Venezuela: Public Defense in Solidarity with Cuban Five

The Venezuelan Ministry for Public Defense (ombudsman) expressed its solidarity with the case of the five Cuban fighters known in the world as the Cuban Five, of whom three of them remain in US prisons, with a call to respect judicial rights. In a communique issued Thursday, the institution pointed that it expressed its position according to its functions as a guarant of the free access to justice in Venezuela, the right to defense and the respect to legal processes for Venezuelans and foreigners.
The Public Defense Ministry called for international solidarity, since there are still doubts regarding the legal process to which the Cuban Five were submitted.

Public Defender Ciro Araujo, main signatory of the document, said each of the charges and observations in the legal process should be revised by a multi-discipline commission, and advocated that the commission should exhaustively verify the case, to rectify the situations that provoked any kind of mistake committed, by means of procedures such as the indult and others, if the judicial appeals were not quite effective. The institution extended its solidarity to the victims and the Cuban people, especially to three of them still remaining in US prisons.

Also recalled the words of the late leader Hugo Chavez, when he said that the actions for the release of the Cuban Five have a world character, because it is a fight for “the dignity of the human being, really a struggle for justice”.

The Cuban Five, as they are known around the world, were arrested on September 12, 1998 in Miami, where they warned their native country on the violent plans planned by extreme right groups that would affect not only Cubans, but also other Latin American, Caribbean and even North American countries.

René Gonzalez and Fernando Gonzalez abandoned the US prison after serving their penal sentences.

Meanwhile, Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino and Antonio Guerrero are the three Cuban fighters still confined in U.S. federal prisons.