Terrorist hailed while heroes jailed
Luis Posada Carriles is celebrated as a hero on the streets of Miami. Just recently he was even awarded the key to the city. Has he done much to deserve it, though? If bombing aircrafts and hotels is encouraged, then absolutely.
Though Carriles, a former CIA-agent, has been linked to bombings that have took the lives of many, he lives free in America as a Cuban-born Venezuelan anti-communist seeking asylum. He isn’t behind bars but the Cuban Five are.Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González and René González have been convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage, yet many say that sufficient evidence has never been displayed. Marta Rodriguez Perez, the mother of one of the accused, tells RT that the presiding judge even told the group, “You might have physically done nothing but you still had the intent of breaking the law.”For that they remain imprisoned while Carriles is out free.“The only way that both countries can move on is for the prisoners from each country to be released and sent back to their native countries,” says Jose Pertierra, a Washington DC-based attorney. “It’s time to just return prisoners and move on with life,” he says.Pertierra says that, despite a lack of evidence, “In Miami the rules of life are inversed.”“You have terrorists who are treated as heroes, and other people—who should be considered to be heroes…people who risk their lives to try to stop terrorism—those folks are in prison,” he says.“It makes absolutely no sense,” he adds, “except that for political reasons.”Pertierra says that the state of Florida is pivotal in elections, and keeping the citizens happy—even if it means honoring a terrorist—is part of the game of politics.Unfortunately the story of the Cuban Five is rarely reported. “They don’t have a human face to show the American people,” says the attorney.And as the country has no image to turn to and see the hypocrisy of its own justice system, the five men remain incarcerated for a crime that can’t be proven was there.
