Message to the Five from Giustino Di Celmo

Acela Caner Román

EVERY year since September 4, 1997, Giustino Di Celmo returns to Havana’s Copacabana Hotel, walks through its halls, greets the employees, embraces the workers. In the lobby, he places a kiss on his hand and caresses the bronze plaque engraved with the face of Fabio, his son and the innocent victim of a crime. The grief-stricken Di Celmo family have never ceased demanding justice and an end to acts terrorism against Cuba.

Giustino di Celmo, Fabio di Celmo’s father, receives a plaque signed by the Five from Magalys Llort, Fernando González’ mother.

On this occasion, family members of the five anti-terrorist Cubans incarcerated in the United States; the leadership of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP); and the Copacabana workers filled the hotel to honor Fabio Di Celmo and his father, an untiring fighter for the liberation of the Five.

Magaly Llort, Fernando González’ mother, was the bearer of a wooden plaque for Fabio’s father containing an inscribed message signed by Gerardo Fernández Nordelo, Ramón Labañino Salazar, René González Schwerert, Fernando González Llort and Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez.

In her words, Magaly Llort emphasized that, at the very beginning of the movement for the return of the Five, Giustino Di Celmo promised that his family members would take up the cause of these unjustly imprisoned men as if it were theirs. And Fabio’s father and brother Livio have fulfilled that promise.

Despite his advanced age, Giustino has undertaken many actions to make people aware of the interconnected events concerning the death of Fabio Di Celmo, as irrefutable evidence of the State of Necessity which the Cuban people have to seek information within terrorist groups in order to avert further crimes.

Finally, Magaly Llort read the text engraved on the plaque:

"For Giustino Di Celmo, with profound gratitude for your support of our struggle for justice."

Di Celmo expressed his thanks for the gift. "No pain can be greater than that of the death of a son and even more so when it is caused by a violent and cruel act. It pains me to think about all the acts of terrorist against Cuba. It pains me to think that Luis Posada Carriles, the confirmed and self-confessed murderer of my son and of multiple crimes, is freely walking the streets of Miami while these young men who were fighting to stop any more acts of terrorism in Cuba are confined in prison cells.

"I want to ask all people of good will to divulge this great truth and to write to the President of the United States asking him to release the five Cuban anti-terrorists. They are just men and justice cannot be incarcerated. If my Fabio were alive, I know that he would have written a letter to Obama advocating their immediate liberation."

GRANMA