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British priest denounces cruelty
against the Five
BRITISH Catholic Father Geoffrey Bottoms has
confirmed that the imprisonment of the five Cubans
in the United States and the isolation from families
and friends to which they are subjected is a brutal
violation of human rights.
The
likewise president of the UK committee for the
release of the five met on Thursday with the mothers
and wives of Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labaniño,
Antonio Guerrero, René González and Fernando
González, who have been imprisoned for six years and
are the victims of an unjust and partial trial.
“The
families should be together and I am sure that that
in the end international solidarity will bring them
back home,” affirmed Bottoms to the family members,
who recalled the strong bonds of friendship that
link him with their sons and themselves and his
fruitful work for their release.
Last
year Bottoms visited Gerardo Hernández in Lompoc
jail and in 2004 saw Ramón Labaniño in Beaumont,
Texas and is awaiting authorization to make
humanitarian visits to the other three, without any
response to date.
As
part of the solidarity group’s battle, Bottoms gave
the mothers and wives of the Cuban heroes T-shirts
alluding to the defense of Cuba and diaries produced
by the British Cuba Solidarity Campaign, of which he
is an executive member.
PALESTINIANS IN SOLIDARITY WITH
THE FIVE
“The
struggle of the five heroes unjustly imprisoned in
US jails is also ours,” Tawafi Anati, a member of
the Palestinian Solidarity Committee with those
Cubans, affirmed on Thursday.
Anati is also a member of the Cuba-Palestine
Friendship Association secretariat and is part of a
delegation from this Arab state visiting the island
in order to strengthen the fraternal links that bind
both peoples.
One
of the solidarity group’s principal actions was to
send a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan,
calling for that agency’s intervention to secure the
Five’s release. (AIN)
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