Victory for Five Campaign
Campaign News | Friday, 27 February 2004
US Government Forced to Release Funds for Advert
Washington, FEB 27. The US government was forced to release funds to the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, which plans to use the money to place a full-page advertisement in The New York Times.
In a telephone press conference on February 25, the Committee said that "the ad will highlight the string of injustices perpetrated against the five Cubans imprisoned for defending their country against terrorism and seek to bring their case to the attention of the people of the USA given that the mass media has largely ignored their case."
The conference was attended by Gloria la Riva and Alicia Jrapko of the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five; Ian Thompson, a lawyer with International Peace for Cuba (IPCA), attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of Partnership for Civil Justice, and Andr‚s G¢mez, a leader of the progressive Miami Cuban-American community, which has raised in excess of 10,000 dollars toward the ad campaign.
Ian Thompson explained that the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) claimed that it had blocked the funds coming into his organization because the name "Cuba" appeared in the bank draft.
Gloria la Riva said that the cost for the ad in The New York Times was successfully borne by solidarity groups across the world and that the ad will appear in the days prior to the March 10 appeals hearing to bring the case of the Cuban Five to the forefront after five years of neglect by the US mainstream press.
