Speech by Tomas Widén, leader of the hunger strikers
Sergels Square, Stockholm 26th of July 2004

Comrades! Friends!

I have here in my hands a handwritten letter, posted from the United States high security prison; the U.S. Penitentiary, Lompoc, California.

Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, who posted the letter, has by the judicial system of the U.S.A. - more precisely a court in Miami, Florida in December 2001 - been sentenced to twice the rest of his life in prison, and on top of this, to be on the safe side, a further 15 years.

I have another letter here. The sender - Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez - has evidently, also he, been judged to be extremely dangerous. The same Miami court sentenced Antonio to life imprisonment plus 10 years. He is today locked up in a high security prison in Florence, Colorado.

At the same time Fernando González Llort was sentenced by the Miami court to 19 years in prison. I have here in my hand Fernandos warmest greetings to his friends here in Sweden, who have been outraged by the sentences.

Together with Gerardo, Antonio and Fernando, Ramón Labañino Salazar and René González Sehwerert were also sentenced to long sentences in prison. Ramon received life imprisonment plus 18 years, and René 15 years.

Which crimes were these five Cuban men guilty of? What were the atrocities they had committed, that for three of them not even a sentence of life imprisonment was regarded by the court as sufficient?

The five were arrested during the night between the 11th and 12th of September 1998. They were immediately thrown into isolation cells, and this - the first but not the last - period in isolation carried on for over 17 months.
They were prevented from having any contact with their relatives.
They were totally prevented from having access to any information about what was going on in the world outside their cramped cells.
They were prevented from having any opportunity to prepare an effective defence.
They were subjected to hateful venomous attacks and slander by the dominating media in Miami; a campaign which with unreduced intensity was carried on from the very night they were arrested, until the day those draconian sentences were passed, and the Five were sent to five different prisons, spread out over the North American continent.
The question is, why?

The remarkable and astonishing answer is that the Five Cubans had, through great personal sacrifices and danger to their own lives, worked during several years to collect information about terrorist activity directed against their own country.

This terrorism against Cuba, which up to this day today - since the Cuban revolution 1959 - has reaped 3.478 lives and caused extensive damage and destruction for the people of Cuba, is actually organised by the same powerful ultra-rightist Miami-Cuban forces who control the media in that town, and who also threaten the lives of those who dare to express another point of view than that of those who promote and organise aggression and terror.

Any possibility for there to be a fair trial in Miami for the Five was from the start to the beginning totally non-existent. The trial developed into a parody on justice, a real witch-hunt, and this was evidently politically steered to be that way.

The formal charge against them was conspiracy to commit espionage. The prosecutors, in spite of them being political stooges and willing to do anything to please, were unable to present any real existent implemented espionage. The Five were sentenced guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage, something which in reality was not ever a part of the task of the Five. The accusations were energetically and without compromise rejected by the Five and their North American defence lawyers. Any bargaining with the prosecutors was completely out of the question.

Gerardo, Ramón, Antonio, Fernando and René had during their years in Miami not devoted themselves to anything else than protecting their country and its people against terrorism. Work completely aimed at the ultra-rightist Cuban exile organisations.

However, a scared jury sentenced the Five guilty, and a stooge judge, Joan Lenard, measured out the cruel punishments - after the defence lawyers having on five occasions during the trial put forward objections and for the sake of getting a fair trial, requested having the trial moved out of Miami to another town.

Shame on Joan Lenard!
Shame on the prosecutors who prostituted themselves and chose to do a dirty favour for the terrorist mafia and its allies in the Government apparatus.
Shame on the federal police of the United States - the FBI - which in June 1998, at the request of the Cuban authorities had declared themselves willing to cooperate to take measures against the clear terrorist activity which emanated from Miami.
Shame on the FBI which during a meeting in Havana was given a great amount of information and documentation about this terrorism - and which said thanks and accepted it, and travelled back home and three months later arrested these five Cubans who had collected the information the FBI had been given access to.

There do not of course exist any words which can sufficiently describe the limitless hypocrisy which the United States, the FBI and the authorities of Jeb Bushs Florida demonstrated when the five Cubans in December 2001 were sentenced and thrown into prison, at a time when George W. Bush had declared the struggle against terrorism to be given priority before everything else!! A false rhetoric aimed at veiling neo-colonial aggression and the state terrorism sponsored by the U.S.A. itself!

Gerardo, Ramón, Antonio, Fernando and René have through their work served their own country and the whole of humanity.

They are subjected to a politically motivated vile crime against justice.

They are today prisoners in the brutal hands of the Empire, innocent of those charges which a politically corrupt court has sentenced them guilty of.

Their moral is unbroken, and is based on the conviction of the righteousness of their cause. It shines like a torch which no high security jail in all of the United States ever will be able to extinguish. Their high moral and belief in the future characterizes their letters - warm greetings to the people of Sweden who demand that the scandalous sentences be annulled.

Throughout the world, from Stockholm to Cape Town, from Istanbul to Santiago de Chile - and not least within the United States itself - the demand to immediately free the Five is raised , and this movement grows steadily.

Comrades! Friends!

I believe that all of us gathered here in Sergel's Square here in Stockholm can unite and together send a message of greetings to Gerardo, Ramón, Antonio, Fernando and René. We greet you and vow to struggle on all fronts for your release. And as a part of the growing world-wide movement we shall continue to struggle until the day you are back home and kissed and embraced by your near and dear ones, and by all the Cuban People.

And be certain about it - you shall come home! The dark forces of the Empire and of injustice shall be defeated.

VENCEREMOS!