John Percy
For all the hypocritical crusading rhetoric of US President George Bush about his "war on terror", in practice he is promoting and sheltering real terrorists — the right-wing Cuban emigres who have been waging a terror war on revolutionary Cuba for decades.
The most notorious terrorist protected by Bush is Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA agent, involved in planting two bombs on a Cuban airliner in 1976, which killed 73 people, including the whole Cuban junior fencing team. Posada later was a high-ranking official in the Venezuelan security service, and is suspected of numerous other terror plots against Cuba.
Earlier this year Posada illegally entered the US, but it was only after intense international pressure, and speeches by Cuban President Fidel Castro, that the US immigration authorities detained Posada on May 19.
The Venezuelan government requested Posada's extradition from the US, but so far Bush has been silent.
Contrast this with the fate of the five young Cubans who monitored and infiltrated the Miami-based Cuban emigre terrorist networks, such as the Cuban American National Foundation, Omega 7 and Brothers to the Rescue.
These organisations, with the support of the US government, have been involved in sponsoring numerous violent actions against the people of Cuba, killing at least 3400 Cuban citizens.
The Cuban Five are Fernando Gonzalez, Rene Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernandez and Ramon Labanino. The US government arrested them in September 1998, and after rigged trials on trumped up espionage charges in 2001, locked them away with sentences of between 15 years and double-life.
Cuban President Fidel Castro made a powerful speech at the Anti-imperialist Square on May 20, in which he pointed out that the Cuban Five perhaps saved the lives of many US citizens. He explained in great detail how the Cuban government had handed over to the FBI copious information in June 1998 on the terrorist activities against Cuban, and other countries', citizens.
Much of this information proved direct links between Posada and the terrorist plots, and much of the information had been provided by heroic Cuban citizens such as the five in Miami.
But rather than arresting the criminals, such as Posada, Washington arrested those who exposed the terrorist conspiracies!
Green Left Weekly has consistently supported the Cuban Five, and hopes to build wider support for their cause in Australia by screening the new documentary Mission against Terror, recently made by Cuban TV producer Roberto Ruiz Rebo and Radio Havana Cuba Irish reporter Bernie Dwyer. This excellent documentary explains the Cuban Five case and shows scenes of terrorist attacks against Cuba. It is helping to break the wall of silence that Washington and the corporate media have imposed on the world around this case.
For more information, visit the Cuban web site <http://www.antiterroristas.cu>, or the site of the United States Free the Five campaign, <http://www.freethefive.org>. More than 120 committees around the world are campaigning on the Cuban Five's behalf. To help with solidarity, contact the Australian Cuban Friendship Society <http://www.sydney-acfs.org>, or the Committees In Solidarity with Latin America and the Caribbean <http://www.cislac.org.au>.
From Green Left Weekly, June 8, 2005.
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