articles on the case to have a clearer sense of the facts, and in order to join those who, around the world, are now saying: the time has come to put an end to this injustice.