I am ready to go on fighting until I die, says Rene Gonzalez
News from Cuba | Sunday, 16 October 2011
An transcript of the family video recording the moment that Miami Five prisoner, Rene Gonzalez was released from jail, has been made available on the Cubadebate website and translated by the US Free the Five Campaign.
'Cubadebate offers viewers the video of René González, the first of the Cuban Five freed in the United States, as he leaves Marianna prison in Florida, Friday, Oct. 7, 2011, 4:30 in the morning, in an emotional encounter with his daughters, his father Cándido and his brother Roberto.
“I am ready to continue fighting until I die,” were his first words after embracing and kissing his daughters, Ivette and Irmita, who filmed the moment that they met him as he left the prison.
The graphic testimony was transmitted on the Roundtable program of Cuban Television.
“My love, my treasure. How are you? ? they say that I’m looking great. Your older daughter is here filming. They are both beautiful,” he told his wife Olga Salanueva by telephone - who did not have U.S. permission to travel to René’s side.
He added that on the eve of his release from the prison, he was confined to the “hole” (the punishment cell) by prison officials: “I remained in the hole the rest of the evening, I slept well and they woke me. I jumped up like a spring. Everything was very quick; from the time they opened the hole until I got out: 10 minutes,” René said.
One can also see René singing “El Mayor,” the song by Silvio Rodríguez, while he is with his daughters and brother Roberto in the car that takes him to where he will live in Florida, while he completes the three years of supervised release imposed by judge Joan Lenard.
“I am thinking of Gerardo,” says René, with the dawn of the morning light and the sounds of “El Necio,” in the car, also by Silvio.
The Cuban anti-terrorist activist, together with his lawyer Philip Horowitz, appeared before the officials assigned to supervise his case.'
- Read the original feature in Spanish on the Cubadebate site
- Watch the film of Rene leaving prison and being reunited with his daughters
