NORWAY – The case is not just about five Cuban men wrongfully imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. It also is a symbol of more than 40 years of hostile relations between Cuba and the United States, according to an Irish reporter and an English priest who spoke here Saturday about their activism to “Free the Cuban Five.”
Bernie Dwyer, an Irish reporter working in Havana, and the Rev. Geoffrey Bottoms, a Catholic priest from England, spoke to a small group at the public library and showed a documentary film about five Cuban men who were tried, convicted and, in 2001, imprisoned for alleged espionage-related crimes against the United States. Most of them received life sentences.
Dwyer and Bottoms have been touring the U.S. recently and visited several Maine towns to speak about the Cubans, Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, Fernando Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero, and Rene Gonzalez. The pair are attempting to raise awareness and funds to help efforts to free the men they believe are innocent.
The Cuban five came to Florida to monitor and stop the Miami-based paramilitary groups that have been terrorizing Cuba for many decades, Dwyer and Bottoms explained. The U.S. has silently tolerated and even supported these groups, they say.
Instead of trying to stop the paramilitary groups from committing acts of terror, the U.S. authorities arrested the men in 1998 and put them on trial in 2000, on charges ranging from acting as covert spies to one count of conspiracy to commit murder, Dwyer and Bottoms said.
Their case was appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Ga., which granted the men a retrial in a new location after finding they did not receive a fair trial in Miami due to its anti-Cuban political climate.
That decision last August by a three-member panel was contested by the prosecution. Now, the full 13 judges who sit on the appeals court will review the case Tuesday and determine whether the men should receive a new trial, be pardoned, or finish out their sentences, Dwyer said. She and Bottoms will be at the trial as international observers.
“As I began to investigate the case, I began to realize this was a huge miscarriage of justice,” Dwyer said Saturday. “Bit by bit, I became more convinced these guys were innocent.” She added, “I decided I would actually campaign for their freedom.”
Dwyer and Bottoms are only two of a larger international group, which includes Noam Chomsky and Nadine Gordimer, that is attempting to bring attention to this case, partly to help the men and partly to display what they say is American hypocrisy in dealing with terrorism.
Currently, supporters are raising $75,000 to buy a one-page advertisement in the New York Times, according to Dr. Tom Whitney, who is a pediatrician in Paris and member of the Maine group, Let Cuba Live. Whitney invited Dwyer and Bottoms to speak in Norway.
Bottoms said the Cuban prisoners he has spoken with are well-educated, humane and compassionate. “They believe they are defending humanity,” he said.
Moreover, they are defending their country, he added. “For all its imperfections, it’s forging an alternative society,” Bottoms said.
They asked that the people in Norway educate others they know about the case.
“At the end of the day, it will be international solidarity that wins the freedom of these five individuals,” Bottoms said.
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