Georgetown: With the recent announcement of the release of U.S. contractor, Alan Gross, in exchange for three members of the Cuban Five, President of the Guyana Cuba Solidarity Movement (GCSM), Haleem Khan and Cuban Ambassador to Guyana, Julio Cesar Gonzales Marchante celebrated the victory at a function held at the Cuban Embassy over the weekend.
“We celebrate along with their families, the people of Cuba, and the international Jury of Millions who have fought successfully for the release of these unjustly imprisoned men. GCSM is proud to have played a role in publicising the case and winning widespread support here in Britain for the campaign for freedom and justice.” Khan emphasized.
The US administration had also restored full diplomacy with Cuba. The Cubans spent more than 15 years in American jails on spying charges. Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino and Antonio Guerrero were released earlier this month and flown back to their homeland — ending what their appeals lawyer called “an arduous experience.”
Khan said Cuba had requested a swap. Amnesty International and a United Nations group both said that they did not receive a fair trial.
Labanino, 51, and Guerrero, 56, received visits from family members while they were jailed, but Hernandez, 49, only saw his wife once because she was deported after his arrest, Khan noted.
Two other members of the Cuban Five — Rene and Fernando Gonzalez — were released in 2012.
All the men were arrested in 1998 and accused of belonging to a spy cabal called the Wasp Network that had infiltrated anti-Castro exile groups in Florida. The five were convicted in 2001, and Hernandez got two life sentences after being found guilty of conspiracy to murder.
The Cuban Five maintained they never targeted the U.S. Government and that they were on a mission to monitor Miami-based terrorist groups plotting to attack Havana. Their convictions were criticized by the United Nations and Amnesty International.
At one point, the verdicts were overturned by a federal appeals panel that found the men did not get a fair trial in Miami, though the convictions were later reinstated. Hernandez, Labanino and Guerrero still had appeals pending when they were released.
Gross was arrested in December 2009 for smuggling satellite equipment to Cuba as part of a U.S. government pro-democracy programme. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
He had been in poor mental and physical health. Gross had been planning to end his life in the near future as a result of his imprisonment.
Last April he went on a hunger strike that lasted for nine days and only ended at the request of his mother, Evelyn Gross, who died in June.
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