[Ppnews] Glover and Landau Visit Gerardo Hernandez, Compare Gross Case With Cuban 5

[Political Prisoner News]

Glover and Landau Visit Gerardo Hernandez, Compare Gross Case With Cuban 5


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http://www.zcommunications.org/glover-and-landau-visit-gerardo-hernandez-compare-gross-case-with-cuban-5-by-saul-landau
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By <http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/saullandau>Saul Landau

Thursday, December 22, 2011

2:30 PM, departure time the most excruciating 
part of visiting Gerardo Hernandez. A prison 
guard announced: “Visiting hours are over.” 
Gerardo lined up against the wall with the other 
inmates. We stood with wives, children and 
mothers. Finally, the electronically controlled, 
heavy metal door opened. Gerardo held up a 
triumphant fist. We did the same. He stayed in Hell (13 years now). We left.

We drove from the Victorville Penitentiary to the 
Ontario California airport, discussing the 
absurdity of five Cubans (one on precarious 
parole) who helped the United States fight 
terrorism but remain locked in federal 
penitentiaries while Luis Posada Carriles who 
orchestrated the 1976 bombing of a Cuban 
passenger plane (73 died) dines in Miami’s finest 
restaurants? In between visits to his 
proctologist Posada and fellow geezers continue plotting anti-Cuba violence.

Miami Federal Court judges will decide on 
Gerardo’s appeal, which presents new facts and 
evidence: Gerardo’s trial lawyer now admits he 
inadequately represented him; new documents show 
payment by the US government to Miami-based 
“journalists” who offered negative stories about 
the accused Cubans, thus tainting the trial 
atmosphere. Finally, the US government has still 
refused to deliver its “secret” map showing the 
exact point where on February 24, 1996 Cuban MIGs 
shot down two Brothers to the Rescue airplanes. 
The Cubans claim the incidents occurred over 
Cuban airspace, i.e.; no crime took place. 
Washington insisted the planes got hit in 
international air space, but the NSA said they 
could not release their crucial diagram: 
“national security.” Gerardo played no part in 
the drama -- no matter where the shoot down occurred.

We agreed US Cuba policy bordered on the absurd. 
For example, the State Department placed Cuba on 
its terrorist list although the US has made Cuba 
a victim of terrorist attacks; Cuba has not 
reciprocated. But Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chair of 
the House Foreign Affairs Committee argued: "the 
United States should not negotiate with a state sponsor of terrorism."

This related to her objection to any US 
humanitarian approach to get Alan Gross released. 
Convicted in Cuba for activities related to a 
USAID regime change policy, Gross must either 
serve his fifteen year sentence or wait until the 
US military “liberates” the island. She called on 
people to assassinate Fidel Castro (see Landau’s 
WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP).

This rhetoric hardly serves Gross’ interests. 
Thanks to Ileana he might stay in prison until 
age 75. He misses his family, as do the Cubans in 
US prisons.  Like Alan, they also have close 
relatives with serious illnesses. When my mother 
died in 2009 “I wasn’t in Cuba to bury her.”

Gerardo told us he and Adriana, now 42 want 
children. So does another member of the five, 
Fernando Gonzalez and his wife. The US denies 
visas to their wives. Time is running out. 
Gerardo’s face showed a flash of anguish.

The Five’s cause gets little publicity. Not so 
the case of Alan Gross, an American contractor 
sentenced to 15 years in Cuba for activities 
designed to undermine Cuba’s government. The 
Gross and Cuban Five cases, however, are 
different. Gerardo received two consecutive life 
sentences plus fifteen years for conspiring to 
commit espionage and aiding and abetting murder 
-- supposedly providing information to Cuban 
authorities, which was public, on the February 
24, 1996 fatal flights of the Brothers to the 
Rescue. Since the trial took place in Miami, the 
prosecution didn’t need to provide evidence for 
either charge. Imagine five Jews on trial in Berlin in 1938!

Gross, perhaps misunderstood the nature of his 
mission, to teach clandestinely dissidents to 
operate closed satellite networks to help 
overthrow the Cuban government. The Five came to 
Florida to stop terrorism, not destabilize the US government,” said Gerardo.

True, Gerardo explained, Gross and the Cubans are 
prisoners and want to go home. But, he said, “the 
media reports regularly on the Jewish-American 
imprisoned in Havana for allegedly trying to help 
the Jewish community obtain internet technology. 
Cuban Jewish leaders deny Gross came to help 
them. Synagogues in Cuba had access to the 
Internet well before Gross’ visit,” he clarified.

Nor, Gerardo smiled did “we [the Cuban Five] 
enter the US with tourists visas as Gross did.” 
In his visits to Cuba, “Gross never told his 
Cuban contacts he worked on a government 
contract. US policy says it wants regime change. 
Imagine Cuba sending in agents to overthrow 
capitalism and install a socialist government. 
Wow! Free health care for all -- just because all human beings deserve it.”

Gerardo sympathized with Gross health problems. 
Alan gets special medical attention and doesn’t 
cohabit with convicted criminals. The Cuban 5 
often did not receive needed medical attention in 
US prisons. Cuba has allowed Judy Gross to visit her husband.

Recently, groups of Jews picketed the Cuban 
Interest Section in Washington. Their signs 
“Cuban Gross Injustice” don’t indicate 
recognition of the Cuban Five. They, like the US 
government, demand that Cuba free Gross. They 
don’t demand reciprocity from Obama: free the 
Cubans who have already served 13 years.

Obama could make a humanitarian gesture to free 
the Cuban Five. Cuba has already “conveyed to the 
U.S. government its willingness to find a 
humanitarian solution to the Gross case on 
reciprocal basis.” (Cuban government press release December 2011)

The US media ignores the statements of 10 Nobel 
Prize winners, Amnesty International and the UN 
Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions. All agree. 
The Cuban Five did not get a fair trial and merit 
a pardon or a new trial – not in Miami.

Obama knows how to get Alan Gross home. After 
all, Israel swapped 1000 Palestinian prisoners for one captured Israeli.



Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow. 
His WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP (with 
Danny Glover) is on dvd (cinemalibrestore.com. 
COUNTERPUNCH published his BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD.



Glover is an activist and actor.




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