US Judge Says Miami Five’s Rene Gonzalez Can Live in Cuba
Campaign News | Friday, 3 May 2013
The other Cuban Five members remain in US prisons.
A Florida judge announced today that she will allow the paroled Cuban Five member, Rene Gonzalez, convicted of espionage in the United States, to reside permanently on the island in exchange for renouncing U.S. citizenship, reported DPA news.
The decision of Judge Joan Lenard accepts that the first of the five Cubans, considered heroes in their country, may reside on the island. The other four are still imprisoned in the United States.
René González was released from prison in October 2011 after being imprisoned 13 years and was now serving three years probation.
Lenard recently allowed Gonzalez’s to travel to Cuba for two weeks to attend the memorial for his father, who died at age 82 on April 1st. Rene arrived in Havana on April 22.
Reached in Havana, Gonzalez, 56, told The Associated Press he was thrilled but wanted a chance to review the judge’s decision. “First I have to read the order,” he said. “If the order is real, it will be a great relief to me,” reported ABC News
Gonzalez was also able to travel to Cuba last year for two weeks to visit a sick brother and later returned to the United States.
Both his visits to the island have been strictly private, despite the usual campaigns organized in Cuba to demand the release of the five agents.
The other four Cubans are serving long prison terms in the United States, one of them a double life sentence.
The case of the Cuban Five is one of the thorniest issues that hamper an improvement in the difficult relations between Washington and Havana. Another is the case of Alan Gross, the US agent serving a 15-year sentence in Havana.
The two countries severed diplomatic ties in 1961, two years after the triumph of Fidel Castro’s revolution.
