The five Cuban antiterrorist fighters unjustly held in the United States are victims of an absurd and unfair justice system, used as a means of domination, said prominent Paraguayan lawyer Martin Almada, discoverer of dictator Alfredo Stroessner's Archives of Terror.
In remarks with Prensa Latina, the lawyer emphasized the unfairness of the trial of the Cuban Five, as they are universally known, since he himself was also condemned to prison terms and tortured for crimes he never committed.
Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez were arrested on September 12, 1998, and illegally imprisoned for the next 17 months in solitary confinement.
In 2001, they received sentences ranging from 15 years to a double life term plus 15 years, the latter imposed on Gerardo. Rene completed his prison term on October 7, 2011, but has been forced to remain for in the United States for three additional years on supervised release.
The reason for their detention, as prosecutors and the judge acknowledged from the moment they were indicted until the last day of the trial, was that they had peacefully and without weapons, penetrated anti-Cuban terrorist groups that have found refuge in the United States. They infiltrated the terrorist groups in order to provide Cuba early warning about the criminal plans.
The lawyer, who is in Santiago de Chile to attend a seminar hosted by the American Association of Jurists, described the U.S. government's arguments against the Five as crude, and said that sooner or later, as happened with the Vietnam war, the people of the United States themselves will demand the release of these Cuban patriots, "because they themselves are patriots."