By IRNA,
London : Britain’s Trades Union Congress (TUC) is holding a candlelight vigil outside the US Embassy in London next week in protest against the continuing detention of five Cuban prisoners, known as the Miami Five.
“The Miami Five have been unjustly imprisoned in US jails since 1998 for trying to stop terrorist attacks against Cuba,” the TUC said in a statement obtained by IRNA.
‘For more than 40 years, right wing Cuban exile groups based in Miami have killed almost 3,500 people in terrorist attacks against Cuba,” the statement said.
“To save lives, Cuba sent five men to Miami to infiltrate and monitor the groups. At the request of the US government, this information was passed to the FBI in 1998,” it said.
“But instead of arresting the terrorists, the FBI used the information to identify and arrest the Five anti-terrorists on 12 September 1998 in Miami and charged them with spying and conspiracy.”
The United Nations, Amnesty International and numerous legal, religious and human rights organisations have already questioned the fairness of their trial and long sentences, and condemned the US refusal to grant visas to for family visits.
Two of the prisoners’ wives, Olga Salanueva and Adriana Pérez, have been refused visas ten times and have not seen their husbands for at least a decade.
Speakers from more than a dozen British unions, as well as MPs and former cabinet minister Tony Benn are due to address the vigil on October 19 to mark the 12th anniversary of their imprisonment.
Those attending also include Irma González Salanueva, daughter of one of the Miami 5, and Tom Goldstein, Supreme Court lawyer representing the prisoners.
In August, TUC general secretary Brendan Barber wrote to US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to protest about the “cruel punishment” meted out to Gerardo Hernandez, who was placed in a tiny windowless for the third time when seeking to appeal against his conviction.
“Not only is this cruel punishment being imposed without explanation, and preventing Gerardo from seeing his lawyers at a crucial stage in his preparation for Habeas Corpus, but it has also been imposed while Gerardo is experiencing health problems,” Barber said.
Eight Nobel Prize winners as well as 110 British MPs have also taken up their cause, writing to the US Attorney General calling for the immediate release of all five.
Cuba has acknowledged that the prisoners are intelligence agents, while confirming they were spying on Miami’s Cuban exile community and not the US government.