ABOUT THE FIVE CUBANS HELD IN MIAMI

                   BY RAISA PAGES (Granma International staff writer)

                   THE Cuban American National Foundation mafia and the extreme
                   U.S. right-wing conservatives turned the trial of the five Cubans held
                   in Miami into a form of political vengeance, just as they did with the
                   Elián González case.

                   According to the analysis made on Friday June 22, during the
                   roundtable discussion attended by Fidel Castro, the illegal actions and
                   manipulation of the law, by denying all the motions presented by the
                   Cuban prisoners’ public defendants, is clear proof of this.

                   The Federal Detention Center in Miami violated the law by placing
                   them in this prison for more than 60 days, the minimum term even
                   for murderers, and by segregating them for 17 months from the rest
                   of the prisoners, in solitary confinement, and handcuffing them every
                   time they had to go anywhere.

                   They have to resort to scapegoats, at a time when the policy
                   towards Cuba, unchanged for more than 40 years, has failed and is
                   being increasingly rejected on an international level and within the
                   United States itself.

                   At the decisive moment of the Elián case, the Miami mafia and the
                   FBI orchestrated another hoax by accusing Mariano Faget, a Miami
                   immigration services employee, of being a Cuban spy. He is still being
                   held, with no concrete proof against him.

                   Coincidentally it was the very same agent Héctor Pesquera, now
                   leading the investigation against the five Cubans, who claimed that
                   Faget was working for the island’s government with the aim of
                   discrediting the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for its
                   decision in the case of the child kidnapped in Miami.

                   On September 26, 2000, one of the public defenders for the five
                   Cubans asked the presiding judge and the prosecutor’s office to hand
                   over all the information accumulated by the FBI on terrorist actions
                   against the island, particularly in reference to airspace violations by
                   Brothers to the Rescue which resulted in the two light aircraft being
                   shot down and the death of four pilots.

                   According to journalist Lázaro Barredo, the request unleashed panic.
                   On October 18, 2000, they found a federal judge willing to deny the
                   Cubans’ lawyers access to these documents. The lawyers were
                   accused of wanting to turn around the case, to focus on the Cuban
                   exile groups in Miami, which demonstrated that there was no
                   impartiality or justice in the process, only favoritism towards the
                   interests of the Cuban-American mafia.

                   THEY EVEN SEE INNOCENT CHILDREN AS FUTURE SPIES

                   The height of hysteria and irrationality was demonstrated by the fate
                   of Olga Salanueva, the wife of René González, and her two
                   daughters, 14 and two years old.

                   Last August, close to the date of the hearing, the prosecutor’s office
                   suggested to René’s lawyer that his client make a deal. If he
                   admitted to being an agent working for a foreign government, the
                   charges of conspiracy would be withdrawn and his sentence would be
                   no more than 10 years.

                   They even told René that he would lose custody of his two-year-old
                   daughter Ivet, born in the United States. Instead of signing, he drew
                   a hand raising a finger of rebellion against the blackmail.

                   In order to pressure him further, they arrested his wife, Olga
                   Salanueva, a woman with a young child. An FBI agent described her
                   as a threat to U.S. security, when in fact Olga had become pregnant
                   shortly after her arrival in the country in December 1996.

                   René’s wife was arrested and transferred to Miami state penitentiary,
                   a prison for criminals who had behaved badly in the INS penitentiary.
                   Olga, a 42-year-old industrial engineer, was kept there for three
                   months and only taken out into daylight on two occasions for around
                   40 minutes. The letters she sent to her husband René never arrived.

                   In an interview with a Cuban television reporter, Olga said that she
                   was only able to see her two-year-old daughter twice during those
                   three months of imprisonment, because she didn’t want her to see
                   her behind a glass barrier. They had to tell the child that her mother
                   had the flu and the glass was to protect her from catching it too.

                   She recounted how before her arrest and ensuing deportation to
                   Cuba, she was constantly insulted and harassed. CANF spokesperson
                   Ninoska Pérez called her incessantly, shouting: "Bitch! Communist
                   spy!"

                   Olga read the poems and letters sent to her by her husband René
                   and those of the other four unjustly imprisoned Cubans, which
                   showed the truly generous and humanitarian nature of these men
                   trapped in a hideous situation born out of the profound hatred
                   harbored within the anti-Cuban groups in Miami.

                   René González Sehwerert, Ramón Labañino Salazar, Fernando
                   González Llort, Antonio Guerrero and Gerardo Hernández are the
                   victims of pressure from extreme right-wing groups in the United
                   States, who want to use this case to strengthen the economic and
                   political war against Cuba, especially now that they have the
                   unconditional support from the new U.S. administration.