8-12-05,11:17am

Caracas, Aug 11 (Prensa Latina) Cuban Parliament Chairman Ricardo Alarcon urged for the immediate release of five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters serving unfair 15 year and life sentences for thwarting anti-Cuba terrorist actions by infiltrating Cuban American extremist groups.

Upon arriving in Venezuela with Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, Alarcon recalled that UN experts ruled their sentences and current situation arbitrary and illegal, as well as the Court of Appeals of Atlanta in its 93-page ruling.

Alarcon said keeping this group in jail is akin to kidnapping, and that there is no reason to withhold anyone in prison without a jail sentence.



Weinglass: Cuban Five Owed Apology

Havana, Aug 11 (PL) Defense council Leonard Weinglass stressed Wednesday that yesterday´s overthrow of the Miami court decision which unfairly jailed five Cubans was a major victory and that they deserve an apology.

In a telephone conversation he said from his office in New York that the 93-page ruling by a three judge panel of the Atlanta appeals court places them in the same situation before they entered the Miami courtroom, and that the gratifying verdict is so strongly in their favor no lawyer would think they should enter again. By a unanimous vote, the judges of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta overturned Tuesday the verdict handed down on them by a Miami court in June 2001, and also ruled that a new trial should take place, as requested by the defense, in a city other than Miami.

The Atlanta ruling comes less than a month after a UN panel ruled that the detention of the five men was arbitrary and in violation of international law.

The judgment came from the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, part of the Geneva-based UN Commission on Human Rights.

These victims of lawlessness have spent the better part of a decade languishing in US jails, two of them without seeing their families, and as Weinglass says, 'instead of a retrial they deserve an apology from the US governemt and be sent home.'



Caracas, Aug 11 (Prensa Latina) The case of the five Cubans imprisoned in the US demonstrates the impunity of US based terrorist groups, said Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon.

At a news conference with media accredited to 16th World Festival of Youth and Students in Caracas, Ricardo Alarcon said the Atlanta Court of Appeals ruling, which reversed the Five´s convictions, extensively documented the terrorist groups´ actions.

On the case of notorious terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, involved in the blowing up of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 in 1976, Alarcon said the Atlanta court referred to all the atrocities he committed.

'If there is a new trial, they better be prepared because it will be a Nuremberg for that terrorist and hypocritical administration,' warned Alarcon, who said this time they will not be able to keep it out of the media, as they did in the first one.