“Mission Against Terror” Tour Winds up in Winnipeg
A cross-Canada tour of the Cuban
documentary film “Mission Against Terror” had its
final screening in Winnipeg
on October 7. More than 150 people viewed the film about the history of U.S. terrorist attacks against Cuba and the case of The Cuban Five and
participated in the discussion period afterwards with the filmmakers, Bernie
Dwyer of Ireland and Roberto
Ruiz of Cuba.
The film outlines the continuous attacks
against Cuba
by Miami-based groups since the victory of the Cuban Revolution 45 years ago,
attacks which have have killed and maimed more than
3000 people. The most serious of these, the 1976
mid-air bombing of a Cubana airliner which killed all
73 people on board, was masterminded by the infamous Orlando Bosch, a
Cuban exile who to this day lives freely in Miami. The film showed excerpts from
recent live television interviews with him, boasting about his exploits. It was
in order to gain information about their plans that the men, now known as
The Cuban Five, infiltrated these Miami-based groups. They then
passed on information about impending terrorist attacks to the Cuban
government, who in turn, passed this information on to the U.S. government
and the FBI in good faith that they would arrest the terrorists and prevent
further attacks. However, the response of the U.S. government and the FBI was to
arrest the informants, put them in isolation for 17 months, and then charge
them with a large number of criminal offences. Most of the charges were a variation
of "conspiracy to commit espionage", with a charge of
"conspiracy to commit murder" added for one of the men after the
Cuban government downed an airplane flown illegally over Cuban airspace by one
of the Miami groups, the Brothers in Arms. It is illegal under U.S. law to charge an individual for the actions
of a government, but that is just what the U.S. government has done. The
myriad of other charges are also trumped up, as The Five broke no laws except
the minor one of failing to register as foreign agents. Following a
highly-charged, kangaroo trial in Miami,
they were convicted and sentenced to a total of five life sentences plus 34
years. They are now serving their seventh year in various maximum-security
prisons around the U.S.
The campaign to free The Five is on an
upswing, buoyed by the May decision of the UN
Human Rights Commission Working Group that their trial was illegal and their
detention arbitrary, as well as by the August ruling by three judges of the
U.S. Atlanta Circuit Appeal Court that overturned their trial and called for a
new one to be held in a venue outside Miami. Although the Miami State Attorney
has since called for this decision to be ruled on by all twelve judges of that Appeal Court, the
movement to free the Five continues to gain momentum.