You and We Are the Five, Cuban Antiterrorist Fighter Says

Athens, Oct 20 (Prensa Latina) The 8th Regional Meeting of Cuban Residents in Europe ended emotional and unexpectedly here today with the words of the antiterrorist fighter Ramon Labañino addressed to the participants from his captivity in the prison in Kentucky, United States.
The voice, heard by telephone, of one of the Five, as they are known in the campaign for their release, sounded amplified at an assembly hall that was in silence and shocked at the unexpected communication, brought to fruition by his daughter Aili, attending the meeting.

“You are also the Five, as we are,” said Ramon to his listeners, and expressed gratitude to everyone for the work the international movement of solidarity is carrying out for his release, and the need to stand together to continue fighting for Cuba.

Of the five Cuban antiterrorist fighters condemned in the United States since 1998 to prevent terrorist actions organized on American soil against their homeland, only Rene Gonzalez has been capable of returning to Cuba, after 13 years in prison.

Ramon Labañino, Fernando Gonzalez, Gerardo Hernandez, and Antonio Guerrero are still serving harsh sentences in prison.

Participants in the meeting unveiled a bust to Jose Marti and laid a wreath. The monument was made by Cuban artist Felix Madrigal Echemendia, and will be located at an Athenian square where other Latin American heroes’ sculptures are placed.

Global Solidarity Energizes Cuban Antiterrorists’ Relatives

Aili Labañino, daughter of one of the Cuban antiterrorist fighters unjustly condemned in the United States and invited to the 8th Regional Meeting of Cuban Residents in Europe, held here, talked with Prensa Latina after the event ended.
Her participation in this event was not only used to recognize and encourage the Cuban emigres to continue their struggle for the Five, as they are known worldwide, but to bring the voice of her father, Ramon Labañino, who addressed the participants over the telephone from his prison in Kentucky, United States.

How Ramon did to an excited audience, Aili also thanked the international movement of solidarity for the work as “it has filled us an energy that as relatives and individuals we need.”

Labañino’s eldest daughter said that to have that hope, transmitted by “many people in the world and many Cubans outside Cuba, as foreigners doing for Cuba,” which as her dad expressed, “make us think that there is not long to go as the beginning so the four antiterrorist fighters will be released.”

As a relative of one of the Five, Aili explained that along with her everyday life, such as any other Cuban, she is ” responsibility for representing them wherever we go, and of course the responsibility for being best Cubans, better people and try to be like them from the human and revolutionary viewpoint.”

Tags: cuba, injustice, Ramon Labañino, solidarity, United States