HAVANA — Speaking to the members of the Venceremos Brigade and the Puerto Rican Cuba solidarity group Brigada Juan Ruis Rivera on July 19 here, Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon charged that the U.S. government carries out terrorism and protects terrorists. His remarks were part of a discussion of anti-Cuban terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, the Cuban Five, and more.
Welcoming the report by an agency of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, which faults the U.S. on the arrest, trial and imprisonment of the five anti-terrorist Cuban men, Alarcon said that he, other Cuban officials, and the families of the prisoners will launch a publicity campaign on the report’s findings.
The mass media, including the Associated Press and the BBC, provided coverage of the UN report that for the first time gave wide publicity to the case of the five.
The report, Alarcon said, is an important tool in the struggle for the prisoners’ release. The report said that the prisoners were deprived of their freedom in an arbitrary way. “The equivalent of being kidnapped,” Alarcon said.
The independent lawyers who wrote the UN agency’s report spent two years investigating complaints brought by the wives of two of the prisoners. The report urges the U.S. government to take the “necessary steps” to remedy its failings.
For Alarcon, Washington can do only one thing: “Set them free.”
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