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10/14/09 - Declaration of the U.S. Movement in Solidarity with the Cuban
Five

The following organizations have issued this declaration:

The National Committee (U.S.) Committee to Free the Cuban Five; the
International
Committee to Free the Cuban Five; and the organizations of the Cuban
Immigration in
Miami that together comprise the Alianza Martiana (Marti Alliance): the
Antonio Maceo
Brigade, the Alianza Martiana as an individual organization, the Alliance of
Workers of the Cuban Community (ATC), the José Martí Association, and
political parties
of the United States who are part of the Cuban Five solidarity movement.


With our declaration we reaffirm our unwavering commitment to maintain and
strengthen our efforts to demand the immediate freedom of our Five brothers:
Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and
René
González, as they are innocent of the charges that the U.S. government has
convicted them of.


Today, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2009, in Miami's United States Federal District
Court
for the Southern District of Florida, a hearing was held to reduce the
sentence of
one of our Five brothers, Antonio Guerrero. It is one of three re-sentencing
hearings
ordered by the Full Panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in September
2008.
The U.S. Federal District Court has not yet set the date or dates of the
other two re-sentencing
hearings of our brothers Ramón Labañino and Fernando González.


In September 2008 the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the trial
court's previous
life sentence imposed on Antonio Guerrero and Ramon Labañino, and the 19
year
sentence imposed on Fernando González in December 2001. The Five were
convicted in
June 2001.


Today the Court imposed a prison sentence of 21 years 10 months on Antonio
Guerrero for his unjust conviction of Conspiracy to Commit Espionage.


Independent of the court process and the decisions that are issued by the
court,
we maintain our steadfast demand for the immediate freedom of the Cuban
Five.


The judicial case prosecuted against our Five brothers has nothing to do
with
justice. This is, and always has been, a political case.

Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, every administration of
the U.S. government has maintained a policy of permanent aggression against
the Cuban
people. A fundamental part of this policy of aggression has been the use of
violence
against the Cuban people. For decades the U.S. administrations have been
directly or
indirectly involved--through terrorist organizations of the Cuban American
extreme
right wing in the United States--in countless terrorist attacks against the
Cuban people,
causing the deaths of 3,478 Cuban men, women and children, and injuring
2,099 Cubans.
The peace, security and well-being of the Cuban people have been tragically
affected.


In the interest of defending its people--as any other responsible government
would do--the government of Cuba assigned to the Five the task of
infiltrating the
terrorist organizations of the Cuban American extreme right wing. Everyone
in this city
knows full well that the terrorist organizations have carried out campaigns
of
death and terror against the Cuban people for decades. Stopping terrorism
was the
mission of the Cuban Five.


Instead of arresting the terrorists and prosecuting them for their crimes,
the
U.S. government, participant of these nefarious campaigns of death and
terror,
arrested the Five 11 years ago this past September. Since then it has kept
them
arbitrarily imprisoned.


It is for these reasons that today in Miami we reaffirm and make known to
our Five
brothers, to their families and all our sisters and brothers in the U.S. and
international movement to Free the Five, as well as the Cuban people, our
unalterable
decision to continue and strengthen our struggle for their immediate
freedom.


Miami, October 13, 2009

National Committee To Free The Cuban Five | 2489 Mission St. #24 | San
Francisco | CA | 94110