The town council of Gran Canaria took a stand on Thursday in favor of the release of five Cuban antiterrorists who have been serving unjust sentences in the U.S. since 1998 for warning their country against violent actions.

These statements were made by the Vice-president of the government of that Spanish island, Román Rodríguez, who welcomed in Las Palmas relatives of two of these political prisoners on Thursday.
During a conversation with Olga Salanueva and Adriana Pérez, wives of René González and Gerardo Hernández, respectively, the leader described as arbitrary the arrest of The Five, as these fighters are known in the international campaigns for their release.

Rodriguez asserted that the case of René, Gerardo, Antonio, Ramón and Fernando, condemned to harsh sentences even though the fact that they had put US security at risk was never proved, is an injustice.

We’re talking about a human rights violation and an arbitrary arrest, denounced the vice-president of the town council of the aforementioned isle of the Canary Islands, who was accompanied by the Minister for Cooperation and International Solidarity, Carmelo Ramírez.

During the meeting, the officials of the insular government took an interest in the ancestry of Gerardo, whose mother, who died in 2009, emigrated from the Canary Islands to Cuba in the 1940's.

However, part of her family continues still lives in this Spanish autonomous community, including lawyer Ana Pérez Nordelo, who, for several years now, has worked intensely on the details of the trial of the Five and their spreading.

Also attending the meeting were Luis Molina, Havana’s Consul General to Las Palmas, and Ana Mayra Rodríguez, adviser to the President of the National Assembly of the People's Power (Cuban Parliament).

Coinciding with the first visit of the wives of René and Gerardo to Gran Canaria and Tenerife, the Permanent Tribunal of the Peoples (TPP) declared on Thursday to be in favor of the immediate release of the Cuban antiterrorists.

In response to a request by the Platform of the Canary Islands for Solidarity with the Peoples, which along with the Committee of the Canary Islands for Solidarity with Cuba coordinate the tour of Olga and Adriana, the TPP joined that international demand made to the US government.

Gianni Tognoni, vice-secretary of the TPP, said that although the Tribunal has no competence to make a formal statement on this case, it supports the demand made public a year ago by the American Association of Jurists (AAJ).

The AAJ assessed that flagrant violations of due process were appreciated in all the records of the case and that procedures and guarantees of the U.S. legal system and international law were not put into practice.

Since their arrival in Spain, Olga Salanueva and Adriana Pérez have been interviewed by a large number of media outlets.

Both in their interviews with the press of the Basque Country, where they began this tour, and in those granted to reporters from the Canary Islands, they denounced that the imprisonment of the Five is a revenge against the Cuban people.

They didn’t violate US security, they simply devoted themselves to monitor the actions carried out by terrorist groups from US territory against Cuba, they stressed.


Translated by Daysi Olano

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