Harold Pinter: Free the Cuban Five

Nov. 9, 2007

Reprinted from Prensa Latina

Havana, Nov 9 (Prensa Latina) British dramatist and political activist Harold Pinter, recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature in 2005, added his voice to the demand for liberation of the antiterrorist Cuban Five imprisoned in the US for more than nine years.

Seven Nobel Prize winners have joined the call for their release, signing a document issued October 12 by Red de Redes in defense of humanity.

The document demands the freedom of Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González, sentenced to harsh prison terms in a political trial held in Miami.

Besides Pinter, the document is signed by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nadine Gordimer and Wole Soyinka (Nobel Prizes in literature), Zhores Alfiorov (physics), Timor Leste President Jose Antonio Horta Ramos and Adolfo Perez Esquivel (Nobel Peace Prize).

Some 3,500 signers -among them musicians, academics, actors, writers and philosophers- endorse the text with their signature, which has generated an increasing wave of adhesions.

The Five, as they are internationally known, helped to control organized terrorist plans against Cuba from Florida, carried out by extreme right anti-Cuban groups.

A panel of three judges who examined the case for the Atlanta Court of Appeals unanimously decided to declare the trial invalid and ordered the sentences revoked. 

Despite that, they have remained isolated in prisons of maximum security.

The Call has also been signed by more than 200 organizations and institutions from various parts of the world, including the United States, Spain, Argentina, France, Brazil and other Latin American nations.

Among notable signers appear the US Alice Walker, Lucius Walker, James Cockcroft, Mumia Abul Jamal and Howard Zinn, Spain's Isaac Rosas and Belen Gopegui, French Jean Marie Binoch, Uruguayan Mario Benedetti and Hispanic-French Manu Chao also signed the document.