Gerardo, Ramón, Fernando, Antonio and René returned to the Homeland, as predicted by the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro.
Photo: File/RHC

By María Josefina Arce 

Cuba's battle was intense.  Years of denouncing the injustice committed against five of its sons, detained in September 1998 in the United States for protecting the Cuban people from terrorist actions perpetrated by organizations based in Florida, mainly in the city of Miami.

Nearly 3,500 dead and more than 2,000 disabled are the result of these acts, organized, financed and executed from U.S. soil, under the complicit gaze of Washington.

Cuba remembers December 17, 2014, when as part of a humanitarian agreement between the United States and Cuba, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino and Antonio Guerrero were released. Previously, René González and Fernando González had been released after serving their respective sentences.

The Five Heroes, as they are known around the world, were subjected in U.S. territory to a rigged trial and sentenced to long sentences, even exceeding two life sentences, accused without evidence of being spies who endangered the security of the United States.

They were incarcerated in maximum security prisons in different states, subjected to solitary confinement in punishment cells for periods of 17 months and cut off from their families.

All these arbitrariness did not manage to undermine their convictions, their faith in their people and in the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro (1926-2016), who did not rest in the struggle to return them to the bosom of their homeland.

It was a battle that went beyond our borders. For more than a decade some two THOUSAND organizations from 154 nations joined Cuba's demand for the release of the five anti-terrorist fighters.

Multiple were the actions developed over the years, such as the International Colloquium for the Liberation of the Five and against Terrorism, which from 2005 to 2014 was held in the eastern city of Holguin, and Havana, in its last edition.

Hundreds of peace and truth lovers attended these meetings from all over the world.

On U.S. soil, the National Committee for the release of the Five was formed to raise awareness of the case among the U.S. public opinion and called for various actions such as demonstrations, talks and the collection of signatures, among others.

Likewise, Nobel Peace Laureates demanded in a letter to the U.S. Attorney General the release of Gerardo, René, Antonio, Fernando and Ramón.

The case of the Cuban anti-terrorist fighters once again united the world around Cuba and once again demonstrated the double standards of the United States, which, while unjustly condemning the five young men, gave refuge to notorious criminals such as Luis Posada Carriles, author of numerous violent acts against the Cuban people.