Harold Pinter demands release of Cuban anti-terrorists
Campaign News | Friday, 9 November 2007
The British dramatist and political activist Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 2005, added today to the demand for the liberation of the 5 Cuban anti- terrorists imprisoned in US jails for the last 9 years.
Pinter becomes the seventh distinguished and internationally recognised personality to add their name to “the Call” for the immediate release of the 5 as spread by the Defence of Humanity network on 12th October.
The document demands the freeing of Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González, who were sentenced to extensive prison terms due to a highly politicised case that took place in Miami.
Along with Pinter, the document has also been signed by Gabriel García Márquez, Nadine Gordimer, Wole Soyinka (Nobel prize for Literature), Zhores Alfiorov (Nobel prize for Physics), José Antonio Horta Ramos, President of East Timor and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel. Some 3,500 signatures, from among others, musicians, academics, dramatists, writers and philosophers have contributed to the growing wave of adhesion to this cause.
The 5, as they are known internationally, were helping to monitor terrorist plots against Cuba, organised from Florida by extreme right Cuban groups, the text states.
A panel of three Judges charged with examining the case by the Court of Appeal in Atlanta, unanimously agreed that the Miami verdict was not valid, indicating that the sentences must be revoked.
“The Call” has also been supported by more than 200 organisations and institutions from various parts of the globe. Amongst the most prominent and represented are groups from USA, Argentina, Spain, France and Brazil as well as other Latin American countries.
Voices of support from North Americans Alice Walker, Lucius Walker, James Cockcroft, Mumia Abul Jamal and Howard Zinn, Spaniards Isaac Rosas y Belén Gopegui, the French man Jean Marie Binoch, the Uruguayan Mario Benedetti and the Hispano-French singer/songwriter Manu Chao have also been received.
“We make up all those in the world who demand the immediate end to this enormous injustice”, declare the intellectuals. “We cannot cease until the truth has opened the way for these men to return to their country and their families.”
