The Rights of the Cuban Five and their Relatives Have Been Disregarded

_By Ana Ivis Galan/ACN

Olga Salanueva (L), wife of Rene Gonzalez and Adriana Perez (R), wife of Gerardo Hernandez.The wives of the five Cuban antiterrorists unjustly imprisoned in the U.S. since 1998, have been denied their visas to visit their husbands more than ten times with diverse arguments: they are possible immigrants or they represent a threat to the U.S. national security.

Does anyone really believe that Olga Salanueva, the wife of Rene Gonzalez; and Adriana Perez, wife of Gerardo Hernandez; are looking forward to live in that nation after all the pain and harm that government has caused their family?

Olga was able to visit her husband in prison during the first two years of incarceration, but then she was deported as a way to blackmail her and shame her, because Rene did accept the despicable accusation blaming him of spying on the U.S. government.     

Fernando Gonzalez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernandez and Rene Gonzalez, internationally known as the Cuban Five, are only allowed to speak by phone with their lawyers, relatives, and Cuban officials for a few minutes; and these phone calls are recorded all the time.

Mail, another means of communication, is similarly revised and submitted to that kind of censure.

Rosa Aurora Freijanes, the wife of Fernando Gonzalez. The most serious case is Gerardo’s. Even though there is a law that establishes that all mail should be delivered and in case it needs to be opened it should be done in front of him, his mail is handed in late and opened.   

The mothers of Antonio Guerrero and Rene live day by day a long wait. Ramon Labañino’s mother passed away before these events, but Gerardo’s died suffering her son’s unfair incarceration.

Rosa Aurora Freijanes and Fernando Gonzalez, and Adriana and Gerardo have no children; their fertile age has run along their husbands’ imprisonment.

This is a very difficult situation for all of them as this is not a matter of two months or two years. Their plans of creating a family and their projects lay still in time.

Days are passing, hopes are getting weak, and people are getting older. 

The president of the Cuban Assembly of the People’s Power, Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada, once said:

“We urge all youths and decent people in this world, along with demands of justice for the Cuban Five, to demand Olga’s right to meet with Rene and Adriana’s with Gerardo”.

Alarcon also said that: “a person deprived arbitrarily and illegally from his freedom, and whose rights are disrespected is being kidnapped and in this case the kidnapper is the U.S. government.”

The dubious authorities during their legal process as to presenting documents and sending them to the pertinent instances turned out to be very agile to sentence and send them to prison, quite separate from each other.

They were sent to very distant prisons throughout the U.S. soil. Each of them was incarcerated in a different state, and even the farthest possible from their lawyers.

As it has been confirmed, none of them have been allowed the right to receive systematic visits from their relatives or their legal representatives, unlike any other prisoners.

The situation of these Cuban antiterrorists has not changed 13 years after their arrest.

Not even Rene, who was put on supervised release outside prison, has the right to return home and meet with his family. An additional three-year supervised released imposed on him prevents him from returning to Cuba.

The trial of Gerardo and Rene is one of the pretexts of the U.S. government to deny the visas to their wives Olga and Adriana.

Every individual tried in court is innocent until proved otherwise.

Let’s recall that they were already declared Not Guilty and their sentence was annulled by the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, based in Atlanta.

In view of this legal fake, acknowledged by prestigious American jurists, a question comes to mind: on what grounds, the U.S. government denies Olga and Adriana the right to visit their husbands in prison?